Warren Buffett has backed some of the biggest financial firms while chiding bankers for excesses in risk-taking and compensation. Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire invested $700 million in Salomon Inc. in 1987, $5 billion in Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in 2008 and $5 billion in Bank of America this year. Buffett, the father, has compared Wall Street to "a church that's running raffles on the weekend."
Wall Street "does a lot of good things and then it has this casino," Buffett said in October 2010. "One of the problems we still have is we have unbalanced incentives for managers of huge financial institutions."
Blackrock Chief Executive Officer Laurence D. Fink and Jim Chanos of hedge fund Kynikos Associates said this month they understand the anger directed at financial companies. Bill Gross, who runs the biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said in a Twitter post that wage earners are fighting back after three decades of class warfare in which they were "being shot at." Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit said yesterday he'd be happy to talk with protesters.