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We have a $5 billion preferred preferred stock that pays us $500 million a year. Goldman has the right, the legal right, to call that at 110% of par. So, anytime they want to, they can send Berkshire 5 and 1/2 billion and they get rid of this preferred stock, which is costing them 500 million a year.
If we got that 5 and 1/2 billion in, [clears throat] we immediately would put it in very short-term uh securities, which probably would under today's conditions might produce 20 million a year or something like that. So, every day by that Goldman does not call our preferred is money in the bank. It's been pointed out that our preferred is paying us $15 a second.
So, as we sit here, tick, tick, tick, tick. That's $15 every every tick. Uh I don't want those ticks to go away. I I just love them. They go on at night when I sleep. They go on weekends. And frankly, Goldman would love to get rid of that preferred. I mean, they only agreed to sell us that preferred because it was a sort of at the height of the crisis.
Uh the US I'm not sure what part of the government, probably the Fed, but they have been telling companies that took TARP money whether they could increase their dividends or not, whether they could redeem preferreds and all that. Up till now, probably the federal government has been doing us a big favor by telling even before this thing happened, they've probably been telling Goldman that you can't call that preferred until we tell you you can't and you can't increase your dividend and they've been pretty strong with all of the TARP companies.
That that has not been publicized too much, but but believe me that it's the case. So, I was just sitting here hoping that the basically that the Fed or whomever would be continue to be quite uh uh quite tough in terms of letting Goldman call our preferred, but it wasn't going to go on forever. I think that I think recent developments have probably delayed delayed the um the calling of our preferred by sometime.
So, the tick, tick, tick will go on and we will be getting $500 million a year a year instead of $20 million a year. Uh the We love the investment and and uh uh I would expect uh that in question about losing reputation, there's no question that the that the allegation alone causes uh causes the company to to lose reputation and obviously the press of the past few weeks, they they hurt they hurt a company.
They can hurt morale. They can a lot of things. Uh nothing of it's not remotely mortal or anything like that, but it hurts. Incidentally, Goldman Sachs had a a situation that in connection with the Penn Central 30 40 40 years ago now and that hurt at that time. Uh they had a connection with one fellow in in terms of uh Boesky that hurt at that time and and uh it was a source of great pain to John Weinberg, who was running uh Goldman, but uh I don't believe that the allegation of something falls within my category of losing reputation.
If something is proven, uh then you have to look at it. My advice in times of uh some kind of a emergent I mean, when some transgression is either found or alleged, you know, basically you saw Ron Olson in our movie. He was the manager of the team and back when we were working at Salomon together in a somewhat similar situation, uh we had as our motto, "Get it right, get it fast, get it out, get it over." But get it right was number one.
I mean, you have to have your facts right cuz if you go out with the wrong facts, you get killed and you can't redo it afterwards. And uh but that does mean sometimes some delay. You have to gather information from within your own organization and you were on the defensive. I I would not I do not hold against Goldman all the fact that an allegation has been made by the SEC and if it leads into something more serious, you know, then then we'll look at the situation at time, but but what I've seen in terms of the Abacus uh
[clears throat] uh activity, I I I just don't I I do not see that that would be any different than me complaining about the list of municipals that were given to me to insure a couple of years ago. Charlie? Well, I I agree with all of that, but I also think that every business ought to decline a lot of business that's perfectly legal and proper to accept.
In other words, the standards in business should not be what's legal and convenient. Uh the standard should be different. And I don't think there's an investment bank in America of any consequence that didn't take too many scuzzy customers and deal in too many scuzzy securities. I would I would agree with that, but Charlie would Do you think we should have done our municipal bond deal?
I mean I think it was a closer case than you do. Okay. We insure probably 40 billion now or something like that of municipal bonds and we have done very little in the last year. Uh not because of Charlie's views that he just expressed, but because basically cuz the the price isn't right. The premiums are wrong and the reaction of other people when premiums are wrong is to take more risk.
And the our reaction when premiums are wrong is just to go play golf or something and tell somebody to call us when premiums get right again. I do want to I Charlie and I will give our views a lot on a lot of the activities that have gone on on Wall Street and we do think plenty has been wrong. I do want to point out though that our experience with Goldman [clears throat] goes back 44 years and during those years, we bought more businesses through them than through any other Wall Street investment bank.
We've probably done more financing. They have helped build the Berkshire Hathaway and we trade with them as well. We don't hire them as investment advisors. I mean, they have a big investment advisory business and if, you know, our reaction to that is no thanks. You know, we are in the business of making our own decisions.
But we when we trade with them, they can very well be shorting to us a stock we're buying. You know, they can be buying for their own account some stock we're selling. They do not owe us uh a divulgence of their position any more than we need to do explain to them our reasoning or what we are doing in our position.
We are acting there in a in a non-fiduciary capacity. I mean, uh and and they are operating in a non-fiduciary capacity in my view when they are trading with us. Now, if they're working on our behalf on an acquisition or or financing, that's that's a different story. Uh but I would I uh I would say that we have had a lot of very satisfactory transactions with with Goldman Sachs and I would [clears throat]
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