(Community Matters) Like most Americans, I’ve long been a fan of Warren Buffett and appreciate his colloquial style – even as I’ve come to realize it’s, at least in part, shrewd PR.  He’s the earnest billionaire who’s long lived in the same, modest home in Omaha, with well-raised children and a story-book wife who died in 2004.  And, the story is complicated by the simultaneously same man who spent as much time in his billionaire’s abode near/in Pebble Beach, mostly traveled in this Bombardier Challenger 600 (The Indefensible), and lived apart from Susan Buffett at least half their marriage – the latter years with his now wife, Astrid Menks.

I don’t say all this to challenge Mr Buffett’s revered place in America; it gives me great comfort and satisfaction that he’s a close confidant to our President.  And, I do mean to convey he’s a complicated man, with more dimensions than his public narrative reminds – his $5B investment in Goldman Sachs no doubt influencing his position defending Goldman Sachs and their CDS transactions.  We now know his comments about derivatives constituting financial weapons of mass destruction and how he doesn’t invest in anything requiring more than a calculator to analyze, more metaphorical  than literate in light of $60B plus into derivatives he’s purchased.

NYT Dealbook Column – From Buffett, Thought-Out Support for Goldman