From Bloomberg:

Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) — The Oracle of Omaha retains his
pre-eminence as a market visionary, outshining a new wave of
financial strategists and the best-known central bankers.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, chairman and chief
executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is regarded as
the best assessor of financial markets by a plurality of almost
one-fourth of respondents to the quarterly poll of investors,
traders and analysts who subscribe to the Bloomberg terminal.

The closest runner-up, Bill Gross, the founder and co-
chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co.,
is chosen by 16 percent. Billionaire investor George Soros gets
10 percent, followed by Nouriel Roubini, the New York
University professor who in 2006 predicted the financial
crisis, and Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom
Report.

Fewer than 1 in 10 cited Federal Reserve Chairman Ben
Bernanke, despite high marks for his performance as a central
banker. Only 3 percent pick Alan Greenspan, the former Fed
chairman.

“The other people in the list have their merit, but I
think consistency — which does not mean total absence of
mistakes — is the key to rating Buffett,” says poll
respondent Frédéric Bach, 46, a partner and head of fixed-
income investments at London-based Falcon Money Management LLP,
which manages $4 billion. “I would add a non-financial
element: there is some humility in the man, as when he opted
out of tech stocks because he didn’t understand them. Who in
finance nowadays will admit they are wrong, or they don’t
understand something?”

Obama Rating

Investors’ confidence in President Barack Obama and his
economic team dropped sharply during the past three months,
even as the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose about 7 percent
and Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Among global
investors, 57 percent say they hold a favorable opinion, down
from 73 percent in a July poll.

Among U.S. investors, two-thirds hold an unfavorable
opinion of Obama. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and
Lawrence Summers, head of the National Economic Council, also
get negative grades from U.S. respondents.

The quarterly Bloomberg Global Poll of investors and
analysts in six continents was conducted Oct. 23-27. It is
based on interviews with a random sample of 1,452 Bloomberg
subscribers, representing decision makers in markets, finance
and economics. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus
2.6 percentage points.

The Bloomberg Global Poll is conducted by Selzer & Co., a
Des Moines, Iowa-based public-opinion research company.

Buffett Missteps

Buffett’s lofty standing follows some recent high-profile
setbacks, among them an investment in Houston-based
ConocoPhillips, the third-largest U.S. oil company, which the
billionaire called a “major mistake,” and the purchase of
shares in two Irish banks that soon afterward plummeted in
value as the financial crisis struck.

Berkshire Hathaway showed a 9.6 percent decline in book
value last year, only the second time the measure has fallen
since Buffett took over in 1965, and the company’s stock price
underperformed the S&P 500 during the year ended Sept. 30.

Still, Buffett also seized advantage of the financial
panic last fall to make big purchases in well-known companies
at depressed prices, extending $8 billion in financing to New
York- based Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Fairfield,
Connecticut-based General Electric Co. at 10 percent yields
after the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. failure froze credit
markets.

Jeff Matthews, author of “Pilgrimage to Warren Buffett’s
Omaha” and founder of the hedge fund Ram Partners LP in
Greenwich, Connecticut, says the long arc of Buffett’s
investing career makes him stand out.

‘One-Hit Wonders’

“There have been a lot of one-hit wonders over the last
40 years,” Matthews says. “Warren Buffett has outlasted them
all.”

Among U.S. investors, Pimco’s Gross rated as highly as
Buffett. Newport Beach, California-based Pimco, the world’s
biggest manager of bond funds with $840 billion in assets, has
called for a “new normal” in the global economy that will
include heightened government regulation, lower consumption,
slower growth and a shrinking global role for the U.S. economy.
Pimco is a unit of Munich-based insurer Allianz SE.

“While not always on-point, he brings a rigorously
analyzed yet pragmatic perspective that yields some value at
any point in time,” says poll respondent Michael Martin,
senior vice president and general counsel of MDAdvantage
Insurance Co. of New Jersey. “The facts, as Gross and his team
have determined, appear to indicate a long and perhaps very
difficult path for this country and others like it.”

International Luster

While Obama has lost some of his international luster, he
continues to be viewed positively outside the U.S. In
interviews, poll respondents cited the turnaround of the U.S.
economy under his leadership.

“The world is facing the worst economic period of its
recent history,” says Francesco Scotto, 36, head of treasury
products for BNP Paribas Fortis in Milan. “Acting on both the
real and the financial economy, the U.S. government helped in
the best possible way the American economy to exit from the
crisis.”

U.S. investors’ highly critical view of the Obama
administration is at odds with the views not only of investors
elsewhere but also the general public at home. Most polls of
Americans have shown only small erosion in Obama’s popularity
over the past three months and the president is viewed
favorably by comfortable margins of the U.S. public.

The Obama policy agenda has a more direct impact on U.S.
investors’ bank balances, says Ann Selzer, president of Selzer
& Co., which conducted the poll.

‘Skin in the Game’

“They have a different kind of skin in the game,” Selzer
says. “They worry about potential government interference in
their ability to make money for themselves and their employers
and their clients. They see higher taxes and controls on
executive pay on the horizon and it can’t possibly make them
happy.”

Bernanke’s leadership of the Fed is held in high esteem
across every region, with a favorable view from 69 percent of
investors worldwide, down slightly from 74 percent in July.

Geithner is viewed positively by 48 percent against 43
percent with a negative opinion.

The worldwide verdict on Summers is negative, with 42
percent rating him unfavorably versus 34 percent favorably.

Click here for additional information on methodology and a
full list of survey questions.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Mike Dorning in Washington at
mdorning@bloomberg.net.