Gurufocus Interviews Bruce Greenwald

Here is the entire interview:

http://www.gurufocus.com/news.php?id=123477

I had requested a question on the Burlington deal that Buffett made which Greenwald has questioned:

That's opposite about what VIX is trying to telling us, but we are value investors. Regarding Berkshire's (BRK.A)(BRK.B) acquisition on Burlington Northern, you commented that it's not a good deal?



No, I don't think it's necessarily not a good deal, I just don't think it's a great deal. And when Buffett usually puts capitol to work, especially a lot of capitol, it's been a great deal. And in particular, I think what he taught people was you want to be patient.

And the time that you want to take advantage of your patience when you had a lot of cash was in the winter of 2009. And other than these protected deals, with Goldman Sachs (GS) and General Electric (GE), where you got the preferred stock with all the protection of the preferred stock, he didn't buy a lot of stock that was available very cheaply, in February, March or even April of 2009.

And given that he didn't do that, paying as much as he did for Burlington Northern was a questionable decision. Now what you always depended on if you look historically is what happened to oil prices. And so when oil prices went up, there's a big competitive advantage for railroads over trucking, and Burlington Northern has gone up with the oil company stocks. But it seems to me that there are probably better ways to make that bet than to pay above market value for Burlington Northern.

I say, come on Bruce.  You are calling Buffett out for not knowing exactly when the stock market was going to bottom or knowing that a collapse was coming ?  Did you know ?  Were you sitting all in cash on March 3, 2009 ?   Ridiculous.

By the way this is what you said about the Burlington deal which is working out great:

"It's a crazy deal. It's an insane deal.  At $100/share we think he has lost his mind. "

http://www.gurufocus.com/news.php?id=120147