Liz Claman Reports on the Big Party in Omaha, Hosted by Her Pal Warren

Reporting live via satellite from Omaha, Nebraska this morning, Liz Claman told Imus the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting was a cross between a festival, a carnival, and a circus.

“It’s so strange to me that 37,000 people descend on Omaha, Nebraska,” said Claman, an anchor for the Fox Business Network. The one thing on every shareholders mind? How Berkshire’s Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett, an Omaha native, runs his company.

Over the past several decades, said Claman, Berkshire Hathaway, which owns an interest in companies like Geico, Fruit of the Loom, and Burlington Northern, has offered up annualized returns of 22 percent, on average.

“That is unheard of, almost impossible to do, and nobody has done it before or since,” said Claman, who will interview Buffett, his business partner Charlie Munger, and Microsoft Founder (and fellow billionaire) Bill Gates together later this morning on FBN.

She frequently interviews Buffett, who seems to have an affinity for the strawberry blonde business babe. In fact, Claman interviewed Buffett just last week, on the eve of the shareholders meeting.

“He was playing bridge in a strip mall,” she said, which was a disturbing development to the I-Man, who wondered what the point was of Buffett having all this money.

But Buffett has sent away most of his fortune, estimated now to be around $50 billion, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which does great work for malaria and vaccines in Africa. “He said, ‘I really want my money to ease the most amount of human sufferings,’” said Claman.

Buffett remains a true son of Nebraska, opening up the shareholders conference by singing and playing the ukulele in a moment that Imus described as “painful.”

Then, just as she was about to reveal a gift she acquired for Imus, Claman’s satellite feed was lost, a calamity that was blamed entirely on trusty Imus producer, Tom “Bigfoot” Bowman, who admitted, “It’s hard to eat and hold a satellite dish.”

-Julie Kanfer