Hail Capitalism

Bill Gates’s Charity Races to Spend Buffett Billions (free subscription required).

Although it has long been the largest grant-making foundation in the nation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is facing an unparalleled challenge: how to give away more money — and do it much faster — than it ever has before.

Largely lost in the June announcement of Warren E. Buffett’s gift of $31 billion to the foundation were its terms. Mr. Buffet will make the contribution in annual increments. For tax reasons, starting in 2009, the foundation must give away every nickel that he contributed in the previous year.

At the current price of the Berkshire Hathaway stock Mr. Buffett will be donating, the foundation will have to distribute $3 billion annually, or a little more than twice what it distributed last year.