24 September 2008

Meyer, Thile, Buffett, Goldman, and Batali



No, I'm not writing about the merger of a white shoe law firm with a scrappy outer-borough slip-and-fall shop.

I happened to have the privilege of watching and listening to Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile this evening at the welcoming Jenkins' home. (Thanks Elvina for getting me on the invite list.) The clip above doesn't even get close to representing what it's like to watch these two men play from three feet away. Their performance made me downright incoherent, which explains the structure of this post.


Today's transaction:

Bought 3K shares of AIG at $4.98. New cost basis for my AIG position: $4.935.

So, Warren Buffett has made a move, getting in on Goldman. Of course he is:

Berkshire is buying $5 billion of perpetual preferred stock in the investment bank. The preferred stock has a dividend of 10% and is callable at any time at a 10% premium. Berkshire Hathaway will also get warrants to purchase $5 billion of Goldman common stock with a strike price of $115 each. Buffett can exercise these at any time over five years, Goldman said in a statement. Goldman also said it's raising at least $2.5 billion by selling common stock in a public offering.



After hours, Goldman traded up 7.75%. The other financials climbed after hours as well, so tomorrow (or is it later today?), I will consider lightening my UYG position and unloading the short-term-trading portion of my AIG holding into any significant show of market strength.

Onto a topic completely unrelated to finance or music: Mario effin' Batali. For me, he's right up there with Martin Picard and Tony Bourdain. Here are some choice quotes from the New York Magazine profile that you really should read instead of this blog:

"My worry is, how many times can you watch me eating something and saying, 'Boy, that's good,' before you say, 'Fuck you! I'm not tasting the shit!,' " he frets. "That there's no real payoff for the customer other than saying, 'Hey, they're having a great time, this is a great show.' The blogs that hate it are gonna be like, 'Who the fuck cares that he's eating with Gwyneth Paltrow, she's a vegan anyway,' or whatever."

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