Ira Stoll submits:

The chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), Warren Buffett, has released his annual letter (pdf), and, as always, it makes for some interesting reading. Said Mr. Buffett: "We will never become dependent on the kindness of strangers. Too-big-to-fail is not a fallback position at Berkshire. Instead, we will always arrange our affairs so that any requirements for cash we may conceivably have will be dwarfed by our own liquidity. Moreover, that liquidity will be constantly refreshed by a gusher of earnings from our many and diverse businesses. When the financial system went into cardiac arrest in September 2008, Berkshire was a supplier of liquidity and capital to the system, not a supplicant. At the very peak of the crisis, we poured $15.5 billion into a business world that could otherwise look only to the federal government for help."

Here are some of the stock holdings of Warren "Supplier not a supplicant" Buffett’s Berkshire: Wells Fargo (WFC) ($9 billion worth at end of 2009). U.S. Bancorp (USB) ($1.7 billion worth at end of 2009). American Express (AXP) ($6 billion worth at end of 2009). The taxpayer put $25 billion into Wells Fargo, $6.6 billion into U.S. Bancorp, and $3.38 billion into American Express through the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Berkshire invested $5 billion in Goldman Sachs (GS) on September 24, 2008; on October 28, 2008, Goldman agreed to take $10 billion in TARP money. Berkshire invested $3 billion in General Electric (GE) on October 1, 2008; on November 12, 2008, GE Capital announced it had received approval from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Temporary Liquidity Guaranty Program to issue up to $139 billion in debt backed by a government guaranty. Granted, Mr. Buffett claims Wells Fargo was forced to take the TARP money (a claim reinforced by other accounts) and that the TARP money hurt his interests by diluting him. Wells Fargo didn’t manage to do what at least some other banks did, and refuse the money. But for Mr. Buffett to go around bragging that he was a supplier not a supplicant, given all these facts, when elsewhere he’s described himself as a net beneficiary of the government’s actions during the financial crisis, is too much.

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