I didn’t see anything in this report about the back taxes owed by Berkshire Hathaway going back to 02. I guess his buddy Obama is going to let them slide so he won’t have to pay his fair share.
The best years for this guy are definitely behind him. As evendence of his push for higher taxes and his love for the Obama administrations socialist policies. Yes he makes alot of money off of investing in stocks of companies with others money. Basically like large banks have done, fortunately for Mr. Buffet the insurance industry was not as damaged by the credit default swaps. And I really do not think that the success of Gieco is due to them not having agents, its more like the nonprofessional counselors, advising their clients to carry 10/20 limits with millions in assets just so they can sell a policy to their customers. Then they get into an accident and find out too late that they purchased the wrong amount of coverage from their attorney. Maybe good business for Gieco, but not for the consumer.
Good to see your reply again Sarah. I have been battling with TOPOV on many issues since he is still spouting the Progressive Line. As far as GEICO is concerned, they have plenty of money to defend E&O claims from advising clients to carry minimum limits for a savings. Their advertising budget is more than most companies total assets. Uncle Warren has figured out a way to game the system and his Democratic buddies let him get away with it as long as he keeps his contributions flowing.
Not hard to defend a claim when it is the client who is the one malpracticing, but that is where one is when they are left to their own devices; after all, what is the standard of care required of a script-reading telephone clerk, anyway? They probably don’t even have a license!
Sarah and friends– Do you have to turn every IJ story into an excuse for a grade school name-calling or political tirade? Buffett is one of the most successful capitalists of our time. He may actually know something about how the economy works. You dismiss his track record because you disagree with some of his politics, mainly that he thinks the wealthy should pay a fair share of taxes. You say you can’t understand for the life of you why he thinks that. Hmmmm. Maybe you should found out. You belittle the fact he makes money on investing. So are you with the Occupy movement? Can’t you disagree with some of his politics while respecting his accomplishments and intelligence? Your extreme partisanship is not very enlightening or insightful on issues of the day. I am, by the way, a long-time Republican but I am tired of extremists of all stripes who put party before country and see evil in every article and event. You know,some people are very thoughtful and care about this country; some are Republicans and some are Democrats. Many just want to see our leaders come together to solve problems and keep us safe. But people like you just want to smear and bully others and hear yourselves rant. Do us all a favor, next time, if you don’t have a constructive comment to offer, keep your hands off the keyboard.
Nora, befor bloviating on this site, you should do some research. Buffet has gone on and on about the rich paying more taxes, hosting Obama fundraisers etc all the while avoiding paying taxes on his Berkshire Hathaway companies going back to 2002. He is like most big time rich liberals that think the rules don’t apply to them. He obviously has cut a deal with Turbo Tax Tim in exchange for donations to the re-election campaign.
Nora, Apparently you have been drinking too much of the Progressive Koolaid when it comes to Buffet. There is no doubt he has learned how to game the system and profit from crony Capitalism which is rampant with this administration. No true Capitalist really wants creeping Socialism and would support people like Obama who is basically trying to destroy the business community. What we are going to have left are some global companies who will have all the advantages of power and influence and the rest will go away or be bought up as time goes by.
Where are you getting the info about the subsidiaries not paying taxes? Did you not see his comments the other day that the banks were fleeced by homeowners that refied and took all the cash out? That sounds like a real liberal Obama mouthpiece to me.
The guy does have a point about the tax rates. I have no issues with changing the cap gains rate, carried interest, etc in principal. I do not want it done solely so the federal gov’t can be expanded further. Taking more of my $$ to pay down the debt would be tolerable.
Full disclosure: I’ve met WB and used to work for one of the smaller companies he owns.
don’t be fooled, berkshire uses all its insurance operations to funnel cash to berkshire so he can buy more co’s. insurance is just cash flow for them, the customer means nothing!
Geico may be making money mostly from the ignorance of it’s customers and Geico’s FALSE advertising. Why does Warrn Buffet condone their commercials stating that they have LOCAL geico agents? In my local area they have one office yet their commercials run unrelentlessly stating how great they are because they have “LOCAL” Geico agents near everyone. This is a blatant lie and one in which they contradict themself on in this article’s own statement by saying they have no agents but do business online. Geico is pretending to be an insurance company and really does not deliver as a true insurance company can. Their claims rating in our local area put’s them at 16th best and their claims handling has received numerous complaints. Again they are the fast food drive through version of a true insurance company and cannot deliver where it matters most to the customer by trying to replace REAL people with pretend call center rep’s who they pay good benefits to to entice them to employment but just ask my office mate, who worked for Geico for a year and a half, they teach them to also do unscrupulous tactics to secure business and really know nothing about acutal hands on insurance procedures. But what should we expect from a company who uses an animated lizard and cavemen in no punch line, low IQ commercials that pound the general public nonstop. I am so sickened by their continous nonsense and insulting advertising that I always change the channel when ever one of their commercials come on. So what if Warren Buffett is happy with his Geico insurance division because they are making money but they are also making fools out of their customers and not delivering at all to any degree that their continous FALSE ADVERTISING claims that they are. And BTW don’t believe them if you question them about their customer satisfaction rating they will tell you they are at 97% but don’t tell you that is their own internal survey and not one from a third party nonbias source so just like Warren Buffet when you ask him what he thinks of his insurance operations of course he is going to say he thinks that they are second to none but reality is Warren that your allowance of such blatant dishonesty and false advertising and pretending to be something your not will catch up to you and unfortunately your customers are the ones to suffer from your horrendous service and lack of REAL local agents. Stop the lying and be truthful about the real facts. Take 15 minutes or less and confess your pedaling a load of bull and being a fake in an industry that doesn’t need your nonsense. And finally stop telling everyone you also do property insurance through geico when the facts are you employ several XYZ companies who arent’ Geico to do these low budget ACV policies for you and the great discount you offer off of your auto policies is 3%? Wow that’s about as bad as the interest rate on a savings account at a bank these days, Next to nothing especially in comparison with my companies auto home discount of 25%. Now that’s real company giving a real discount with real local agents and real claims handling and real customer satisfaction as rated by a true third party non biased source called JD Power and Associates. Ever heard of them or are you too busy listening to yourself talk. Buyers beware you will get what you pay for if you want cheap insurance and cheap service with fake information and be insulted by the stupidity of Geico’s commercials that have nothing to do with information about their services and failed attempts at humor then go for it. Water seeks it’s own level and if your in their 9% of the market share I feel sorry for you. They are absolutely the worst insurance company in the industry. Warren is making money though and because he is successful financially everyone is just supposed to be like sheep and go along with him and say “geez if he makes allot of money he must know what he’s talking about” and believe anything he says. In the case of his Geico insurance company their is nothing but false advertising bombarding the publice through all the media airwaves about their LOCAL agents giving great service. Get rid of the lizard and replace him with a Clown as your mascot for the joke your trying to make out of insurance. Geico is a pretender and needs to stop trying to impersonate a real company and lying to the public to do so.
Shawn, I think Buffet and his minions are playing exactly to the mentally challenged out there who swallow the bait hook, line and sinker. In fact, they are doing about the same thing that Nationwide, Progressive, 21st Century, Farmer’s University do and that is to play to people with IQ’s in the 50’s. The only really good insurance commercials are done by Liberty Mutual who preaches responsibility and is tailored to those who actually use their brains to make a buying decision.
GEICO is the McDonald’s of insurance. It’s fast, it’s cheap and it’s barely adequate. No one is taking their family to McDonald’s to celebrate any big life rights of passage.
GEICO – Has no agents – no, they have substandard faceless phone clerks who read off a script, and don’t know you – they’ll never know you, and they’ll forget all about you as soon as they hang up the phone. You’ll never get the same one twice, and they are there primarily waiting for payday.
This is what has happened to our society – the GEICO-ization of service where it’s all crap but most people today wouldn’t even know the difference. Who goes to a self-serve dentist? With insurance, you have more value at stake than a tooth, but just the thought of drilling your own tooth to most people seems ridiculous, yet they go out and take faulty advise about coverage limits from a faceless person whoo needs to keep the fact finding questions at a minimum to move on to the next caller.
You are absolutely right. We are living in a dumbed down society of people who are more concerned with downloading an app on their iphone instead of thinking about their buying decisions and getting quality advice. GEICO caters to people like this and I seriously doubt that these order takers are licensed to sell or even knows much about what they are selling. They are trained in the very basics and would be stumped if someone asked them a real coverage question.
Nora and friends,
Buffet is the one who made this political when he endorese Obama and sent his secretary to the state of the Union speach and had the nerve to state that he didnt pay as much in taxes as his secretary. I think we all know that is not true. IJ has made it political when they publish articles like this one on Buffet and also another article last week on journalist sueing Ruprect Murdocks Fox news, what does that have to do with insurance? or any other political event which is helpful to Obama’s election.
Progressive Liberals always point fingers away from their own rediculous factless illogical belief’s. and eventually when caught in thier ideologial falsehoods, burst into an emotional, factless outburst of ridicule.
What the Libs didn’t say was that the secretary was one of the 1 percenters that wasn’t paying her fair share. She makes a huge salary well above the $250,000 threshold and just bought a big fancy house etc. Uncle Warren made sure she was well paid for her work. Also, it is well known that Uncle Warren has not been paying proper taxes on many of his owned entities. If he is all for the rich paying their fair share, why not cut the government a check for his back taxes going back to 2002? Hypocrisy personified.
Do you think if Warren Buffet had not endorsed Obama, Would we be reading an article in the insurance journal about Warren Buffets annual shareholder meeting? Me either!
So are we going to have to read about George Clooney, Barbara Sriesand, Jane Fonda or Bruce Springstein’s rants for the next 8 months?
I didn’t see anything in this report about the back taxes owed by Berkshire Hathaway going back to 02. I guess his buddy Obama is going to let them slide so he won’t have to pay his fair share.
The best years for this guy are definitely behind him. As evendence of his push for higher taxes and his love for the Obama administrations socialist policies. Yes he makes alot of money off of investing in stocks of companies with others money. Basically like large banks have done, fortunately for Mr. Buffet the insurance industry was not as damaged by the credit default swaps. And I really do not think that the success of Gieco is due to them not having agents, its more like the nonprofessional counselors, advising their clients to carry 10/20 limits with millions in assets just so they can sell a policy to their customers. Then they get into an accident and find out too late that they purchased the wrong amount of coverage from their attorney. Maybe good business for Gieco, but not for the consumer.
Good to see your reply again Sarah. I have been battling with TOPOV on many issues since he is still spouting the Progressive Line. As far as GEICO is concerned, they have plenty of money to defend E&O claims from advising clients to carry minimum limits for a savings. Their advertising budget is more than most companies total assets. Uncle Warren has figured out a way to game the system and his Democratic buddies let him get away with it as long as he keeps his contributions flowing.
Not hard to defend a claim when it is the client who is the one malpracticing, but that is where one is when they are left to their own devices; after all, what is the standard of care required of a script-reading telephone clerk, anyway? They probably don’t even have a license!
Sarah and friends– Do you have to turn every IJ story into an excuse for a grade school name-calling or political tirade? Buffett is one of the most successful capitalists of our time. He may actually know something about how the economy works. You dismiss his track record because you disagree with some of his politics, mainly that he thinks the wealthy should pay a fair share of taxes. You say you can’t understand for the life of you why he thinks that. Hmmmm. Maybe you should found out. You belittle the fact he makes money on investing. So are you with the Occupy movement? Can’t you disagree with some of his politics while respecting his accomplishments and intelligence? Your extreme partisanship is not very enlightening or insightful on issues of the day. I am, by the way, a long-time Republican but I am tired of extremists of all stripes who put party before country and see evil in every article and event. You know,some people are very thoughtful and care about this country; some are Republicans and some are Democrats. Many just want to see our leaders come together to solve problems and keep us safe. But people like you just want to smear and bully others and hear yourselves rant. Do us all a favor, next time, if you don’t have a constructive comment to offer, keep your hands off the keyboard.
Nora, befor bloviating on this site, you should do some research. Buffet has gone on and on about the rich paying more taxes, hosting Obama fundraisers etc all the while avoiding paying taxes on his Berkshire Hathaway companies going back to 2002. He is like most big time rich liberals that think the rules don’t apply to them. He obviously has cut a deal with Turbo Tax Tim in exchange for donations to the re-election campaign.
Nora, Apparently you have been drinking too much of the Progressive Koolaid when it comes to Buffet. There is no doubt he has learned how to game the system and profit from crony Capitalism which is rampant with this administration. No true Capitalist really wants creeping Socialism and would support people like Obama who is basically trying to destroy the business community. What we are going to have left are some global companies who will have all the advantages of power and influence and the rest will go away or be bought up as time goes by.
Where are you getting the info about the subsidiaries not paying taxes? Did you not see his comments the other day that the banks were fleeced by homeowners that refied and took all the cash out? That sounds like a real liberal Obama mouthpiece to me.
The guy does have a point about the tax rates. I have no issues with changing the cap gains rate, carried interest, etc in principal. I do not want it done solely so the federal gov’t can be expanded further. Taking more of my $$ to pay down the debt would be tolerable.
Full disclosure: I’ve met WB and used to work for one of the smaller companies he owns.
don’t be fooled, berkshire uses all its insurance operations to funnel cash to berkshire so he can buy more co’s. insurance is just cash flow for them, the customer means nothing!
He admits insurance is a global cartel where surplus is withheld to drive up prices and restrict capacity.
Geico may be making money mostly from the ignorance of it’s customers and Geico’s FALSE advertising. Why does Warrn Buffet condone their commercials stating that they have LOCAL geico agents? In my local area they have one office yet their commercials run unrelentlessly stating how great they are because they have “LOCAL” Geico agents near everyone. This is a blatant lie and one in which they contradict themself on in this article’s own statement by saying they have no agents but do business online. Geico is pretending to be an insurance company and really does not deliver as a true insurance company can. Their claims rating in our local area put’s them at 16th best and their claims handling has received numerous complaints. Again they are the fast food drive through version of a true insurance company and cannot deliver where it matters most to the customer by trying to replace REAL people with pretend call center rep’s who they pay good benefits to to entice them to employment but just ask my office mate, who worked for Geico for a year and a half, they teach them to also do unscrupulous tactics to secure business and really know nothing about acutal hands on insurance procedures. But what should we expect from a company who uses an animated lizard and cavemen in no punch line, low IQ commercials that pound the general public nonstop. I am so sickened by their continous nonsense and insulting advertising that I always change the channel when ever one of their commercials come on. So what if Warren Buffett is happy with his Geico insurance division because they are making money but they are also making fools out of their customers and not delivering at all to any degree that their continous FALSE ADVERTISING claims that they are. And BTW don’t believe them if you question them about their customer satisfaction rating they will tell you they are at 97% but don’t tell you that is their own internal survey and not one from a third party nonbias source so just like Warren Buffet when you ask him what he thinks of his insurance operations of course he is going to say he thinks that they are second to none but reality is Warren that your allowance of such blatant dishonesty and false advertising and pretending to be something your not will catch up to you and unfortunately your customers are the ones to suffer from your horrendous service and lack of REAL local agents. Stop the lying and be truthful about the real facts. Take 15 minutes or less and confess your pedaling a load of bull and being a fake in an industry that doesn’t need your nonsense. And finally stop telling everyone you also do property insurance through geico when the facts are you employ several XYZ companies who arent’ Geico to do these low budget ACV policies for you and the great discount you offer off of your auto policies is 3%? Wow that’s about as bad as the interest rate on a savings account at a bank these days, Next to nothing especially in comparison with my companies auto home discount of 25%. Now that’s real company giving a real discount with real local agents and real claims handling and real customer satisfaction as rated by a true third party non biased source called JD Power and Associates. Ever heard of them or are you too busy listening to yourself talk. Buyers beware you will get what you pay for if you want cheap insurance and cheap service with fake information and be insulted by the stupidity of Geico’s commercials that have nothing to do with information about their services and failed attempts at humor then go for it. Water seeks it’s own level and if your in their 9% of the market share I feel sorry for you. They are absolutely the worst insurance company in the industry. Warren is making money though and because he is successful financially everyone is just supposed to be like sheep and go along with him and say “geez if he makes allot of money he must know what he’s talking about” and believe anything he says. In the case of his Geico insurance company their is nothing but false advertising bombarding the publice through all the media airwaves about their LOCAL agents giving great service. Get rid of the lizard and replace him with a Clown as your mascot for the joke your trying to make out of insurance. Geico is a pretender and needs to stop trying to impersonate a real company and lying to the public to do so.
Shawn, I think Buffet and his minions are playing exactly to the mentally challenged out there who swallow the bait hook, line and sinker. In fact, they are doing about the same thing that Nationwide, Progressive, 21st Century, Farmer’s University do and that is to play to people with IQ’s in the 50’s. The only really good insurance commercials are done by Liberty Mutual who preaches responsibility and is tailored to those who actually use their brains to make a buying decision.
GEICO is the McDonald’s of insurance. It’s fast, it’s cheap and it’s barely adequate. No one is taking their family to McDonald’s to celebrate any big life rights of passage.
GEICO – Has no agents – no, they have substandard faceless phone clerks who read off a script, and don’t know you – they’ll never know you, and they’ll forget all about you as soon as they hang up the phone. You’ll never get the same one twice, and they are there primarily waiting for payday.
This is what has happened to our society – the GEICO-ization of service where it’s all crap but most people today wouldn’t even know the difference. Who goes to a self-serve dentist? With insurance, you have more value at stake than a tooth, but just the thought of drilling your own tooth to most people seems ridiculous, yet they go out and take faulty advise about coverage limits from a faceless person whoo needs to keep the fact finding questions at a minimum to move on to the next caller.
You are absolutely right. We are living in a dumbed down society of people who are more concerned with downloading an app on their iphone instead of thinking about their buying decisions and getting quality advice. GEICO caters to people like this and I seriously doubt that these order takers are licensed to sell or even knows much about what they are selling. They are trained in the very basics and would be stumped if someone asked them a real coverage question.
That would be the “Dairy Queen” of insurance biz.
Nora and friends,
Buffet is the one who made this political when he endorese Obama and sent his secretary to the state of the Union speach and had the nerve to state that he didnt pay as much in taxes as his secretary. I think we all know that is not true. IJ has made it political when they publish articles like this one on Buffet and also another article last week on journalist sueing Ruprect Murdocks Fox news, what does that have to do with insurance? or any other political event which is helpful to Obama’s election.
Progressive Liberals always point fingers away from their own rediculous factless illogical belief’s. and eventually when caught in thier ideologial falsehoods, burst into an emotional, factless outburst of ridicule.
What the Libs didn’t say was that the secretary was one of the 1 percenters that wasn’t paying her fair share. She makes a huge salary well above the $250,000 threshold and just bought a big fancy house etc. Uncle Warren made sure she was well paid for her work. Also, it is well known that Uncle Warren has not been paying proper taxes on many of his owned entities. If he is all for the rich paying their fair share, why not cut the government a check for his back taxes going back to 2002? Hypocrisy personified.
Do you think if Warren Buffet had not endorsed Obama, Would we be reading an article in the insurance journal about Warren Buffets annual shareholder meeting? Me either!
So are we going to have to read about George Clooney, Barbara Sriesand, Jane Fonda or Bruce Springstein’s rants for the next 8 months?