Warren Buffett, Chairman, Berkshire Hathaway Investment Group | Terry Leadership Speaker Series

Good morning It certainly got quiet quickly. That surprised me. can you hear me are you they're back well for business school you know it doesn't get much better than this having the world's greatest investor come to our campus is quite bored office German berkshire hathaway holding company's investments range from backup insurance American Express coca-cola portions jewelry stories whole town braska mr. Baumann has been described as God value investors Michael Jordan of investing game He began his first investment partnership mid-nineteen fifties with 100 hours of his own money a few years later he began investing struggling

Massachusetts textile mill called berkshire hathaway through birth anniversary started putting capital into other businesses seeking insurance which generate cash streams for more investments which have done very well indeed as well share prices about eighteen dollars in 1965 berkshire today traits around sixty nine thousand one hundred dollars a share over time the company's annualized performances more than double that of the S&P 500 and berkshire today is worth more than 100 billion dollars but mr. Buffett is known as much for his unpretentious style at as far as lofty success He has become a champion of investors is

legendary for his aversion to corporate double speak is rare among CEOs and that he cheerfully admits his mistakes three years ago he wrote in his annual report that butcher would have done better if you'd simply gone to the movies are great work very many years like that since nineteen sixty-five believe me berkshire was proudly even the finally absent from the dot , stereo the last few years and now that the bubble has burst as we all know it's warren buffett is having the last laugh his most recent letter to shareholders he wrote quote we have

embraced the 21st century by entering such cutting-edge industries as brick carpet installation and paint try to control your excitement my buddy You know i am personally from reading his letters it's just a joy it's it's it's a it's a business lesson in itself i encourage it whenever you get an opportunity to take one side and and read it carefully you'll learn a tremendous amount his wisdom and insights or so value that some investors buy a share purchase stock just so they can hear him his legendary annual meeting or as he calls it Woodstock for capitalists

he doesn't make speaking of periods as often and we are extremely fortunate to have him with us today Earl entered of coca-cola and our distinguished executive-in-residence had a lot to do with a thorough and we're deeply indebted to you for helping to raise us thank you very much our format today will be primarily questions and answers mr. Buffett will Make some brief remarks at the beginning and then we'll move into your face we will have a microphone setup over here we would like you to come around we were videotaping we'd like it use a microphone

play so go ahead and begin to line up over there to ask your questions so would you please give a very warm welcome to the Oracle of Omaha warrant yeah good night testing 1 million two million three okay I I came from Nebraska today and that you're probably all familiar with us mainly by our football team we have those fellows with the the bingo white helmets with those red hands on I asked one of our starters the other day what's the end stand when he said Knowledge ok we can make a ton of though I

mean that you know coaster Nebraska just because you're a football player with that they made your in agricultural economics and there's a to question final for all of the fires and first question is what are all mcdonald have and they were giving that to one of our potential Heisman Trophy winners the other day and he started this swept finally right now is a farm pressure in the light of course you don't want to find a Heisman candidate uh so I said now he said you're halfway home he said just one more question how do you

spell far I think I really starts to sweat and he looks at the ceiling and he looks around five his face by itself He says he I all so much for that guy sure it will be done right now I look I really want to talk about what side your mind so we're going to do a Q&A and the men and I I there's a couple questions i always get asked you know I always did always say well we should i go to work for when i get out then I've got a very simple answer

we we may elaborate more on this as we go along but another the real thing to do is to get going in first some institution or individual that you admire I mean it's crazy to take in between jobs just because they look good on your resume or because you get a little higher starting pay i was up at Harvard while back and very nice young guys pick me up at the airport Harvard Business School attending and he said look he said I went to undergrad here and then I worked for x and y and z

and now I've come here and he said I Thought it would really round up my resume perfectly if I want to work now for a big management consulting firm and I said what is that what you want to do he said nobody said that's the perfect resume and I said well what are you going to start doing what you like and he said well I'll get to that someday and I said well you know I said your plan sounds to me a lot like saving up sex for your old age it just doesn't make a

lot of sex head I told that same girl I said you're not going to work for every admire the most and I said you can't get a bad result of jump out of bed in the morning and you'll be having fun being called me up a couple weeks later said what you tell us gets he said they're all becoming self-employed so you've got you've got a temper that advice a little bit Ah play one game a little bit with me for just a minute and then roll up that will get to your questions and I'd

like for the moment to have you a lot that heavy pretend i made you a great offer and I've told you that you could pick any one of your classmates in you now know each other probably pretty well after being here for a while you can thank you have 24 hours to think it over and you can pick any one of your classmates and you get ten percent of their earnings for the rest of their lives and I ask you what goes through your mind in determining which one of those who would pick you can

pick the one with the richest father that doesn't count on me you gotta gotta do this on merit but you probably wouldn't pick the person against the highest grades in the class I mean that at all we're getting is grades in the class but that that's not That isn't going to be the quality that but that sets apart a big winner from the rest of the pack think about who we would pick and why and I think you'll find when you get through you'll pick some individual you've all got the ability you wouldn't be here

otherwise you've all got the energy I mean you've got it out here did the initiative is here the intelligence is here throughout the class but some of your going to be bigger winners and others had it gets down to a bunch of qualities that interestingly enough you are our self made I mean it's not how tall you are not willing to kick a football 60 yards is not whether you could run the hundred-yard dash Ten seconds it's that whether the best-looking person in the room it's a whole bunch of qualities that really come out of

Ben Franklin or the Boy Scout colder so whatever it may be I mean it'sit's its integrity is honesty it's its generosity it's it's being willing to do more than your share its it's just all those qualities that are self selected and then if you look on the other side of the ledger because there's always a catch to these you know free gifts in June a joke so you'll also have to this is the fun part you also have to sell short one of your classmates and pay ten percent of what they do so what do

you think is going to do the worst in the class is a great more fun and think about it again and again it wasn't the plan but it isn't the person with the lowest grades or anything of the sort It's the person who just doesn't shape up in the character department when we look for three things when we hire people we look for intelligence we look friend for initiative or energy and we look for integrity and if they don't have the ladder the first tool kill you because if you're going to get somebody without integrity

you want to be lazy and down I mean you don't want to get a lot of smart and energetic self is that third quality and but everything about that quality is your choice you know you you can't change the way you are wired much but you can change a lot of what you do with that wiring and it's the habits that you generate now on those qualities or those negative qualities i mean the person the person who always you know claimed credit for things they didn't do that always cuts Corners that the can't count on

getting it in the end those those are habit patterns and the time to form the right habits is one year when you're your age I mean it duh it doesn't do me much good to get golf lessons now if I got the golf lessons when I was your age I might be a decent offer but but it someone once said the chains of habit or two are too light to be felt until they're too heavy to be broken and i see that all the time i see people with have a patterns that her self destructive

when they're 50 or 60 and they think they really can't change their imprisoned by that but you're not in prison by anything so when you write down the qualities of that person that you'd like to buy to ten percent of look at that list and ask yourself is there anything on that list I couldn't do the answers there are there won't be and when you look at the person yourself short and you look at those qualities that you don't like if you see any of those in yourself he could tell them whatever maybe selfishness you

can get rid of that I mean that is not ordained and if you follow that you and Ben Franklin did this in my old boss Ben Graham did this of early ages in their young teens they just been grand looked around and he said who I admire you know and you want to be admired himself and he said you know why do i buy these other people and he said if I admire them for these reasons maybe other people will admire me if I behave in a similar manner any and he decided what kind of

a person who wanted to be and if you follow that at the end you'll be the person you love my Ten percent of I mean that's the goal in the end and it's it's something that's achievable by by everybody in this room so that's the end of the sermon knowledge let's talk about what's on your mind and the you're going to ask anything the only thing I won't tell you is what we're buying or selling her about let's say yeah i don't i don't even tell myself that I mean I i write it down that

I like the coca-cola formula you know there's only two people can get into the trust Department and find out what they are and I don't know the two are so it at its we don't talk about what we're buying or selling but anything else is fair game personal business anything you'd like to talk about and actually the top of the questions are the more interesting of this for me so don't don't spare my feelings i may just Thrown at my head add that and with that let's I guess we got a microphone is this the

only microphone is there one on feeling like ok here is my ceiling I'm gonna do microphone to stand in line them and i'll be Regis Philbin and you can yes i have an old-fashioned belief that i can only should expect to make money and things that I understand when I say understand I don't understand it you know what the product does or anything like that I didn't understand what the economics of the business are likely to look at look like 10 years in our 20 years and now i know in general what the economics of

a Wrigley chewing gum will look like 10 years now the internet is going to change the way people should come It isn't going to change which come they true now if you own the chewing gum market in a big way and you've got double mint experiment and juicy fruit those brands will be there 10 years analysis I can't pinpoint exactly what the numbers are gonna look like I'm really but i'm not going to be way off if I try to look forward on something like that that evaluating that company is within when i call my

circle of competence I understand what they do i understand the economics of and I understand the competitive aspects of the business there can be all kinds of companies that have wonderful futures but i don't know which ones they are and I given talks in the past where I carry with me a a 70-page tightly printed list and it shows two thousand auto companies now for the start of the 20th century you had seen what the auto was going to do to this country the impact it would have on the lives and then your children and

grandchildren and so on that what it just it transformed the American landscape but of those two thousand companies you know three basically survive and they haven't done that well I had many times so how do you pick three winners out of 2,000 I mean it's not so easy to do it's easy when you look back but it's not so easy looking forward so you could have been dead right on on the fact that the auto industry fact he probably could have predicted how big impact it would have but you wouldn't have if you want companies

across the board you wouldn't have made any money because the economic characteristics of that business we're not easy to define i said i'd always said the easier thing to do is figure out who loses and what you really should Have done in 1900 five or so when you saw what was going to happen with the auto is you should have gone short horses there were 20 million horses and 1900 there's about four million horses now so it's easy to figure out the losers get the losers the horse but the winner was the auto overall but

2,000 companies just about fail with you merged out and so on there were three companies auto companies in the Dow Industrials in the nineteen twenties and thirties Studebaker Nash Combinator and Hudson motor those names are all familiar to me and maybe some more familiar to you but they're not making any cars you know they didn't make money i had at one time they were in the dowel 30 they were the aristocrats of American business and they got creamed so figuring out the economic characteristics about the winners in a Wonderful business and it is not easy

in north carolina in a horrible and Roberto golf I guess or we'll talk often we're watching i have been Wilbur but if you could have seen the future of the airline business from that point forward and how that would transform things you know it would blow you away that's excited people incidentally ever since but if they're going to capitalist the kitty hawk he should have shot horrible down I mean it because it's nothing but cost investors money there were 400 airplane companies in the nineteen twenties and thirties along there was an all the hall there

was a Nebraska we were the silicon valley of America apparently very graft and they all disappeared in a terrible business at the end of nineteen Ninety-one if you added up the aggregate earnings from all airline companies with billions board in since Wilbur and Orville were down there they came to less than zero number of passengers went up every year the importance of the industry was dramatically increased decade by decade and nobody made any money it so figuring out the economic consequences TV I think there's I don't know 20 25 million sensei years old the United

States I don't think is one of them made in the United States anymore I mean it's a TV set manufacturer what a wonderful business site everybody and nobody a TV in nineteen fifty are there about 45 to 50 everybody has multiple sets now nobody is in the United States and made any Real money making the sense that they're all out of business in the magnet boxes the rca's all of those companies radio was the equivalent of 20 over 500 companies making radios in nineteen twenties again I don't think there's a us radio manufacturer at the

present time but coca-cola you know I was eighteen eighty for jacob's pharmacy or whatever and fellow comes up with something a lot of cock copiers over the years but now you've got a company that is selling roughly 1.1 billion a tout servings of its product not all cloaks writing some other daily throughout the world honoured 17 years later so understanding the economic characteristics of a business is different than predicting the fact that an interest is going to do wonderfully so I look at the internet businesses are looking at tech mrs. i say this is a

marvelous thing I love to play around on the Computer and it now i order my books from amazon and all kinds of things but I don't know who's going to win unless I know who's going to win I'm not interested in the best thing i'll just play around on the computer at defining your circle of competence is the most important aspect of investing it's not how important how large your circle is you don't have to be an expert on everything but knowing where the perimeter of that circle of what you know what you don't know

is and staying inside of it is all important Tom Watson senior started IBM said in his book he said it I'm no genius said but I'm smart in spots I stay around those spots and you know that is the key so if I understand a few things and I stick in that arena I'll do okay and if I don't understand something but I got all excited about it Because my neighbors are talking about stocks are going up everything they start fooling around someplace else eventually I'll get cream and I should so now let's go over

here a little bit I got two short questions one is how do you find intrinsic value in a company while intrinsic value is what is the number that if you were all knowing about the future and could predict all the cash that a bit of business would give you between now and judgement day discounted at the proper discount rate that number is what the intrinsic value of businesses in other words the only reason for making investment laying out money now is to get more money later on right that's that's what investing is all about now

when you look at the stock when you look at the bottom so Miss United States Government is very easy tom what you're going to get back it says it right on the bond it says when you get the interest payments so when you get the principal so it's very easy to figure out the value of a body could change tomorrow of interest rates change but you are the cash flows are printed on the bond the cash flows are printed on a stock certificate that's the job of the animals is to print out change that stock

certificate which represents an interest in the business and change that into a bond and say this is what I think it's going to play out in the future when we buy you know some machine for Shaw it to make carpet that's what we're thinking about obviously and you know you all learned That in business school but it's the same thing for a big business it if you by coca-cola today the company is selling for about a hundred and ten to fifteen billion dollars in the market the question is if you had a hundred and ten

or fifteen billion you would be listening to me but I didn't listen to you it's nothing but the question is would you lay it out today to get what the coca-cola company is going to deliver to you over the next two or three hundred years discount rate doesn't make much difference after as you get further out but and that is a question how much cash they are going to give you it isn't a question of you know that is the question of how many analysts are going to recommend that or what the volume of the

stock is or what the chart looks like running It's a question how much cash is going to give you that you only read the true with if you're buying a farm - if you're buying an apartment house any financial asset for oil in the ground you're laying out Cashin how to get your cash back later on and the question is how much you're going to get one here to get it and how sure are you and when i calculate intrinsic value of a business when we buy businesses and whether we're buying all of a business

or a little piece of the business i always think we're buying the whole business because that's my approach to it I look at it and say what what will come out of this business and when and what you really like of course of them to be able to use the money they earn and are Higher returns on it as you go along I mean Berkshires never distributed anything to shareholders but its ability to distribute goes up as the value of the businesses we own increases we can compound it internally but the real question berkshire selling

for will say a hundred and five or so billion now uh what can we distribute from that hundred and if you're going to buy the whole company 405 million now can we distribute enough cash to you soon enough to make a sensible at present interest rates to lay out that cash now and that's that's what he gets out doing at the end if you can't answer that question you can't buy the stock you know you can gamble in the stock if you want to your neighbors can buy it but if you don't answer that question

I can't answer that For for internet companies for example that a lot of companies that all kinds of me so I can ask for but I just stay away from those number two so you get formula is involved in finding intrinsic values and circumference and you got a mathematical this is that just got a present value of future cash show segments for question is why haven't you written down your set of formulas or your strategies in written form so you can share with everyone else well i think i actually have written about that oh and

if you read the annual reports over the years back the most recent and report I i use what I've just been talking to use the illustration of Esau because here he stopped was in 600 BC smart man was smart enough to know it was 600 BC though I mean it will take a little foresight that but he stopped you know It between tortoises and hair is always other things he found time to write about you know Bert and he said a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush now there isn't quite complete

because the question is how sure are you that there are two in the bush and how long you have to wait to get them out now they probably knew that but he just didn't have time because he had all these other problems to write and had to get on with it so but he was halfway there and 600 BC that's all there is to investing is how many birds in the bush what are you going to get them out and how sure are you now if interest rates are fifteen percent roughly you've got to get

two birds out of the bush and five years equal the bird in the hand but if interest rates are three percent and you can get two birds out in 20 years it still makes sense to give up the bird in the hand because it's all gets back to discounting against an interest on interest rate that Hamish often you don't know you know not only how many birds in the bush put in the case the Internet companies there weren't any birds in the bush but that but they still take the bird that you give them from

the hand that but it's but I i actually have written about this sort of thing and stealing have away from the top of the rotor some 2,600 years ago but I've been behind on my reading yeah yeah good morning huh I know you're vain for your success but i was curious is there any particular moments in your life that or mistakes or failures that you've made that were particularly memorable what you may have learned from them and if you have any particular advice for The students here in dealing with the with the discouraging circle yeah

I well I may have made a lot of mistakes biggest mistake i exalt while and not the biggest not necessarily the biggest but the by Berkshire Hathaway itself was a mistake because virtually lousy textile business and I brought a very cheap I've been taught by Ben Graham to buy things on a quantitative basis look around for things that are cheap and that i was taught that same 1949-50 made a big impression on me so I went around looking for what i call you cigar bunch of stocks and the cigar butt approach to buying stocks is

that you walk down the street and you're looking around for cigar butts and you find this honestly that's terrible-looking soggy ugly-looking cigar one pot left in it but you pick it up and you get your one puff disgusting is right away but it's Free I mean it's cheap and then you look around for another soggy you know one puff cigarettes well that's what I did for years it's a mistake ah although we make money doing it but you can't make it with big money so much easier just to by wonderful businesses so now i would

rather buy a wonderful business at a fair price that a fair business with a wonderful price but in those days I was buying cheap stocks and berkshire was selling below its working capital for sure you have plans for nothing at the machinery for nothing you get the inventory and receivables of the discount is cheap so i bought it and twenty years later I was still running a lousy business and that money did not compound you really want to be a wonderful business because at that time Is the friend of the wonderful business you keep compounding

it keeps doing more business and you keep making more money time is the enemy of the lousy business I could have sold berkshire perhaps liquidated it and made a quick little profit you know one puff but staying with those kind of businesses is this is a big mistake so you might say I learned something out of that mistake and I would have been way better off taking what i did with Berkshires I kept buying but better businesses I started insurance business sees candy the Buffalo and all kinds of things i would have been way better

doing that with a with a brand-new little entity that I'd set up rather than using berkshire the platform now I've had a Lot of fun out of it I mean everything in life seems to turn out for the better so I I don't have any complaints about that but it was a dumb thing to do I went in the US air i bought a preferred stock in 1989 ah as soon as my check cleared the company went into the red never got out I mean it was it that really done I mean a dead I've

got an 800 number i call now whenever I think about buying an airline stock i call them up any our that fortunately i call it three in the morning and I just dial it myself my name is Warren I'm a narrow holic and I'm thinking about buying this thing and then they talked me down many things happened thanks takes hours sometimes but it's worth it Flipping if you ever think about that era of buying an airline stock call me and i'll give you the 800 number because I don't know you don't want to do it

but we got lucky in terms of how we eventually came out on it but it was a dumb dumb decision all mine and I've done I biggest biggest step in terms of events that in terms of opportunity cause eventually cost I brought half interest in a Sinclair filling station was about 20 with a guy was in the national guard with out of my ten thousand dollars then I put two thousand dollars in and I lost it all so that was twenty percent and that means that the opportunity cost is now six billion dollars of that

of that filling station which is a big price to Pay for you know getting the white with your windows in the fields Hannah windshields and things like that so actually I like it when berkshire goes down does it reduce the cost of that mistake on an opportunity to us but the biggest mistakes we made by far I've made not we've made the biggest mistakes I've made by far our mistakes of omission and not coalition me it's the things I knew enough to do they were within my circle of competence and I was sucking my thumb

and that is really those are the ones that her they don't show up any place I probably cost berkshire at least five billion dollars for example by sucking my thumb twenty years ago are close to one Fannie Mae was was having some troubles and forget about the whole company for practically nothing and I don't worry about that if it's microsoft because I don't know what was microsoft isn't in My circle of compliments that's why I I don't have any reason to think I'm entitled to make money out of Microsoft or out of cocoa beans or

whatever but I didn't know enough to understand Fannie Mae and I bullet and that never shows up under conventional county but the call i know the cost of it I know I know you know that I passed it up and those are the big big mistakes and I've had plenty of them at and you unless I tell you about them in the annual report and I resist the temptation sometimes as I tell you about him in the annual report you're not going to know it because it doesn't show up under conventional county but automation is

way bigger than accomplished there is a big Opportunities in life have to be seized out we don't do very many things but when we get the chance to do something that's right a big we've got to do it and even to do it on a small scale is just as big a mistake almost is not doing it at all I mean you've really gotta you gotta grab them when they come and that because they are not going to get 500 great opportunities you would be better off if when you got out of school here you

gotta punch card with 20 punches on it and every big financial every financial decision you made you used up a punch you get very rich because you think through very hard each one of you want to a cocktail party and somebody talk about a company didn't even understand what they did he couldn't pronounce the name but they made some money last week and another one like it You wouldn't buy it if you only had 24 inches on that card there's a temptation to dabble if particularly during all markets in socks is so easy you know

easier now than ever because you can do it online you know just you click it then and maybe goes up to . get excited about that you buy another one the next day and so on you can't make any money over time doing that but if you have a punch card with only 20 punches we're going to get another one of us to your life you would think a long time before every investment decision and you would make good ones and you make big ones and you probably wouldn't even use all 20 punches at the

in your lifetime but you would need to Yeah mr. perfect morning and in your comments about making mistakes and errors like that you talk a little about your self discipline when you're in a position and you you feel like it's no longer good in what criteria to use to you just finally abandoned it yeah when I started out the South situation has changed over the years because when i started out and why ideas the money and i would go through movies manual i went through it page by page and then I went through it again

by page and i found stocks in there that i could understand that we're selling a bike to time journeys even one time servings well when you don't have 10,000 bucks that i can get a little frustrating and and if you don't like to borrow money which I never like to borrow money so I was always coming up with more ideas than i had money so i had to sell Whatever I likes least to buy something new that just was compelling to me and it for a long time i was in that mode and now our

problems we have more money than ideas so where when if you look at our annual report which is on the internet under in our home base furniture out of the way . com you'll see something in the back call the economic principles of Berkshire and you will see which I believe in setting out for my my partner's they are my partner's I don't look at my share of my partners and I got my partners for life so I want to tell them how I think and if they don't just agree with the way I think

that's fine but I don't want them that I don't be disappointed in me so ah i lay out there and I say in terms of are wholly owned businesses We're not going to sell no matter how much anybody offers this for me I mean if somebody offers three times what something is worth that sees candy the buffalo news for showers whatever maybe we're not gonna sell it I may be wrong and having that approach i know i'm not wrong with my own daughter percent of aperture because that's the way I want to live my life

I've got all the money could possibly need you know just amounts to which a change in the newspaper story on my obituary and the amount of money the foundation has and the break off relationships with people i like and people that have joined me because they think it's a permanent home to do that simply because somebody waits a big check at me would be like something for my children because up to a big shot I won't do that and I want to tell my partner's I won't do it so that they're Not disappointed me more

and more with certain stocks we've got that approach now if we were chronically short of funds and all kinds of opportunities coming we might have a somewhat different approach but our inclination is not the cell things unless we get really discouraged perhaps with the management or we think the economic characteristics of the business change in a big way I mean and that happens so what I'm going to sell simply because it looks too high yep in all likelihood that mean that I can't make that a hundred percent but it's it's that's that's that's the principle

under which we operate we're generating right now Five billion of cashier at least so it's a hundred million bucks every week and you know just met we've been talking about half an hour and i'm not a damn thing so since you know I think the real question is how do you put it out intelligent by the ad and if we were selling things would be just that much more so they make their money there may come a time when that would change but what we want to and I have partners Cheryl were partners who would

say if you can get three times what sees candies worth why don't you sell it and that's why I want to be sure before they come in they know how I think on that I mean they're they're entitled to know that that you really want to thank for meta you know if you're going to get married and you want to mary's that's going to last Initially the happiest married you know or one that that Martha Stewart will talk about anything that you want a marriage is gonna last what quality you look for in a spouse

one quality good for brains you look for humor you look for character to look for beauty now you look for low expectations that that is the marriage is gonna watch them both have low expectations i made it and I want my partners to be on the low side on expectations coming in because i want the marriage classes the financial marriage when I join me at virtual and I don't want him to think i'm going to do things that I'm i'm not going to do so that's that's our guiding principle the device is all free in

your medical advice everything next time good morning it mr. Babbitt I have a question regarding evaluation of The sounds of investment in recent years appears that the use of tax sheltering in preparation is increasing and such you know reputable companies like UPS and others involved in a cold part of silver shoulders with IRS and as we know most of these transactions are very artificial but yet there is the profit there from the investor perspective do you think it's beneficial for investor that the company that they invest a involved no see charters and if so do

you think would be helpful is it built in such that disclosed in statements and immediately no statement not sure I got that a hundred percent George to you that i will repeat that it and they are all the Giants shot at it they if you think that the involvement of a corporation that you invest or anybody for that matter invest in tax shelter which is by some definition of That attack showers right I've never used one yeah i know i wanna go out to it saying so I'm asking if you know that the corporation is

involved in such activity that is beneficial in charts pattern would you would think that that's helpful for investments what does that mean there there's but they're perfectly legal ways to show their taxes i mean we we did and still do but we were the earliest ones to go in for low income tax housing credits that guy met with President first president Bush about about that one and that benefits are still mild degree it it's not a big element of virtue of its a penis and in terms of pictures overall value but it it is a

congressionally ordained tax benefit I wouldn't call exactly a shelter it's a tax benefit that Congress has decided they're willing to offer business Those and they that because they think it's the best way to to generate low-income housing so we participate in something but that it's not a it's not a big factor and and what we do and what I want there's no there's nothing wrong with that then if you get into tax evasion I mean that's a whole different game that point they'll go to jail no but certain businesses some insurance companies are incorporated in

Bermuda I that and add you can save a lot of taxes you have to meet certain other tests which we wouldn't want to meet but if we were willing to meet those other tests there's nothing illegal or immoral about us moving to Bermuda we're not going to do it and what if if the restrictions were done it that the tax code is the rule book and you follow the rule but I think some of the things people do in Terms of bending that rule book get very close to frog and sometimes cross the line into

fraud and when they do I think that would be be prosecuted but that's that's another game and inside there has been more pushing on that i would say in the last five years and certainly was my experience earlier and there are more there's up I think now is diminished the last year too but a couple years ago there was very aggressive marketing by some of the auditing firms and of these even with sure percentage shares of the gain to be paid to the others i think that those things got fairly dubious and pretty when they

shopped for legal opinions and also that if you got caught doing these things you can say well I was rely on this legal opinion and therefore I shouldn't go to jail but just pay the back taxes so I i don't know how many anything were associated with it has done that but I've obviously if they push too far we don't want to be there yep i was curious with the large number of people you have now have with the tremendous amounts of wealth what do you think of the current state of philanthropy well I'll be

out this week and then actually 10 : out flying on to Seattle and then and talking to the United Way group out there they see how well you hide away raises more per capita I believe in it either way in the country and and bill gates will be there were talking jointly his mother was very active and the united way but bill is going to give away over a billion dollars a year and a lot more later on but right now a billion and it's very interesting and he's very rational about it and he's very

informed in fact he got somebody I Think is primary advisor in the medical field as fellows with the CDC in Vienna and bill reads 15 books so a month on this i mean he is thinking just absorbing I i wouldn't be able to get it that fast but he just says with a billion dollars he wants to save as many lives for years you can so how did he get that his objective he's it's just as much a metric of his of his foundation as some other metric return on capital might be for a business

and he says I'm going to spend a billion dollars or how many how many lives can be saved for that so he's gotten very heavily in the vaccines and and AIDS in Africa number of things that it's very rational i personally I think I've all my 99 . something percent of my net worth will go to a foundation after the ladder of my wife and i and i am it's all going to go to foundation far as i'm concerned i got from society's gonna go to society I've written a letter to my trustees I've got

very few trustees to get a whole bunch of trustees in my view it they just homogenized themselves down to sort of the lowest common denominator because he had 30 people in a room and prestigious people but they're also all have their particular all modern allow other particular Hospital and it will become a big trade-off game you know that they like Congress so I have very few people and I don't give them anything specific because I tell them their judgment above ground will be better than my instructions from six feet underground son that I don't like

to think that but it's true so I tell him I look the society are the ones that don't have an actual funding constituents see you love or are just damned intractable and very difficult to solve So I don't I am NOT going to haunt them at all if they spend big money on some terribly important problem and they fail because they're taking on tough problems when I by businesses i'm buying easy businesses the reason that big problems of society or big problems is that their damn tough to solve so they're they're swinging at bad pitches

I'm swinging it easy pictures in business but they're swinging it they have to swing at bad pitches but i tell him i wanted to try and do it and if they fail it doesn't bother me at all and I tell them if they give a million bucks here and a million bucks there in a million bucks there they're not going to sleep because I'm gonna be haunting him I'm going to come back every night you know I did not want the eyedropper approach used to flying through p But I want them to use their judgment

to look at important problems that do not have a natural funding constituency you know if the government's going to find it fine you know I mean they should be funding important problems but we don't need to do it the the ball applied to be in my I have in my opinion is the fun things that don't have the natural constituents and that's what bills doing there isn't the neck there are a bunch of people around that you can make an emotional appeal to to make vaccines available to millions and millions of kids around the world

it just doesn't target anybody's heart strange you can make buildings after mean it just isn't the sort of thing that you can raise money for on an emotional basis and there's nothing wrong with raising money on our emotional basis but that is a problem will get solved by a funny constituent It was responding to that but bill is responding to what it is mind is that is the important thing which is saving lives and he doesn't care whether it gets his name on a building or whether anything happens or what everybody knows about it and

he gets published they just because of the scale is on but it he doesn't care about that i can promise you that so that's my philosophy is that I got this money not because i'm a superior human being not because I've done more for society and other people I was wired the right way to be dropped into the United States at this particular time I mean it's a huge capitalistic society and I'm wired no credit to me but it born that way so that I'm better an asset allocation than Other people to some degree just

like other people are better at all kinds of other things and I was with two teachers out of the sun valley they're doing more for society that I am and they don't this market system does nothing for them market system does all kinds of things for me kate says if I have been born five thousand years ago you know I have been some animals lunch you know because i can't run very fast climb trees I mean you know what those state and I could I could tell that animal is chasing me in a way that

we see how I can allocate assets you know it wouldn't make any difference So here I am yeah i'm bored out again I the just very very lucky and at the odds when i was born in nineteen thirty the odds with 50 to 1 against baby born the United States that's a terrible set onto the face and then I was rock down here you know and if I then drop down and / or someplace ER or China I mean I wouldn't have a chance so society is what does it for you and and it should

go back and might be with you go back to society if you've been lucky enough to be dropped into a society where your particular wiring pays off big now it that that's just luck and and you know there's nothing wrong with being like I don't feel guilty about anything else but i also don't feel that I feel like I have a lot of fun doing what I do but I feel the money should go back into Society and it should go back as intelligently as it can and best way to do it intelligently is to

have high grade and intelligent people administering it at the time and you don't know the problems that are going to be out there 10 years from now or 20 years from now or 30 years from now but i do know if I've got a small number of high-grade smart people and high grade is more applied out Oh of if you gave me 20 extra points of IQ but but cheated a little on the high grade I wouldn't take it because that they got to be they got to be there's somebody chances that to do things

in a petty way or you know do try to make people get supported in their own minds to their own interests rather than the interest of the institution so I really want super high-grade people doing it and I've got them and I think the money might do a lot of good it may do no good But it will be operating in fields or if it doesn't good that good probably would have been done otherwise yep I'm just wondering there's a lot of differences between the recent boom and bust the stock market and one in the

nineteen twenties but there's also a lot of similarities and the simulators are allowing people to draw the conclusion that stock prices will be trapped depressed for some time to come what where do you disagree agree with that we bought in the the whole century is quite interesting if you take the 20th century it was unbelievable century for the United States the gdp per capita and that's the way to think of this per capita sometimes they talk about our gdp vs Europe's but if their populations the same every year an artist goes up one percent you've

gotta you know in the end Of the goods you gotta i have a divisor as well as the numerator and and so gdp per capita in the 20th century in the United States one of six hundred and ten percent actually qualitatively went too far more than that because you can't really measure you know certain things and medicine or whatever it may be it and the improvements but just out of quantitative basis it went up every single decade including the decade of the thirties so here you have a hundred years when basically the US citizen really

was getting was improving their lot decade by decade by decade the thirties it was a 13-percent that's decade was World War 2 the night the forties 36-percent the worst decade was the first world war so you get sometimes the analogy I can get in trouble and analogies but any of that it was it was a huge . interestingly enough there were six big periods in there for the stock Market in both directions there were three big bull market from 1910 1920 one the Dow want from 66 to 70 one less than a 10-percent move in

20 years less than half a percent here you got evidence to put a half of it didn't move from 21 to 29 as you point out at what it went from 71 to a high of 381 in September of 1929 while five hundred percent well obviously the country well being of the country thing about five hundred percent during that period and the well-being of the company in the country about the whole lot more than ten percent during that first 21 years so he had this very uneven development from 19 from september's 1929 until the end

of 1948 the download from 381 to about a hundred and eighty was cut in half and That was eighteen long years and yet the per capita gdp was moving right up during this whole period to the economy is doing fine for 38 265 the doll one again from about a hundred eighty up to close to a thousand again 541 which was far outstripping from 65 to 80 1 the doll went down literally well again per capita to be and then we've had this last period where it's going to prolifically if you take the whole hundred

years it went up a hundred and eighty-four one every thousand dollars became a hundred eighty thousand but forty three and a quarter you're forty three and three-quarters years with those three big huge bull markets and fifty six and a quarter years with periods of stagnation all in an economy that was doing fine you know year after year after your fifty six and a quarter years net the dow was down a couple other points during that period and the other Forty three and three-quarters years made up the rest of this move from 66 to 11,000 someone

to dallas self-excited yourself how could it be that you can have a country was doing better and better and better and better citizens we're living every every generation was living better than the one that preceded it but you have these huge changes big gains a few times long period of stagnation 20 years I mean that's a long time to do nothing the answer is that investors behave in very human ways which is they get very excited during bull markets and they look in the rearview mirror and they say I made money last year i'm going

to make more money this year so this time I'll borrow an hour or the neighbor says you know I wasn't it last year when that neighbor was dumber than I am a lot of money so i'm going to go in this year's they're always looking at the river where and when they look in the rearview mirror and they see a lot of money having been made in the last few years they plow and they just push and push and push on prices and when they look in the rearview mirror and I see no money having

been made they just say this is a lousy place to be so they don't care what's going on in the underlying business and it's it's astounding but that's that makes for a huge opportunity just huge opportunity I mean I have lived through roughly half in investing sense about half that . and I've had that long period of stagnation from 48 I mean from 65 to 80 - 17 years I wrote an article for forbes in 1979 I just how can this be pension funds in the nineteen seventy put a hundred and some percent of their

new money in stock because they were wild about stocks then they got a lot cheaper and they put our record low in nine percent of that nobody in the 1970s when stocks for way cheaper people behave very peculiarly and and in terms of the reactions because they they're human beings and they get excited when others get excited they get greedy when others get greedy they get fearful one other get fearful and they'll continue to do so and you will see you know if you will see things you won't believe in your lifetime and securities markets

and the country will do very well over time but you will see these huge waves and then and if you can stay objective throughout that you can detach yourself temperamentally from the crowd You get very rich and you won't have to be very bright I mean it I'm sure you are but but that one you know it just it doesn't take brains it takes temperament it takes the ability to sit there and look at something when i started out in nineteen fifty i would go through and find things at two times earnings and they were

perfectly decent businesses and people want two jobs at those companies and everybody knew they were going to be around anyone behind with two times earnings and that's when interest rates for two and a half percent you know I went to the start installing security lights 21 and I Kansas City Life Insurance Company have to be a fairly prominent company in omaha and the policies they sold google if you're buying life in church from them had a building and assumption of two percent interest the stock of kansas City life was selling it less than three times

earnings you're getting 35% if you bought the stock no question about the sound of the company I went to the local agent as I figure it out I'll give yourself him a few shares of stock I mean think I understand he's got his whole life invested in this company with the local agent we've been with them for 20 years and as name is mo size of mr. moose and you know you're selling these policies with 2% even have a few members of your own family and you can buy into this company whose paycheck youtube and

on every month that you know and whose future you of your your beneficiaries of his life policy depend on and who you're selling them you know a two percent investment on and you get thirty five percent of your money you know and i'm stuck trying To be good and then I couldn't I consultant and I'm i will allow themselves when I mean the world you have to start with that but but it just blew me away it blew me away I thought sometimes I used to wonder if I his nuts you know that that but

those things the same thing happened I mean 1964 the dow closed the dates 864 and then a 1981 17 years later later it closed at age 65 and move one . in 17 years now it's not a big move and that you can't believe the how discouraged people were by that by the during that period but you know people are looking better so things can go on a long time that don't make sense and but they don't come to an end i mean the internet thing I mean you had these companies selling for many billions

of dollars that had nope really frankly no prospects are making any money that that's a that's a bubble butt hurt sign one time said anything that can't go on forever will end now that's a pretty good but think about that and particularly think about it next time you're trying to do something just because the stock's gone ball a lot you know many of your neighbors make money or something that you've got to be she's had to sit and think objectively and think about what i buy this whole business it's an Internet companies got a hundred

million shares outstanding a hundred that's ten billion dollars is it worth ten billion dollars It's worth ten billion dollars it's got to be able to give you you know seven or eight hundred million next year and if it doesn't give you seven or eight hundred million next year he has a good move maybe ten percent more than that the year after and continue to him there are a lot of businesses can do that and people just go crazy and of course it's fun I mean it's you know it's like that sign they put in doctors

offices and says avoid hangover state rock and up that minute it's just so much fun to keep like but yeah you got it you got to do sensible things to get to get that result yeah yeah next well we got three people standing there so let's let's do the three that are standing ok Good morning sir hi I i was wondering what your opinion is the Federal Reserve and their actions taken recently you feel like done and not to fix the economy yeah well I'm a big fan of alan greenspan's over time I've known him

for a long long time we were on a board together caption reason Alan is a very very smart guy he is motivated in my opinion entirely by whatever for the United States people united states it so you better that you've got you couldn't have a better person in there and the problem he may have is that that because his tenure in office has been associated with this incredible all market that that even though he wouldn't have claimed credit for that people applied associated because of the importance of The Fed generally they might associate with him

so they made if things don't work out so well made blame them as well but I think his policy is generally been very good you have to understand one thing that about the Fed is that it's not as powerful as the mystique would make it it's a break is better than its gas pedal when the Fed wants to put on the brakes we go for the windshield I mean how do you know the economy just wrong yeah and they can put on the brakes Paul Walker did it he broke inflation by doing it but I

mean when he put on the brakes and that . around nineteen eighty i mean people hated he was crucified for what is the right thing to do and he could do it he did it all by himself and these he and And it was the only way because of the momentum the inflation was generating it was the only thing that was what was needed then normally unpopular it's much harder for a Greenspan to put on the brakes because nobody wants him to put on the brakes busty so visible but he's put them on sort of

gradually but stepping on the gas pedal he does not necessarily get the same result it may help but there are a thousand other variables operating and as you see in Japan you know you can get down to zero interest rates and you can stimulate anything so it isn't like the Japanese haven't read the same books we read about economics I mean they've read canes and they were the whole thing so we're not smarter than they are we don't have any secrets they don't have but they don't know how to get Their economy going and you

know there - <operand> two </operand> GPA has been going no place you know in the last five years and still problems around so easy money doesn't solve everything but Greenspan could very well get blamed for the fact that that he hasn't solved everything and it's just not in his power to solve it can help in various ways and I've I don't think you could have anybody but he better and I think he's done the right thing to this point but the right thing may not be quite as as effective as as people may help that

would be in economics as always you always want to ask and then what you read in the paper well what happens if the Japanese start selling government our government bonds or what happened they dumped the dollar they can't dump the dollar there's a way to dump dollars you could you can at least dollar assets because The Japanese want to sell government our government bonds they sell up to us and they get a time deposit or a demand deposits it here they still own a dollar asset if they sell them to the French they get it

and they may get some answers from the French but now the French habit I mean the only way you can reduce foreign investment in the United States is to change it around so they're consuming more than from us more than were consuming from that might be one once when we buy a television set from Japan if we buy more television sets from them than they buy equivalent consumables from us the exchange of what balances things is we give them some investment type asset whether it's cash or US government bonds or stocks or movie studios are

real estate or different things and the only way that reverses is when we start Running a trade surplus which were miles away from so logically you know if you read classic economics that you would believe that our currency would have been weak along Earl weaker over the recent years and that it would be a week now but there are other things operating and that's one of the problems about economics is there's never just one variable there's usually hundreds of variables and they operate with different impact at different times I mean it's a it's it's not

like a physics for me if I mean it tho i guess it would be if you get in the Heisenberg principle or something like that but but the the formula has a lot of the same variables year after year but the relative importance of those variables and how they interact with each other is Never exactly the same and that's what we find out the Japanese find out everybody finds out and and foreign currency or the currents are the value of a dollar and currency rates are defying what you would expect based on history but somebody

said of history were perfect guide you know the Forbes 400 would all be librarians you know she's going to look it up in the books and it always you know all the answers but it history doesn't repeat itself as Mark Twain said i was going to repeat itself but it rhymes I mean things come back but they don't quite come back in the same format will understand all this perfectly for years why the dollars behave the way it has but I i think it would be useful net from the US if the dollar was strong

yes mr. Buffett thanks for taking my question my question pertains to small Business and my family spending the truckload sector of transportation for about 50 years and as you talked about the airline industry and other merchants next week acquisitions and things going on and a lot of the smaller players being tossed out of the market what do you see for people that like this room for students that want to start a small business and maybe they want to start in a business that is somewhat of a commodity type business but as businesses the large corporations

get larger and their deficiencies increase how can a small businesses compete it has these people the idea the in many areas small businesses have an advantage you know another businesses scale has a huge advantage and I mean you don't want To be a a tiny carbon steel producer on the other hand when many miles came along and learn how to use scrap more effectively that than the the older methods of making steel they actually had managed to scale is a huge advantage in some businesses it's you know the largest airlines haven't won southwest airlines as

one starting with you know just a few planes flying down there between houston and allison and they have become bigger but their ambition hasn't been to be the biggest and you know they they probably by the fuel of just as cheap as United that we bought it you know when there's lots more walmart is a classic example I mean who would have thought 25 years ago 30 years ago i'm here with serious with a hundred story plus building in Chicago had access to money far cheaper than sample I'm Sam was credit was not as good

as serious every supplier wanted to do business with sears nobody ever heard of Sam every real-estate developer was developing a new shopping center went first to sears on Sam got the short end so here's the guys starting in bentonville arkansas and he kills them over time just playing kills him and disadvantaged and buying disadvantage and borrowing disadvantage in real estate advantage Sam Walton and his ability to inspire in the end hundreds of thousands of people to be enthusiastic about going to work and doing although doing the right things over time so i would be just

as optimistic about small business generally now there's certain areas where scale just as i was just playing important but but I see no disadvantage we intentionally at Berkshire we have a Hundred and twelve thousand employees more in Georgia than any other state in the Union incidentally we employ a lot of their don't and then we put a lot of people are making a guy go ad we intentionally with our hundred and twelve thousand but we probably have about how many business units but lots at will have 13.8 people at headquarters I'm not the point agent

said that my I resent it when people like that i have a full but we have one that works four days a week then that's all we have at headquarters hundred twelve thousand people a hundred and five billion market cap but we intentionally keep our units small we think we want them to have the nimbleness the responsiveness of the customer particularly that will turn them you know that essentially will more than offset anything that the scale of having maybe a little more purchasing power something when the will develop we Own a home furnishing with furniture

home furnishings business in utah run by phone bill child he was featured in Fortune about one issue ago that it did the cover story was God in business it was and it was Bill was the number one illustration built up that business from his father-in-law was doing two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year and then I was over half the business in utah in this field but you're close to 400 million he built by thinking about the customer and the truth with he was competing with sears he was competing with rabbits was a huge furniture

retailer the retailer in the past he was competing with everybody but all he thought about from the moment he got up in the morning was how do I take care of my customer and that wins we have a business in Omaha some of you may have heard of It's the largest home furnishing store in the world in all which only has a SMS a of 650,000 people it's on 72 acres it's does 325 million dollars in one location which happens to be five hundred dollars for every man woman and child in the SMS a but

it draws from beyond that that business comes about her as resulted from an investment of five hundred dollars in 1937 by a woman who walked out of Russia in 1921 she'll and she walked out . on a peanut boat landed in seattle with a tag around her neck she could speak one word of English the American Red Cross look at the tag is at Fort Dodge Iowa they got a fort dodge I what she couldn't pick up the language she was there two years She said she felt like a dummy so she came to homo

because there were other Russian Jews there and she's at least have somebody to talk to her little girl started school Francis Francis would come home at night and teach her mother the words you learned in school that day that's how this woman rose bump can learn the English language but from her from her daughter from kindergarten on teaching of the words she bought seven siblings over from Russia one of the time 50 bucks every time she say fifty bucks she sold used clothing and the works she had her seven siblings over her mother and father

and by 1937 16 years after she got here she saved five hundred dollars she got out of train went to Chicago to the American Furniture Mart which was huge Impressive things you had this - smart as hell but she fought like a peasant away and she saw this building she decided to name her company then browse current you want about five hundred dollars worth of got about two thousand dollars worth of you merchandise all the way back to Omaha she worried because she thought I old $1,500 and she only had a five-hundred-dollar equity so she

got to Omaha she took the bed the sofa the refrigerator out of her own home to sell fast so she could get the money so she can pay on time she took that business and build it from that start no one would sell to her she went to court four times because they tried to The carpet manufacturers tried to keep her from selling the discount and she went into court add told the judge because you figured out ways to buy this stuff in various nefarious ways from other hand of people by a foreign she said

look at i pay three dollars a yard for this carpet brandeis sells it for 698 is I sell it for 398 just tell me judge how much you want me to rob people she defended herself papers wrote it up the judge bought carpet from her the next day I mean it was no marvelous Brandeis is selling anymore they were the huge department store , she put everybody out of business and the punch line she worked till she was a hundred and three she sold me the business when she Was 89 and she didn't have she

didn't have an audit I went out this year I want afternoon took a check out with Nana had because I knew she wanted to do something and I said mrs. B here's the money I said I don't even know what just tell me where the only money that never open any money since I all those guys back in nineteen thirty-seven and she said it's all free and clear she never seen a balance sheet she didn't know what accounting terms mad but she understood the nature of the business and i told her i said i'd rather

have I don't have your word and other than an order from every one of the big six or bigger or whatever their word number at the time of the top are turning from sin and she worked till she was a hundred and three she died a hundred and four she had three siblings at her funeral I mean those are some genes her son works there now he's eighty two or three and the three sisters are all alive but the punch line is she couldn't read or write this woman could not read or write if you

told her this room was sixty eight feet by 43 she would tell you how many square yards it was like that she ever went to school to be in her life she would tell you how much that wasn't 598 yards she had the tax she's not about something that she liked your looks and that would be it and that was that you know that is the that that you can't beat that you know had and you can't replicate that at General Motors you can't institutionalize that that the person who brings that kind of drive to

a business and does it day after day and thinks about the customer yeah and that's all she did I can't and once you've raised four kids in the Process to but you can't hit it can't miss and not you don't have to worry if you're an entrepreneur in most fields are some field work you can't do it because there are some scale aspects to it but in most fields you know you will kill people by Sean that which was shocked nobody ever heard of Sean carpet 30 years ago and got forty percent of the business

in the country - so don't I did it's a great field of opportunity out there and i had and i know about trucking specifically but I wish you the best on it then your you won't be at a disadvantage in many fields if you're small and you'll actually have an advantage for thank you mr. Buffett thank you very much for sharing your wisdom and your ideas are wonderful stories with us today we are truly honored and pleased we've had this Opportunity to get to know you a little bit better I'd like to thank a couple

people before we conclude for helping with the logistics associate dean a bob Gatewood our director of alumni relations and Marie garrison thank both of you David . and director of communications are a lot of work and everyone into this I thank all of you for all you've done it all again thank you for helping make this possible mr. but we have a parting gift for you but it needs to be placed into context before we show you what it is in your most recent letter newsletter - you're in a report to the shareholders you discuss

some of the things you look for and make with making acquisitions and one of the things you talked about was owners look for owners who care who they sell to and that was important to you I like to quote from your report when a business masterpiece has been created by a lifetime or several lifetimes of understanding care and exceptional talent it should be important to the owner what corporation is entrusted to carry on its history a little bit further down you say how much better it is for the painter of a business Rembrandt to personally

select its permanent home then they have a trust officer or uninterested airs knocks it off well we believe that many of these words apply to you as well you two have created a business masterpiece you to have created a Rembrandt what we have today is a light-hearted portrait a light-hearted characterization that we hope to capture some of the business milestones in your career and we hope Also captures some of that quick quick wit and humor that you demonstrated today it was painted by a good friend of ours and a well-known artist lives here locally alan

campbell Allen nice but is with us and he will help but unveiled today Alan please come down now when we need when he unveils us please understand that you're not gonna be able to see the detail of this more you're sitting but we invite you to come down and walk past the as you as you leave today Alan if you're going to speak over the microphone place well thank you and and and mr. Buffett hope you told maintain your sense of humor which appealed to me greatly when Reading your corporate report and this is going

to be a test of that famous humor but it is a it is intended to be a porch or both of you and of your company and of your values and when I was when Marie garrison my girlfriend the alumni director here told me you were coming and I read the comments about the Rembrandt's and lying on your back you feel like you can allow your back and paint ceiling every day Brooks here you basically open the door with your own words so and and just on the side my brother's one of your pilot's for

executive jet I think it's not a reference to the jewelry , so you can stay this is based only very famous Rembrandt self-portrait anybody's information mr. Buffett will sign autographs you've got books with you like in the side will set up a table down front here for the next 15 or 20 minutes would like to take a Picture of you got a camera with you please come on up don't hesitate and thank you all for coming and participating today was a wonderful event thank you