Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Follow-Up (II)

-
Alternative ideas are of course being tossed around. Rochdale Securities analyst Richard Bove, for example, suggested that "Goldman would be better off repaying $5 billion to Warren Buffett before refunding U.S. government aid, because the money provided by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. pays a dividend that’s twice as high as the $10 billion received from the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program".

However there is a minor technicality that was pointed out to us by a regular Balcony contributor who insists on remaining Anonymous: Unlike the government, Buffett did not impose any compensation restrictions. Our bet is that Goldman will stick to the original plan...
-

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/30206127. GS:" Returning TARP money is a duty ". Chin Lee, Hong Kong

Statler said...

@ Chin (hopefully this is your first name): If my memory serves me right, it was also their duty to accept TARP money in the first place. They were forced to do it, although they did not really need it, so that other banks really needing it would not be exposed and the system would not be weakened. "Be all that you can be - Join Goldman!"