On Durbin, bailouts, and Buffett

Published June 14, 2009 4:00am ET



The Chicago Sun-Times has an interesting piece today on Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and how he cashed out $116,000 in stock during the financial collapse last fall. There’s no reason to conclude Durbin did something inappropriate–sure, he cashed out just after his closed-door meeting with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, but it was also after the huge Sept. 15 drop in the stock market that followed Lehman’s collapse.

But the part of this story that piqued my interest was that Durbin shifted this money to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. The Sun-Times reports: “Altogether, Durbin sold investments worth $116,000 in September. By Oct. 2, he had invested $98,046 in Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway, the form shows.”

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