"Berkshire Hathaway sees its profits double" Bloomberg News, May 05, 2012
NEW YORK - Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said Friday its first-quarter profit doubled as insurance units and Warren Buffett’s derivative bets posted better results.
Net income climbed to $3.25 billion, or $1,966 a share, from $1.51 billion, or $917, a year earlier, when the company faced claims from an earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Berkshire said in a prepared statement. Operating earnings, which exclude some investment results, were $1,615 a share, missing the average $1,780 estimate of three analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
That's OVER a BILLION BUCKS a MONTH, folks -- BETTING on DERIVATIVES!!
You know, the KIND of CRAP that RUINED the WORLD ECONOMY!
Of course, Buffett has his hands in so many things he's too big too fail.
Buffett, Berkshire’s chairman, increases volatility by guarding companies against losses from large natural disasters, a risk he is willing to take because insurance units gives him funds to invest, especially when catastrophes are less severe. Berkshire’s profits also fluctuate based on stock indexes including the Standard & Poor’s 500 after Buffett used derivatives to bet on equities gaining....
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Related: Buffett Made $10 Billion in 2011
Yup, but somehow the economy is still s***.
So what is he going to spend all that money on, 'eh?
"Buffett has said newspapers will have a decent future if they continue delivering information that can’t be found elsewhere. They also need to stop offering news free online, he has said."
Related: Would You Pay Twice For a Turd?
Ashamedly, I am. If I don't I wouldn't be doing this because if I don't read a printed paper I am not interested in viewing their website. It's all for you, dear and beloved readers.
‘‘If a citizenry cares little about its community, it will eventually care little about its newspaper,’’ said Buffett, Berkshire’s 81-year-old chairman and chief executive."
Someone else once said something similar:
"Without a paper – a journal of some kind– you cannot unite a community. You belong to a very important profession." -- Mahatma Gandhi
That's why what has happened to AmeriKa's newspapers is so sad, why this country is so divided, and WHY YOU and I ARE HERE, dear and beloved reader!!
Related:
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Operation Mockingbird
Why Am I No Longer Reading the Newspaper?
I still care; however, that's why I no longer believe.
Maybe Buffett can break their grip:
"At N.Y. newspaper, Warren Buffett leads from afar; Billionaire says he plans to buy more publications" by Christine Haughney | New York Times, June 18, 2012
BUFFALO — Over the years, newspaper owners have built monuments to themselves in the form of giant buildings, statues, and plaques.
It's called arrogance.
At the headquarters of The Buffalo News, a sand-colored office building, the only visible sign of the owner is a small photo hanging in the office of the publisher, Stanford Lipsey, signed, ‘‘To the best in the business, Warren.’’
Warren is, of course, the billionaire Warren E. Buffett, but the modesty of his physical presence — he has not visited the newsroom in eight years — understates his interest in the paper, which his company, Berkshire Hathaway, bought in 1977.
Buffett’s views on newspapers have been a hot topic. Three years
after telling shareholders he would not buy a newspaper at any price,
Buffett has moved aggressively into the business, buying 63 local papers
and revealing a 3 percent stake in Lee Enterprises, a chain of mostly
small daily newspapers based in Iowa.
In a letter Buffett sent to the publishers and editors of all Berkshire Hathaway daily newspapers, he described himself as a newspaper addict who planned to buy more papers. While he is less certain how he will make papers profitable in the digital age, he’s confident that in certain cities, newspapers will thrive.
‘‘I do not have any secret sauce,’’ Buffett said in a phone interview. ‘‘There are still 1,400 daily papers in the United States. The nice thing about it is that somebody can think about the best answer and we can copy him. Two or three years from now, you’ll see a much better-defined pattern of operations online and in print by papers.’’
The best indicator of what Buffett may do is what he has done with The Buffalo News. Interviews with more than a dozen current and former editors paint a picture of a profitable paper that is run with little involvement from its owner. Some journalists say the owners will hold out as long as they can to buy the latest printing presses and that they wish the paper dedicated more resources to the highly ambitious journalism that wins the biggest awards. But many workers agree the owners do not skimp on sending journalists to town meetings or on enterprising local journalism....
But being owned by Berkshire Hathaway has not shielded The News from the industry’s slump. In 2011, the union said newspaper officials told them the paper earned a profit of $9.3 million, the first time the paper’s profits fell below $10 million in a quarter-century. Lipsey said The Buffalo News often reported annual profits in the 1980s of $55 million. Since 2009, nearly 100 full-time jobs have been cut, said Henry L. Davis, president of Buffalo Newspaper Guild. The unionized staff members who remain have had a 1 percent raise since 2009.
The newsroom staff is now 140, from 200 about a decade ago. Retirees have few complaints about the pension managed by Berkshire Hathaway because the maximum retirement payouts have been raised. Newsroom employees still have their health benefits fully covered.
‘‘We do kind of consider ourselves lucky,’’ said Gene Warner, a reporter with the paper for 32 years who retired in 2010. ‘‘We’re not bleeding red ink.’’
You should.
Lipsey hopes to improve the paper’s fortunes by unveiling a version for Apple’s iPad and a paid subscription model. He is expanding into commercial printing and hopes for double-digit growth this year....
That's not working.
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Let me pick over my Globe for a minute:
"Times-Picayune slashes newsroom staff; New Orleans paper prepares for digital focus" by Kevin McGill | Associated Press, June 13, 2012
NEW ORLEANS — The Times-Picayune said Tuesday 200 employees will lose their jobs when one of the nation’s oldest daily newspapers shifts its focus to online news and publishes just three days a week beginning this fall....
The change means New Orleans will become the largest metro area in the nation without a daily newspaper in the digital age.
In Alabama, three major daily newspapers laid off about 400 employees....
Papers have struggled in recent years as print advertising declined during the recession, and newspapers have yet to learn how to make online advertising as profitable as print.
Maybe if you STOPPED the AGENDA-PUSHING LYING that might help!
In New Orleans, the announcement last month about the changes was greeted with dismay. A rally in support of keeping The Times-Picayune a daily drew hundreds of people outside a popular restaurant last week.
Community leaders and a group of advertisers have called on the parent company to keep the daily publication.
‘‘Many readers can’t imagine the morning without our newspaper in their hands,’’ Times-Picayune editor Jim Amoss said in a video posted on the paper’s affiliated website, NOLA.com. ‘‘I understand that. I’m a print guy. I grew up in this business. But I’m also a news guy, a journalist, and a New Orleans native. My priorities are to cover the news of the New Orleans area, to have the best reporters investigate and explain the complexities of this politically byzantine community, and to write about our culture, our food, our music, our sports.’’
Guilty as charged.
****************
Job casualties in New Orleans included some of the city’s most experienced writers and photographers, many of whom announced their departures on a Facebook page by simply posting ‘‘-30-,’’ an old copy editor’s code for ‘‘end of story.’’
Peter Finney, a sports writer for the paper since 1945, is being laid off but has been asked to write a freelance column, the paper said. Managing editors Peter Kovacs and Dan Shea, among the newsroom leaders during the paper’s Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, have not been asked to stay.
Then JOIN the REST OF US in the $HOE-$TRING CITIZEN'S MEDIA!!
Employees who took part in Tuesday’s meetings described an emotional scene that played out over the course of the day among colleagues who have worked together for many years.
I feel bad for them, but it is not my fault.
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Related: La. paper to end daily circulation
Also see: Aaron Kushner ready to buy 7 Western newspapers
"The major media are large corporations, owned by and interlinked with even larger conglomerates. Like other corporations, they sell a product to a market. The market is advertisers -- that is, other businesses. The product is audiences, [and] for the elite media, [they're] relatively privileged audiences. So we have major corporations selling fairly wealthy and privileged audiences to other businesses. Not surprisingly, the picture of the world presented reflects the narrow and biased interests and values of the sellers, the buyers and the product." -- Noam Chomsky (from Take the Rich Off Welfare -- Odonian Press, p133) -- Wake the Flock Up
