The New Yorker:

As the Sage of Omaha announces his retirement, the Trump family’s crypto ventures and Musk’s doge cuts illuminate darker aspects of the system.

By John Cassidy

Last weekend, in Omaha, Nebraska, at the annual meeting of Warren Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett announced that at the end of this year he will give up his post as C.E.O. According to reports, some people in the crowd cried at the news. Given that the attendees were nearly all Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, this reaction was perhaps unsurprising: if you bought a hundred dollars of Berkshire stock in 1964, just before Buffett took over the company, by the end of last year it would have been worth roughly $5.5 million. But Buffett, who is ninety-four, and frequently referred to as the Sage of Omaha, isn’t known only for his Midas touch. He’s also famous for his relatively modest life style, his call for higher taxes on the extremely wealthy, and his pledge to give away the great bulk of his fortune. If there is an acceptable face of American capitalism, many people would say that it’s Buffett.

The news of Buffett’s impending departure comes at a time when some less public-minded representatives of the system are busy making headlines. As Buffett made his announcement, the Timesand other news organizations were delving into the Trump family’s latest crypto ventures. Just days later, Bill Gates, Buffett’s longtime friend and partner in philanthropy, claimed that Elon Musk, the de-facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency, had been responsible for the deaths of impoverished children by dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, which, among other services, provides H.I.V. treatment-and-prevention drugs to kids in Africa.

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