Obama and McCain agreed on only one thing during the debates – that the
The days of seven-course dinners are over America Inc. Buffeted by financial woes, none other than Warren Buffet might be called in to serve frugal buffet meals to corporate America.
best Secretary of the Treasury would be Warren Buffett. The world’s richest man started his ‘business’ life as a newspaper delivery boy, deducting his bicycle and watch as work expense in his first income tax return that declared the $35 dollars he made – when he was all of 13 years old. Turned down from Harvard Business School without an admission, Buffett would eventually graduate from the equally illustrious Columbia University, and teach ‘Investment Principles’ at University of Nebraska to students twice his age – when he was all of 21 years. In the same year, he would flop in his first formal business – a petrol bunk, but in the next year he would start working with the man who would change his life forever – Benjamin Graham, the father of ‘value investing’. Berkshire Hathaway, Buffet’s legendary insurance, investment, & holding company with assets of $273 billion and an employee base of 2,33,000, was originally a textile manufacturing firm that Buffett took over but couldn’t turn around. In 2006, as the world’s second richest man, Buffett donated $30.7 billion to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, thus making it the largest transparently operated private philanthropic foundation, and making himself history’s most generous philanthropist. Ironically, two years later – in 2008 – he would end Bill Gates’ 15-years of iron grip on the ‘world’s richest’ title. Known for his frugal, simple living – no cell phone, no personal computer, no driver, living only on his $100,000 annual salary, and in the same house since 1958 – Buffet described the fate that befell some of the mightiest US corporations recently as “poetic justice”. Still, there was no one else to help Goldman Sachs or General Electric, other than Buffett. Michael Lee Stallard of E Pluribus Partners, a leadership training organisation, writes about the unique leadership traits of the man who is destined to be the Secretary of Treasury or Economic Advisor to Obama.