The Weekend: Goldman Spin TV, Berkshire Swings to Profit

The bailout package for Greece that had originally appeared to be just $60 billion between the E.U. and the IMF in Sunday turned into a �110 billion package, or roughly $145 billion, the Financial Times’s Kerin Hope, Nikki Tait, and Quentin Peel report, with �80 billion of that coming from Europe, the rest from the IMF. �Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel said it w the only way to preserve the value of the Euro. The bailout requires extensive new cuts in government spening to try and halt the budget deficit at 14% of GDP and cap the public debt at just under 150% of GDP.

Berkshire Hathaway (BKRA) swung to a $3.26 billion profit from a year-earlier loss of $1.5 billion in Q1, Warren Buffett told investors at the annual shareholder meeting on Omaha on Saturday. He also defended Goldman Sachs (GS) and reiterated the positive remarks at a press conference on Sunday. “I don’t have a problem with the Abacus transaction at all, and I think I understand it better than most,” said Buffett, referring to the credit derivative at the heart of the SEC’s fraud suit against Goldman. As for firms that the SEC SAYS were defrauded, Buffett said almost exactly what Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein�told Carl Levin in his appearance before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations last week, to wit, “Any bond insurer that is making a decision about what to insure and what to charge for it should not care a whit about who is on the other side of the transaction.” Berkshire shares closed down 1.3% in Friday at $115,325.

JP Morgan (JPM) and other asset managers and investment advisors are urging clients to move money into equities after investors sponge most of the last 12 months pouring an overwhelming amount of money into bonds, writes the Financial Times’s Beagan Wilcox yesterday. Bond funds has net inflows of $395 billion from April of last year through February of this year compared to just $24 billion in equity funds, writes Wilcox, citing data from Investmetg Company Institute. But now, “JPMorgan has hit the market with a road-show that will run a total of 19 weeks in 40 cities during which it discusses with advisers the importance of clients taking on some equity risk.”

Goldman’s Blankfein appeared on prominent television programs over the weekend in further damage control. On Friday he was the guest of Charlie Rose, who asked Blankfein why Americans are so angry at Wall Street, and Goldmanin particular. “I think the financial system failed the american people,” said Blankfein. “I think the people on Wall Street carried themselves in a very proud way, some might say haughty way, when things were going well. And when it didn’t work well, how could you not blame the people who had awfully nice lives when things were going well? �Then to compound it, people see some of the people who did well not doing so bad when things were going badly. And that absolutely infuriated people. The anger is totally understandable and justified in many cases, not in every case.” without what the government did, would Goldman have survived? �”Difficult to say,” said Blankfein. “But I’m glad not to have tested that.” Goldman shares are up $2.47, or 1.7%, at $147.67.