Ronald Stöferle et al. on speculators, political connections and Warren Buffett

Good economists are rarely good speculators.  Much more dangerous is, however, the popular notion that a good speculator has to be a good economist...

Speculation is largely a question of timing, and decisions regarding proper timing are a rather intuitive affair...

However, it is quite possible that the conscious manipulation of trends is already a predominant factor these days.  Attempts to control the economy are increasing as well.  With that, the character of speculation has an especially good ear for the scheming of politicians or even enjoyes good political connections.  This is true of most famous speculators, especially the number one: Warren Buffett.  A large proportion of this wealth comes from taxpayer funds.  Rolfe Winkler summarized this for Reuters as follows:

Were it not for government bailouts, for which Buffett lobbied hard, many of his company's stock holdings would have been wiped out.  Berkshire Hathaway, in which Buffett owns 27%... has more than $26 billion invested in eight financial companies that have received bailout money. [...] The federal deposit insurance corporation (FDIC) backs more than $130 billion of their debt.

~ Rahim Taghnizadegan, Ronald Stöferle, Mark Valek and Heinz Blasnik, Austrian School for Investors (2015), p. 68

Buffett with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein