Robert Lenzner

I want to tell you a story about Warren Buffett that I personally cherish, and that sheds light on his admirable character.

My son, Jed Lenzner, was just a tot when the notes from Omaha started coming to inquire when I was bringing him to the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting....

Jamie Dimon emulates Warren Buffett in his 38-page letter to JPM shareholders -- as argument for why JP Morgan Chase is exceptionally good value for long term investors, still bruised from the collapse of bank shares in the 2008 meltdown. Buffett talks about how BRK intrinsic value is...

I have my doubts about the the wisdom of our entrusted Wise Men in understanding the past in order to predict the future.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told a George Washington University class last week ( I saw it on C-Span) that the 2008 financial crisis took place because "nobody...

Your talk to the Society of Newspaper Editors was more political warfare than a primer in math or or an effective attack on class warfare, Mr. President. You lost me and most of America with all your talk about Trojan Horses and Social Darwinism, as I thought I...

Listen up! I have just finished reading the brilliant, fast-paced How To Be A Rogue Trader in global finance by the prize-winning Associate Editor of the Financial Times, John Gapper and hereby recommend it as required reading (ASAP) by the CEOs, risk officers, derivatives traders, boards of directors, accountants and...

This debate has been going on ever since there were crises, bear markets, even depressions.

Let's go to the record book (thanks to MM Thomas, a partner in the old Lehman Bros., and later at Drexel Burnham)

In 1932, before election day, Russell Leffingwell, a top partner of of the...

The only conclusion you can reach from reading Ron Suskind's Confidence Men, an informal history of Wall Street and the White House under Barack Obama, is one of childish rivalries, a lack of decisiveness and follow-through -- in short a chapter in White House Amateursville and morale-killing that had nothing...

The European crisis looks to be worse than 2008 in the U.S. That's because it is both a sovereign debt problem for Greece, Portugal and possibly Spain, as well as a a crisis for the European banking system, whose shares are losing value almost every day.

In the U.S., you...

Moses Chao, one of the wisest men I know, and a leading NYU neuroscientist, has been warning me for two years about the danger of not finding a cure for Alzheimer's, a debilitating disease of the brain that currently affects some 5 million Americans over the age of...

The Greenland glaciers are very nearly melted altogether, reports Rob Purves, an Australian environmental consultant and board member of World Wildlife Fund Intl., whom I met last week in Lake Louise, Alberta, one of the wonders of the world and on the UNESCO list of protected places.

Purves, a no-nonsense,...

There is a powerful lot of wishful thinking going on about the American economy these days, starting at the very top. President Obama has promised that we will always be a Triple A nation -- despite just having had our credit rating reduced for the first time in our history....

We are in a most unpleasant quandary. No win-win in the offing. Lose-lose maybe. At best minor win-win or lose-win. I can't see the financial markets anywhere responding well tomorrow -- except for the golden goldies (GLD).

If Obama folds and accepts cuts on the middle class and old folks...

Rupert Murdoch cannot be pleased by the aftershocks of the hearing before Parliament.

Two former News International executives whose duties were key to the News of the World scandal have publicly denounced James Murdoch's assertion he knew nothing about the widespread hacking of soccer union leader Gordon Taylor...

A wise legal counselor who advises wealthy families suggested to me over lunch today that Rebekah Brooks could find herself in the very same pickle that DeeDee Brooks, the President of Sotheby's, found herself in when the government began its investigation of price fixing in the art world. To ensure...

Financial markets are fragile and teetering due to the debt impasse in the US and the unruly contagion of sovereign debt crisis in Europe, says Mihir Desai, Harvard finance professor. "Our (financial) system appears broken to the rest of the world."

MIT economist Simon Johnson lays down the bold challenge...

Rupert Murdoch's $5 billion share repurchase plan of News Corp. shares is equal to 12% of News Corp's $42 billion market cap. As the Murdoch family has 47% voting control, this $5 billion move could be the first step in taking out the public shareholders -- and ensuring...

Subscribe to the Economist's recorded reading of the entire issue from last week, which gives you a clearer view of what's in store for China. The inflation is still high, and the 10% annual growth rate of the last decade is going to wither to under 5% by...

There must be a contagion of write-offs, sooner or later. Take Greece for example; its 2 year notes are yielding over 29%, but the institutions holding that debt are still valuing the paper at 100 cents on the dollar. And that's just Greece, a small nation on the eastern border...

MPD -- the marginal productivity of debt -- all debt that is consumer, corporate and government -- is producing less and less of national income -- wages, profits,and interest income. MPD is suffocating GDP. For decades every new dollar of debt "has created incrementally less and less national income and...

The partial meltdown in bank stocks was a surprise and a warning. The market seemed to know that the powers-that-be were going to order more capital -- a great deal more capital -- according to the declaration today that a surcharge will raise bank capital to at least 10% of...