Why Dilbert's Creator Doesn't Trust Warren Buffett
By: Dilbert creator Scott Adams doesn't trust Warren Buffett's October call to buy U.S. stocks hammered during Wall Street's worst year in decades.
Over the weekend, Barron's ran a profile of Adams, whose daily comic strip about dysfunctional offices and managers everywhere has been making cubicle-dwellers smile for 20 years.
Adams also writes about the economy and the stock market, among other things, in his own blog on Dilbert.com.
Now the real-world economic downturn is affecting Dilbert's fictional high-tech employer.
Barron's says Adams thinks capitalism will end up in the dustbin of history because modern technology allows crooks and market manipulators to destroy vast amounts of capital in very little time.
While Adams does not think Buffett is one of those crooks, Barron's reveals that Adams doesn't even trust the Oracle of Omaha.
Washington editor Jim McTague writes:
Adams "just worries that the master's objectivity has been clouded by do-good impulses. 'His social conscience makes his motives suspect. He plans to give all of his money away to charity. He's a very liberal guy. So when he buys stock when the country is panicking, it might be for another reason,' like rescuing the market, Adams contends.
Barron's notes that Adams is suspicious of money managers in general, after he "lost a bundle following advice during the tech bubble" of the late 1990s. (That advice, of course, didn't come from Warren Buffett.)
Adams tells Barron's he's recently started moving some his money into stock ETFs, diversifying from the tax-free muni bonds that sheltered him during the recent storm. This time around, however, he's making all the decisions himself.
Buffett certainly wouldn't argue with that approach.
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Questions? Comments? Email me at buffettwatch@cnbc.com
