8:42 a.m. (all times Central): It’s begun! They’re playing the movie. Starts out with a musical montage with scenes from Berkshire subsidiaries. Makes me wonder if “It’s a Beautiful Day” is, in fact, the most-played song at annual meetings. Then goes to a cartoon in which Warren and Bill Gates (Berkshire director and Buffett bridge [...]

First event of the Berkshire Hathway annual meeting: Warren Buffett gets his portrait painted by performance artist Michael Israel. It takes 8 minutes. Afterwards, Buffett goes to shake Israel’s hand… and then thinks twice. Then Warren did some TV interviews and walked around the exhibition space, visiting the booths and displays of Berkshire’s subsidiary companies, [...]

One thing I meant to tell you about yesterday—before I got seduced by the blueberry martinis and diamond necklaces at Borsheim’s—was my conversation with Brad Kinstler, the CEO of See’s Candies. In this year’s annual report, Warren Buffett bragged about See’s. Per-capita consumption of boxed chocolates might not exactly be a growth industry, Buffett wrote, [...]

Berkshire Hathaway is expecting a record turn-out for tomorrow’s annual meeting. The crowd-control paraphernalia—what do you call those metal divider things?—is all set up in front of the Qwest Center and ready to go. There’s plenty for shareholders to ask the Oracle—how his new bond insurance business is going, the deal for Wrigley, those rumors [...]

As you have probably noticed, I’m back from vacation, and Barbara Kiviat is still writing posts. That was partly already in the works because she’s going to the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting this weekend, but I’ve also asked her to keep on writing here whenever the mood strikes her, and she has agreed. I haven’t [...]

The phrase is Brad DeLong’s, and I like it. The latest indicators, out this morning, are the April payroll employment (down 20,000, after seasonal adjustments) and unemployment rate (5%, down from 5.1% in March). That’s better than most economic forecasters expected, but it’s entirely possible the payroll number will be revised to -100,000 (or even [...]

Got in last night for the big Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. They’re expecting more than 30,000 people this year, up from about 27,000 last, and way up from the 450 who showed up in 1986 or the 7,500 who came in 1996. Even though it’s raining,there’s that Warren Buffett/Charlie Munger excitement in the air. Last [...]

So maybe the Great Decoupling thesis wasn’t nonsense. Reports Time’s Michael Schuman from Hong Kong: Finding an empty table at a Starbucks in Hong Kong on a Sunday afternoon these days feels like winning the lottery. So does getting a reservation at a good dim sum restaurant or renting an affordable apartment. While the U.S. [...]

With all the talk here and on Swampland over the past couple of days about John McCain’s health-care plan, it’s worth remembering that there’s already a bipartisan bill in Congress that would do pretty much what McCain says he wants to do as far as taking health insurance out of the hands of employers, yet [...]