02.18.09
More Bizarre Investments from the Gates Foundation
“My background is finance and accounting. As a socially conscious venture capitalist and philanthropist, I have a very good understanding of wealth management and philanthropy. I started my career in 1967 with the IRS as a specialist in taxation covering many areas of the tax law including the so-called legal loopholes to charitable giving. […] However, the Gates Buffet foundation grant is nothing more than a shell game in which control of assets for both Gates and Buffet remain the same. […] The only difference is that the accumulation of wealth by these two will be much more massive because they will no longer have to pay any taxes.”
The Gates and Buffet Foundation Shell Game
THIS mystery lingers on. The Gates Foundation invests in oil companies, in governments, and even in pharmaceutical companies that gain from the suffering people in developing nations. With financial questions hovering over Microsoft and the economy in general (another massive fraud has just been unearthed), one must understand and accept a reasonable degree of skepticism. What does a supposedly-charitable foundation think that it’s doing with an investment in a patent-slinging monopolist?
Bill Gates has acquired a 5.2 percent stake in Eastman Kodak, according to a regulatory filing today. The Microsoft chairman owns the shares through his Cascade Investment LLC investment arm and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Kodak is in antitrust waters while it harasses companies using its patents, so in many ways it has things in common with Microsoft. Why is the Gates Foundation becoming a shareholder? Gates already invests in the world's largest patent troll.
As a side note, the Foundation has been tossing some money around for publicity in recent days (relatively minuscule amounts by the way). Some of this appears to be promotion for Windows Mobile, which is dying. █
“Do some good deeds for publicity if the cameras are on”
Roy Schestowitz said,
February 19, 2009 at 5:25 am
One person theorises that “this is almost certainly his [Gates'] move to start squeezing some proprietary substitute for JPEG and RAW formats into consumer devices.
“You’ll notice that the solid state storage devices used in the cameras use Bill’s patented, designed to lose data filesystem rather than one that has wear leveling and other advances needed to work reliably on
solid state.
“Wait too long on this and all your family photos will need Bill’s permission to be copied, viewed, printed or edited. Even then it will only be available in digital form on Bill’s cruftware.”