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本应在去年巴郡股东大会上大放异彩的《滚雪球》却因延迟出版，只能偃旗息鼓和其它六本新书摆在一起供股东们翻阅购买；华尔街的批巴力量刚开始聚集，而美国境外的批巴势力又在加拿大多伦多建起倒巴新阵线，姑且观之！
Published Sunday March 22, 2009
Warren Watch: Biography will be sold at meeting
BY STEVE JORDON
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER "The Snowball" is scheduled to be sold at the May 2 annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. shareholders. There had been discussion about whether the Warren Buffett biography by Alice Schroeder would be available then, but Buffett makes the selections himself and the 960-page book made the cut, along with 41 other books and three DVDs. In January, we reported that Buffett had ended his annual pre-meeting Q&A dinner with Schroeder. The New York Times quoted unnamed sources last month as saying that Buffett's relationship with Schroeder had cooled because he was displeased with the book's accounts of his personal life, particularly its portrayal of his late wife, Susan Thompson Buffett. But at the time Buffett said, through a spokeswoman, that he "likes Alice, likes her book and has received a number of glowing letters from friends about it." Their off-the-record dinner discussion, held since 1998, had simply run its course, he said. The book (full title: "The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life," Bantam, $35) will be one of seven new books displayed in the northeast corner of the Qwest Center Omaha's exhibition hall, where Omaha's locally owned store, the Bookworm, has its temporary shop. "It would be out of character for him to authorize the book and then not have her sell the book at the meeting," said Phil Black, co-owner of the Bookworm. The store usually invites authors of the books to sign copies during the annual meeting and had invited Schroeder, he said. But Schroeder said last week that she will not be signing copies at the meeting or at the Bookworm, located in Countryside Village near 87th and Pacific Streets, during Berkshire weekend. "I am a huge supporter of independent bookstores," Schroeder said. "Independent bookstores and publishers and authors have very special relationships. For whatever reason, we were not able to have that kind of a relationship with the Bookworm for this event." She and Bantam "weren't able to work things out with the Bookworm," she said. At one point Bantam had hoped to debut the book at the 2008 Berkshire meeting. The Bookworm had planned a separate "Snowball" tent outside the Qwest Center stocked with tens of thousands of copies. But the writing and editing process pushed the release to September. Many of the 25,000 or so people expected at this year's Berkshire meeting likely already have copies if they want them. Black said he's trying to figure out how many copies to order. "It won't be the thousands and thousands like it would have been last year," he said, although the store's 20 percent discount for shareholders is an added incentive. Buffett had long planned an autobiography but instead delegated the task of writing a complete account of his life to Schroeder, a former insurance analyst who had researched Berkshire. It's her first book. For five years Buffett opened his records and gave her exclusive access and extensive interviews. His friends, family members and business associates cooperated as well. Other new titles that will be sold at the Berkshire meeting: • "How to Build a Business Warren Buffett Would Buy: The R.C. Willey Story" by Jeff Benedict. • "Dear Mr. Buffett: What an Investor Learns 1,269 Miles from Wall Street" by Janet Tavakoli. • "Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime" by Bill Gates Sr., father of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. • "Pilgrimage to Warren Buffett's Omaha: A Hedge Fund Manager's Dispatches" by Jeff Matthews. • New editions of "The Great Crash: 1929" by John Kenneth Galbraith and "Security Analysis" by Benjamin Graham & David Dodd. Does he swim naked?
Toronto Star columnist David Olive criticized Buffett last week on several counts, including his touting the strengths of Wells Fargo Bank and U.S. Bank when Berkshire is a leading shareholder of the two.
Rather than a trusted oracle for Main Street, Olive wrote, Buffett is "a knight errant." "How seriously are we to take Warren Buffett, one of the world's best-known investors, and for decades a scold of poor corporate governance practices? Not very, I'd say," the columnist wrote. Buffett's advocacy of the stock market helped lead ordinary people to investment risks they weren't equipped to handle, Olive wrote. Instead of "buy and hold," Berkshire "generates most of its profits from the cerebrum of Warren Edward Buffett," signing sweetheart investment deals and making huge bets that average people can't duplicate. Olive wrote that Buffett criticized derivatives ? complex investments that derive their value from other sources such as stock indexes ? yet Berkshire counts a possible $2 billion loss from its own derivatives and would lose $61 billion if all of its derivatives turn sour. He criticized Berkshire's ownership of 20 percent of Moody's Corp., saying that Moody's high ratings on mortgage-backed securities contributed to the global financial crisis. "Buffett is oversold as a governance expert, public or private sector," the column said. "Having cultivated a reputation as an advocate of corporate ethics, Buffett in his own conduct at Berkshire has rejected almost every tenet of the modern corporate-governance reform movement. "Buffett likes to say that a recession reveals who's been swimming naked," Olive writes. "For those who have chosen not to be starry-eyed about Buffett's methods and his uneven record, the Oracle has been scantily clad for years." | 
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