Warren Buffett

Their daughter, Susie, lives in Omaha and does charitable work through the Susan A. Buffett Foundation and is a national board member of Girls, Inc. Read Less

In 2009, Gates regained the position of number one on the Forbes list, with Buffett second. Read Less

Later, in the third and final presidential debate, Obama mentioned Buffett as a potential economic advisor. Buffett was also finance advisor to California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger during his 2003 election campaign.

Warren Buffett's writings include his annual reports and various articles. Buffett is recognized by communicators as a great story-teller, as evidenced by his annual letters to shareholders. He warned about the pernicious effects of inflation:

In his article "The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville", Buffett rebutted the academic Efficient-market hypothesis, that beating the S&P 500 was "pure chance", by highlighting the results achieved by a number of students of the Graham and Dodd value investing school of thought. In addition to himself, Buffett named Walter J. Schloss, Tom Knapp, Ed Anderson (Tweedy, Brown Inc.), Bill Ruane (Sequoia Fund, Inc.), Charles Munger (Buffett's own business partner at Berkshire), Rick Guerin (Pacific Partners, Ltd.), and Stan Perlmeter (Perlmeter Investments). In his November 1999 Fortune article, he warned of investors' unrealistic expectations: Read Less

Buffett has described the health care reform under President Barack Obama as insufficient to deal with the costs of health care in the US, though he supports its aim of expanding health insurance coverage. Buffett compared health care costs to a tapeworm, saying that they compromise US economic competitiveness by increasing manufacturing costs. Buffett thinks health care costs should head towards 13 to 14% of GDP. (Under the PPACA, the CMS actuary has projected health care costs will reach almost 20% of GDP by 2020.) Buffett said "if you want the very best, I mean if you want to spend a million dollars to prolong your life 3 months in a coma or something" then the US is probably the best, but that other countries spend much less and receive much more in health care value (visits, hospital beds, doctors and nurses per capita). Buffett faults the incentives in the US medical industry, that payers reimburse doctors for procedures (fee-for-service) leading to unnecessary care (overutilization), instead of paying for results. Buffett has cited Atul Gawande's 2009 article in the New Yorker as being a useful study in the problems of US health care, with its documentation of unwarranted variation in Medicare expenditures between McAllen, Texas and El Paso, Texas. Buffett also brought up the problem of lobbying by the medical industry, saying that they are very focused on maintaining their income. Read Less