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June 25, 2006

Red Hot Charity Philanthropy

What do you do if you have so much money that you don't know what to do with it?

You give it away, give it away now.

"Brace yourself," Buffett warned with a grin. He then described a momentous change in his thinking. Within months, he said, he would begin to give away his Berkshire Hathaway fortune, then and now worth well over $40 billion.

This news was indeed stunning. Buffett, 75, has for decades said his wealth would go to philanthropy but has just as steadily indicated the handoff would be made at his death. Now he was revising the timetable.

"I know what I want to do," he said, "and it makes sense to get going." On that spring day his plan was uncertain in some of its details; today it is essentially complete. And it is typical Buffett: rational, original, breaking the mold of how extremely rich people donate money.

Those damnable evil capitalists! Somewhere a socialist is scratching his head in disbelief and beginning to think anew... ok, maybe not, as with most ideologues the evidence doesn't matter.