Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett is the “greatest PR person of recent times” and has “managed to achieve a snow job that has conned virtually everyone in the press,” Wisdom Tree Investments Chairman Michael Steinhardt told CNBC Tuesday. “It is remarkable that he continues to do it.”
Later in the segment, Steinhardt told those interviewing him, including Becky Quick and Joe Kernen, that the business news media needs to change “so that people like you begin to recognize his reality and get off some cloud.”
Quick has been one of Buffett’s favorite journalists, and she is one of three who have been invited to ask him questions during Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting.
Margo Beller writes for CNBC.com that, “Steinhardt, who retired in 1995, said the basis for Buffett’s public relations job isn’t so much Berkshire’sportfolio outperforming the Standard & Poor’s 500 in the past — he said he doubts it — but the 80-year-old Buffett’s relatively recent philanthropy.
“‘What he has done…is that he gave away 2½ cents for the first 70-some-odd years of his life. He gave away nothing and then in one fell swoop he gave away almost all of his money, thoughtlessly, to one guy,’ Steinhardt said, referring to Microsoft’s Bill Gates.
“In June 2006, Buffett announced his plans to contribute 10 million of his Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, worth approximately $36 billion. In December 2010, Gates, Buffett and others signed what they called the ‘Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge’ in which they promised to donate to charity at least half of their wealth over the course of time.”
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