Video: David Einhorn on Bloomberg TV

The David Einhorn December media tour continues.

Topics in the below Bloomberg interviews include: European debt crisis, Too Big to Fail, Apple's stock price and importance of Steve Jobs, when David first got an iPhone, and the unemployment problem. Much of this will be familiar to anyone who has seen some of David's other recent media appearances  (which have also been posted on this site).

Video: David Einhorn Media Blitz Continues on Charlie Rose

It's the David Einhorn show this week. His first ever interview on Charlie Rose from yesterday can be viewed here.

On the same evening Charlie, who by the way is about as 'elitestream' as it gets on television, surprisingly ran a program discussing gold with John Hathaway, Peter Munk, & James Grant, which can be viewed here.

Kudos to Charlie for taking an interest in getting up to speed on gold, which as correctly predicted on this blog on Nov. 7 has moved comfortably into $1400+/oz. territory.

Update: Q&A in today's WSJ with Mr. Einhorn here.

Video: Famed Investor David Einhorn on CNBC

Great to see David speaking publicly recently (more recent Einhorn here). Wide ranging interview covering his expectations on the price of gold, and even some positive, upbeat thoughts from the legendary short seller.



The below video features David Einhorn (who was guest hosting on CNBC this morning) sparring with Fed insider Larry Meyer from Macroeconomic Advisors.

Gold's Strange Bedfellows

Today Floyd Norris ponders the rise in the price of gold in a NY Times piece, which perhaps more accurately could be titled "Let's Hope the Price of Gold Crashes".

I encourage you to read it in full, but if you don't have time it can be simply summarized as yet another gold hit job by a major media organization. Wall Street Journal opinion makers had previously been leading the anti-gold media charge; in particular investing 'guru' Jason Zweig and Matt Phillips of the MarketBeat blog have both bad mouthed the barbarous relic. Perhaps the NY Times is now aiming to give the WSJ a run for its anti-yellow metal money?

What Zweig, Phillips and now Norris have perhaps all failed to realize is that in barbarous monetary times, relics do well.

However, the above journalists' dislike of gold doesn't compares with the vitriol from Warren Buffet's longtime partner at Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger. In what is a clear case of hating on both the game and the playa, Munger calls all gold owners "jerks".

If the fiercely competitive and politically opposite WSJ and NY Times seem like strange anti-gold bedfellows, consider the following bizarre 'gold lovers': followers of media shock jock Glen Beck and the hedge fund investor he refers to as a "economic war criminal", George Soros, both own loads of gold; countries as culturally and economically diverse as Russia, Mauritius, India, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Iran, Bangladesh and China have all been increasing their gold reserves; citizens have been acquiring Au in both economically underperforming America and booming Germany, where Frankfurt university professor Wilhelm Hankel recently remarked:

"You cannot find a bank safe deposit box in Germany because every single one has already been taken and stuffed with gold and silver. It is like an underground Switzerland within our borders"

Returning to Norris' article, he speculates that part of the appeal of gold is that it serves as a proxy ballot box for the general dissatisfaction people feel towards the inability of their political leaders to tackle economic problems.

In other words, the rising price of gold reflects an investor vote of no confidence in the world's economic leadership. But besides Munger, can anyone really blame investors for feeling this way?

Video: Rare David Einhorn Interview on Shorting, Rating Agencies, Apple & Gold

I'm a big fan of David Einhorn's investment strategy, particularly his ability to identify accounting shenanigans at firms such as Lehman Brothers and Allied Capital, both of which he successfully shorted. (He wrote a well received book on his rather disturbing saga with Allied Capital.) He also rarely gives public interviews so the following video caught my attention.



The contribution of the credit rating agencies to the financial crisis have been well documented. Dodd-Frank financial 'reform' failed to make any material changes to rating agency model, which contains an inherent conflict of interest (bond issuers make payments to rating agencies, which incentivizes issuers to 'shop' for better ratings). To address this problem Einhorn simply advocates that credit rating agencies, such as Moody's (which he is short), should be abolished. Of note, famed investor Warren Buffet has been steadily reducing his large Moody's holdings.

Einhorn also discusses how a value investor like himself can be long Apple, which many have argued is in a bubble, as well as his current gold holdings (the largest position in his hedge fund). For more from Einhorn on his rationale for owning gold see this NY Times op-ed.