Obama is Bush part 3

Wells Fargo: A Growth Stock During the Great Depression?

shur1l: Remember, Buffett is never wrong on his big bets.

Buffett himself would beg to differ with you. He sunk a lot of money into USAir Group -- which was a huge losing trade until some "bright" state pension managers from Georgia decided to buy USAir and bail Buffett out.

Buffett was a big investor in Fannie Mae -- but after holding the position for several years he bailed out and called Fannie a disaster waiting to happen.

Lets not forget one of his biggest purchases was General Re, which came with billions in undocumented derivatives trades that eventually led Buffett to call derivatives weapons of financial destruction.

Too many of Buffetts disciples only remember his winning trades-- like everyone else, Buffett has had some failures too.

As for Wells Fargo -- the company is extraordinarily concentrated in California, which is having one of the most severe real estate collapses in the country.

Some people like to claim WFC is more conservative in lending, but there isn't much evidence behind this folklore. It might be true, but the only "evidence" anyone ever gives is that "everyone knows Wells Fargo is more conservative"... If they were really more conservative, we should have seen a terrible plummet in the amount of loans they were writing near the peak of the real estate bubble -- but instead we saw a continuation of the trend. Doesn't sound like they were turning away people.

I happen to have several colleagues who received **unsolicited** home equity loans from Wells Fargo through the US Mail. They never requested the loans, so obviously they didnt fill out any liar loan type documentation -- or any documentation. All they had to do was endorse the back of the check and deposit it in their checking account and the loan was activated!!!!

I know this is very anecdotal evidence, but it really made me reconsider the "accepted wisdom" that Wells Fargo is more conservative in their lending.