• 1994年股东大会
  • 上午场
    • 1. 明年需要更大的会议场地
    • 2. 巴菲特将”最受欢迎奖”输给了芒格
    • 3. 会议时间安排
    • 4. 介绍伯克希尔董事
    • 5. 会议法定人数
    • 6. 选举董事
    • 7. 正式会议休会
    • 8. 介绍伯克希尔经理人
    • 9. 中西部快运将增加飞往奥马哈的航班
    • 10. 问答环节安排
    • 11. 衍生品：危险组合——“无知与借来的钱”
    • 12. 伯克希尔参与了大都会/ABC的股票回购
    • 13. 我们不太可能购买没有当前现金流的企业
    • 14. 保险业务的内在价值远高于账面价值
    • 15. 伯克希尔为何不拆股
    • 16. 巴菲特保留他的私人飞机
    • 17. 巴菲特人生的下一个目标
    • 18. 判断管理层的”两个标尺”
    • 19. 伯克希尔如何留住优秀经理人
    • 20. 健力士受苏格兰威士忌需求疲软影响
    • 21. 为何巴菲特突然去世伯克希尔也不会出问题
    • 22. 简单回答：也不会反向拆股
    • 30. 巴菲特赞扬所罗门兄弟公司的新管理层
    • 30. Buffett praises new Salomon Brothers management
    • 31. 危机后监管收紧，Wesco出售小型储贷机构
    • 31. Wesco sold small savings and loan as regulations tightened after crisis
    • 32. 鞋业很艰难，但Dexter拥有出色的管理者
    • 32. Shoe industry is tough, but Dexter has great managers
    • 33. 巴菲特谈投资烟草公司
    • 33. Buffett on investing in tobacco companies
    • 34. “很难与市场争辩”
    • 34. “Hard to argue with the market”
    • 35. 第六区没有问题
    • 35. No question from zone 6
    • 36. 保险公司对巨灾“视而不见”
    • 36. Insurers have “head in the sand” on catastrophes
    • 37. 书籍推荐
    • 37. Book recommendations
    • 38. 耐克和锐步
    • 38. Nike and Reebok
    • 39. “你不需要做非凡的事情来获得非凡的结果”
    • 39. “You don’t have to do exceptional things to get exceptional results”
    • 40. 削减全美航空的成本将“极其艰难”
    • 40. Cutting USAir’s costs will be “enormously tough”
    • 41. 我们“不急于”退休
    • 41. We’re “not in any hurry” to retire
    • 42. 伯克希尔在要约收购中出售了部分大都会/ABC股份
    • 42. Berkshire sold some Cap Cities shares in tender offer
    • 43. 结构化结算业务规模不大，但“完全令人满意”
    • 43. Structured settlements business isn’t big, but is “perfectly satisfactory”
    • 44. 不评论箭牌
    • 44. No comment on Wrigley
    • 45. “没有特别意愿”在世界特定地区购买公司
    • 45. “No specific desire” to buy companies in certain parts of the world
    • 46. 飓风是比暴乱更大的保险风险
    • 46. Hurricanes are bigger insurance risk than riots
    • 51. 巴菲特主张“大幅累进”的消费税
    • 51. Buffett favors a “steeply progressive” consumption tax
    • 52. 伯克希尔不是“富人共同基金”
    • 52. Berkshire isn’t a “rich man’s mutual fund”
    • 53. 评估公司价值无需利率展望
    • 53. Don’t need interest rate outlook to value companies
    • 54. 追溯保单在业务中占比很小
    • 54. “Retroactive” insurance is small part of our business
    • 1994年年度会议
      • 第四部分
    • 10. 伯克希尔不太可能成为道琼斯或标普500成分股
    • 10. Unlikely Berkshire will be a Dow or S&P 500 stock
    • 11. 如果不了解企业，就应该分散投资
    • 11. Diversify if you don’t understand businesses
    • 12. 我们不喜欢”给你们答案”——关于可口可乐
    • 12. We don’t like to “give you our answers” on Coca-Cola
    • 13. 安联的交易”近乎持平”
    • 13. Allianz deal was “close to a wash”
    • 14. “规模是劣势”——在买卖中
    • 14. “Size is a disadvantage” in buying and selling
    • 15. 伯克希尔没有为巴菲特和芒格投保”关键人物险”
    • 15. No key man insurance for Buffett and Munger
    • 16. 帝亚吉欧-LVMH重组是”合乎逻辑的”
    • 16. Guinness-VNMH restructuring was “logical”
    • 17. 伯克希尔不对冲货币
    • 17. Berkshire doesn’t hedge currencies
    • 18. 保险业务的内在价值远超账面价值
    • 18. Insurance intrinsic value far exceeds book value
    • 19. 对可口可乐的继任问题没有担忧
    • 19. No concerns on Coca-Cola succession
    • 20. 所罗门CEO的2400万美元奖金目标”极其难以实现”
    • 20. Salomon CEO’s $24M bonus target “hellishly hard to hit”
    • 21. 所罗门”比几年前好多了”
    • 21. Salomon is a “better company than it was some years back”
    • 22. 计算内在价值
    • 22. Calculating intrinsic value
    • 23. 增长本身并不能使一家公司成为好的投资
    • 23. Growth alone doesn’t make a company a good investment
    • 24. 资本配置不应委派他人
    • 24. Capital allocation shouldn’t be delegated
    • 25. 凯恩斯：关于投资的伟大”智慧”
    • 25. Keynes: Great “wisdom” about investing

WARREN BUFFETT: Put this over here.

CHARLIE MUNGER:

WARREN BUFFETT: Am I live yet? Yeah. Morning.

AUDIENCE: Morning.

WARREN BUFFETT: We were a little worried today because we weren’t sure from the reservations whether we can handle everybody, but it looks to me like there may be a couple seats left up there. But I think next year, we’re going to have to find a different spot because it looks to me like we’re up about 600 this year from last year, and to be on the safe side we will seek out a larger spot. Now, there are certain implications to that because, as some of the more experienced of you know, a few years ago we were holding this meeting at the Joslyn Museum, which is a temple of culture. (Laughter) And we’ve now, of course, moved to an old vaudeville theater. And the only place in town that can hold us next year, I think, is the Ak-Sar-Ben Coliseum where they have keno and racetracks. (Laughter) We are sliding down the cultural chain — (laughter) — just as Charlie predicted years ago. He saw all this coming. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: Charlie — I have some rather distressing news to report. There are always a few people that vote against everyone on the slate for directors and there’s maybe a dozen or so people do that. And then there are others that single shot it, and they pick out people to vote against. And, this will come as news to Charlie, I haven’t told him yet. But he is the only one among our candidates for directors that received no negative votes this year. (Applause). Hold it — hold it. No need to applaud. I tell you, when you lose out the title of Miss Congeniality to Charlie, you know you’re in trouble. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: Now, I’d like to tell you a little bit how we’ll run this. We will have the business meeting in a hurry with the cooperation of all of you, and then we will introduce our managers who are here, and then we will have a Q&A period. We will run that until 12 o’clock, at which point we’ll break, and then at 12:15, if the hardcore want to stick around, we will have another hour or so until about 1:15 of questions. So, you’re free to leave, of course, any time and I’ve pointed out in the past that it’s much better form if you leave while Charlie is talking rather than when I’m talking, but — (Laughter) Feel free anytime, but you can — if you’re panicked and you’re worried about being conspicuous by leaving, you will be able to leave at noon. We will have buses out front that will take you to the hotels or the airport or to any place in town in which we have a commercial interest. (Laughter) We encourage you staying around on that basis.

WARREN BUFFETT: Let’s have the — let’s get the business of the meeting out of the way. Then we can get on to more interesting things. I will first introduce the Berkshire Hathaway directors that are present in addition to myself and — First of all, there’s Charlie, who is the vice chairman of Berkshire, and if the rest of you will stand. We have Susan T. Buffett, Howard Buffett, Malcolm Chase III, and Walter Scott Jr. And that’s it. (Applause)

WARREN BUFFETT: Also with us today are partners in the firm of Deloitte and Touche, our auditors, Mr. Ron Burgess and Mr. Craig Christiansen (PH). They are available to respond to appropriate questions you might have concerning their firm’s audit of the accounts of Berkshire. Mr. Forrest Krutter, secretary of Berkshire. He will make a written record of the proceedings. Mr. Robert M. Fitzsimmons has been appointed inspector of election at this meeting. He will certify to the count of votes cast in the election for directors. The named proxy holders for this meeting are Walter Scott Jr. and Marc D. Hamburg. Proxy cards have been returned through last Friday representing 1,035,680 Berkshire shares to be voted by the proxy holders as indicated on the cards. That number of shares represents a quorum and we will therefore directly proceed with the meeting. We will conduct the business of the meeting and then adjourn to the formal meeting — and then adjourn the formal meeting. After that, we will entertain questions that you might have. First order of business will be a reading of the minutes of the last meeting of shareholders. I recognize Mr. Walter Scott Jr. who will place a motion before the meeting.

WALTER SCOTT: I move that the reading of the minutes of the last meeting of the shareholders be dispensed with.

WARREN BUFFETT: Do I hear a second?

VOICES: Seconded. Motion has been moved and seconded. Are there any comments or questions? Hearing none, we will vote on the motion by voice vote. (Laughter) All those in favor say aye.

VOICES: Aye.

WARREN BUFFETT: Opposed? The motion is carried and it’s a vote. Does the secretary have a report of the number of Berkshire shares outstanding entitled to vote and represented at the meeting?

FORREST KRUTTER: Yes, I do. As indicated in the proxy statement that accompanied the notice of this meeting that was sent by first class mail to all shareholders of record on March 8, 1994, being the record date for this meeting, there were 1,177,750 shares of Berkshire common stock outstanding, with each share entitled to one vote on motions considered at the meeting. Of that number, 1,035,680 shares are represented at this meeting by proxies returned through last Friday.

WARREN BUFFETT: Thank you. We will proceed to elect directors. If a shareholder is present who wishes to withdraw a proxy previously sent in and vote in person, he or she may do so. Also, if any shareholder that’s present has not turned in a proxy and desires a ballot in order to vote in person, you may do so. If you wish to do this, please identify yourself to meeting officials in the aisles who will furnish a ballot to you. Would those persons desiring ballots please identify themselves so that we may distribute them? Just raise your hand. I now recognize Mr. Walter Scott Jr. to place a motion before the meeting with respect to election of directors.

WALTER SCOTT: I move that Warren Buffett, Susan Buffett, Howard Buffett, Malcolm Chase, Charles Munger, and Walter Scott be elected as directors.

WARREN BUFFETT: Is there a second?

VOICE: Seconded.

WARREN BUFFETT: It’s been moved and seconded that Warren E. Buffett, Susan T. Buffett, Howard G. Buffett, Malcolm G. Chase III, Charles T. Munger, and Walter Scott Jr. be elected as directors. Are there any other nominations? Is there any discussion? Motions and nominations are ready to be acted upon. If there are any shareholders voting in person, they should now mark their ballots and allow the ballots to be delivered to the inspector of elections. Seeing none, will the proxy holders please also submit to the inspector of elections the ballot voting the proxies in accordance with the instructions they have received. Mr. Fitzsimmons, when you’re ready you may give your report.

ROBERT FITZSIMMONS: My report is ready. The ballot of the proxy holders received through last Friday cast not less than a 1,035,407 votes for each nominee. That number far exceeds a majority of the number of all shares outstanding and a more precise count cannot change the results of the election. However, the certification required by Delaware law regarding the precise count of the votes, including the votes cast in person at this meeting, will be given to the secretary to be placed with the minutes of this meeting.

WARREN BUFFETT: Thank you, Mr. Fitzsimmons. Warren E. Buffett, Susan T. Buffett, Howard G. Buffett, Malcolm G. Chase III, Charles T. Munger, and Walter Scott Jr. have been elected as directors. (Applause)

WARREN BUFFETT: Does anyone have any further business to come before this meeting before we adjourn? If not, I recognize Mr. Walter Scott Jr. to place a motion before the meeting.

WALTER SCOTT: I move the meeting be adjourned.

WARREN BUFFETT: Second?

VOICES: Seconded. The motion to adjourn has been made and seconded. We will vote by voice. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor say aye?

VOICES: Aye

WARREN BUFFETT: Opposed say no, the meeting is adjourned. (Laughter) It’s democracy in Middle America. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: Now, I’d like to introduce some of the people that make this place work to you. And if you would hold your applause until the end because there are quite a number of our managers here. I’m not sure which ones for sure are here, some of them may be out tending the store as well. But, first of all, from Nebraska Furniture Mart, Louie, Ron, and Irv Blumkin. I’m not sure who’s here, but would you stand please, any of the Blumkins that are present? OK, we’ve — looks like Irv. I can’t quite see it. From Borsheims, is Susan Jacques here? Susan? There she is. Susan had a record day yesterday. She just — (applause) — Susan became CEO just a few months ago and she’s turning in records already. Keep it up. (Laughter) And from Central States Indemnity, we have the Kizers. I’m not sure which ones are here, but there’s Bill Sr., Bill Jr., John, and Dick. Kizers, stand up.

I think I can see him — John. Don Wurster from National Indemnity. Rod Eldred from the Homestate Companies. Brad Kinstler from Cypress, our worker’s comp company. Ajit Jain, the big ticket writer in the East. And Mike Goldberg, who runs our real estate finance group and also generally oversees the insurance group. Mike. Gary Heldman from Fechheimers. Chuck Huggins from See’s, the candy man. Stan Lipsey from the Buffalo News. Chuck’s been with us, incidentally, twenty-odd years. Stan’s been working with me for well over 25 years. Frank Rooney and Jim Issler from H.H. Brown. Dave Hillstrom from Precision Steel. Ralph Schey from Scott Fetzer. Peter Lunder, who is with our newest acquisition, Dexter Shoe. And Harold Alfond, his partner, couldn’t be with us because his wife is ill. And finally, the manager that’s been with Charlie and me the longest, Harry Bottle from K&W. Harry, you here? There’s Harry. Harry saved our bacon back in 19 — what?

— 62 or so, when in some mad moment I went into the windmill business. And Harry got me out of it. (Laughter) That’s our group of managers and I appreciate it if you give them a hand. (Applause)

WARREN BUFFETT: I have one piece of good news about next year for you. In addition to moving to larger quarters, they’re going to add nonstop air service from New York, Washington, and Los Angeles here in the next few months, Midwest Express. So, I hope they do very well with it and I hope that makes it easier for you to get into town.

WARREN BUFFETT: Now, in this — for the next two hours and 15 minutes or so, we’ll have a session where we will take questions. We have seven zones, three on the main floor. We’ll go start over there with zone one and work across. On the main floor, if you’ll raise your hand, the person who is handling the mic will pass it to you and we’ll try to not repeat any individual in any one zone till everyone in that zone has had a chance to ask one question. So, after you’ve been on once, let other people get a shot. When we move up to the loge, we have one person there and in the case — and then we have three in the balcony, which is essentially full now. And we would, up there, we would appreciate it if you would you leave your seat and go to the person with the mic. It’ll be a little easier in both the loge and the balcony to handle it that way.

And if you’ll go a little ahead of time, that way if there’s a line of two or three you can you can line up for questions in both the loge and balcony. So, whatever you’d care to ask. If you want an optimistic answer you’ll, of course, direct your question to Charlie. If you’d like a little more realism you’ll come to me and — (laughter).

WARREN BUFFETT: Let’s start over in zone 1. Sometimes we can’t see too well from up here, but — In fact, I can’t even see the monitor right now, but do we have one over there? And if you’ll identify yourself by name and your hometown, we’d appreciate it.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Michael Mullen (PH) from Omaha. Would you comment on the use of derivatives? I noticed that Dell computer stock was off 2 1/2 points Friday with the loss of derivatives.

WARREN BUFFETT: Question is about derivatives. We have in this room the author of the best thing you can read on that. There was an article in Fortune about a month ago or so by Carol Loomis on derivatives, and far and away it’s the best article that has been written. We also have some people in the room that do business in derivatives from Salomon. And it’s a very broad subject. It — as we said last year, I think someone asked what might be the big financial story of the ’90s and we said we obviously don’t know, but that if we had to pick a topic that it could well be derivatives because they lend themselves to the use of unusual amounts of leverage and they’re sometimes not completely understood by the people involved. And any time you combine ignorance and borrowed money — (laughter) — you can get some pretty interesting consequences. (Laughter) Particularly when the numbers get vague. And you’ve seen that, of course, recently with the recent Procter and Gamble announcement.

Now, I don’t know the details of the P&G derivatives, but I understand, at least from press reports, that what started out as interest rate swaps ended up with P&G writing puts on large quantities of U.S. and, I think, one other country’s bonds. And any time you go from selling soap to writing puts on bonds, you’ve made a big jump. (Laughter) And it — the ability to borrow enormous amounts of money combined with a chance to get either very rich or very poor very quickly, has historically been a recipe for trouble at some point. Derivatives are not going to go away. They serve useful purposes and all that, but I’m just saying that it has that potential. We’ve seen a little bit of that. I can’t think of anything that we’ve done that would — can you think of anything we do that approaches derivatives, Charlie? Directly?

CHARLIE MUNGER: No. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: I may have to cut him off if he talks too long. (Laughter) Is there anything you would like to add to your already extensive remarks? (Laughter)

CHARLIE MUNGER: No. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: OK.

WARREN BUFFETT: In that case we’ll go to zone 2. (Laughter)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Hugh Stevenson (PH). I’m a shareholder from Atlanta. My question involves the company’s investment in the stock of Cap Cities. It’s been my understanding in the past that that was regarded as one of the four, quote unquote, “permanent” holdings of the company. So I was a little bit confused by the disposition of one million shares. Could you clarify that? Was my previous misunderstanding — was my previous understanding incorrect? Or has there been some change or is there a third possibility?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, we have classified the Washington Post Company and Cap Cities and GEICO and Coke in the category of permanent holdings. And — But in the case of three of those four, The Washington Post Company, I don’t know, maybe seven or eight years ago, GEICO some years back, and now Cap Cities, we have participated in tenders where the company has repurchased shares. Now the first two, the Post and GEICO, we participated proportionally. That was not feasible, and incidentally, not as attractive taxwise anymore. The 1968 Tax Act changed the desirability of proportional redemptions of shares, from our standpoint. That point has been missed by a lot of journalists in commenting on it, but it just so happens that the commentary that has been written has been obsolete, in some cases, by six or seven years. But, we did participate in the Cap Cities tender offer, just as we did in the Post and GEICO. We still are, by far, the largest shareholder of Cap Cities.

We think it’s a superbly run operation in a business that looks a little tougher than it did 15 years ago, but looks a little bit better than it did 15 months ago. Charlie, you have anything?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Uh, no. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: He’s thinking it over now though before — (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 3.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning. My name is Howard Bask (PH) and I’m from Kansas City. And I’ve got a theoretical value question for you. If you were to buy a business and you bought it at its intrinsic value, what’s the minimum aftertax free cash flow yield you’d need to get?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, your question is if we were buying all of a business and we’re buying at what we thought was intrinsic value, what was the minimum —

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Correct.

WARREN BUFFETT: — present earning power or what the present — the minimum discount rate of future streams?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: No, what’s the minimum current after-tax free cash flow yield you’d…

WARREN BUFFETT: We could conceivably buy a business — I don’t think we would be likely to — but we could we could conceivably buy a business that had no current after-tax cash flow. But, we would have to think it had a tremendous future. But we would not find — obviously the current figures, particularly in the kind of businesses we buy, tend to be representative, we think, of what’s going to happen in the future. But that would not necessarily have to be the case. You can argue, for example, in buying stocks, we bought GEICO at a time when it was losing significant money. We didn’t expect it to continue to lose significant money. But if we think the present value of the future earning power is attractive enough compared to the purchase price, we would not be overwhelmed by what the first year’s figure would be. Charlie, you want to add to that?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. We don’t care what we report in the first year or two of — after buying anything.

AUDIENCE MEMBER OFF MIC: (INAUDIBLE) on average over the years (INAUDIBLE).

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I would say that in a world of 7 percent long-term bond rates that we would certainly want to think we were discounting future after-tax streams of cash at at least a 10 percent rate. But that will depend on the certainty we feel about the business. The more certain we feel about a business, the closer we are willing to play it. We have to feel pretty certain about any business before we’re even interested at all. But there are still degrees of certainty, and — If we thought we were getting a stream of cash over the next 30 years that we felt extremely certain about, we would use a discount rate that would be somewhat less than if it was one where we thought we might get some surprises in five or 10 years — possibility existed. Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Nothing to add.

WARREN BUFFETT: OK. Zone 4.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Morris Spence (PH) from Omaha, Nebraska. You’ve made comments on several occasions about the intrinsic business value of the insurance operations. And in this year’s report you state that the insurance business possesses an intrinsic value that exceeds book value by a large amount, larger, in fact, than is the case at any Berkshire — other Berkshire business. I was wondering if you would explain in greater detail why you believe that to be true.

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I — it’s very hard to quantify, as we’ve said many times in the report. But, I think that it’s clear that even taking fairly pessimistic assumptions, that the excess of intrinsic value over carrying value is higher, by some margin, for the insurance business. And I think that the table in the report that shows you what our cost to float has been over the years, and also what the trend of float has been over the years, would, unless you thought that table had no validity for the future, I think that that table would tend to the point you in the direction of saying the insurance business does have a very significant excess of intrinsic value over carrying value. Very hard number to put something on. But — and you don’t want to extrapolate that table out. But I think that table shows that we started with maybe 20 million of float and that we’re up to something close to three billion of float. And that that float has come to us at a cost that’s extremely attractive, on average, over the years.

And just to pick an example, last year, when we actually had an underwriting profit, the value of that float was something over $200 million. And that figure was a lot bigger than it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago. So that’s — that is a stream — last year was unusually favorable, but that is a — that’s a very significant stream of earnings, and it’s one we feel we have reasonably good prospects in. So we feel very good about the insurance business.

WARREN BUFFETT: OK. Zone 5?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Cy Rademacher (PH) from Omaha. Is there any point at which your stock would rise to the point where you might split the stock?

WARREN BUFFETT: Surprise, surprise. (Laughter) I think I’ll let Charlie answer that this year. (Laughs) He’s so popular with the shareholders that I can afford to let him take the tough questions. (Laughter)

CHARLIE MUNGER: I think the answer is no. (Laughter and applause) I think the idea of carving ownerships in an enterprise into little, tiny $20 pieces is almost insane. And it’s quite inefficient to service a $20 account and I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a minimum as a condition of joining some enterprise. Certainly we’d all feel that way if we were organizing a private enterprise.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, we would not carve it up in $20 units. We find it very — it’s interesting because every company finds a way to fill up its common shareholder list. And you can start with the As and work through to the Zs and you’ll — every company in the New York Stock Exchange, one way or another, has attracted some constituency of shareholders. And frankly, we can’t imagine a better constituency than is in this room. I mean, we have — we don’t think we can improve on this group, and we followed certain policies that we think attracted certain types of shareholders and actually pushed away others. And that is part of our eugenics program here at Berkshire. (Laughter)

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, just look around this room and as you mingle with one another. This is a very outstanding group of people. And why would anybody want a different kind of a group?

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, if we cause — if we follow some policies that cause a whole bunch of people to buy Berkshire for the wrong reason, the only way they can buy it is to replace somebody in this room, or in this larger metaphorical room, of shareholders that we have. So someone in one of these seats gets up and somebody else walks in. The question is do we have a better audience? I don’t think so. So I think that — I think Charlie said it very well.

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 6.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mr. Buffett, my name is Rob Na (PH) and I’m from Omaha, Nebraska. My question is, given the recent announcement of Midwest Express and their nonstop jet service between East and West Coasts, will this cut down on your use of “The Indefensible?” (Laughter) And will you use more commercial air travel?

WARREN BUFFETT: This is a question planted by Charlie. (Laughter) I think you should know, I take it to the drugstore at the moment, and I — (Laughter) No, it’s just a question when I start sleeping in it at the hangar. Nothing will cut back on “The Indefensible.” It’s being painted right now, but I told them to make it last a long time. Charlie, though, was pointing out the merits of other kinds of transportation last night at the meeting of our managers. He might want to repeat those here.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I just pointed out that the back of the plane arrived at the same time as the front of the plane, invariably. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: He’s even more of an authority on buses, incidentally, if anybody has his — (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 7.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mr. Buffett, my name’s Allan Maxwell from Omaha. I’ve got two questions. What is your next goal in life now that you’re the richest man in the country?

WARREN BUFFETT: That’s easy. It’s to be the oldest man in the country. (Laughter and applause)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Secondly, you talk about good management with corporations and that you try and buy companies with good management. I feel that I have about as much chance of meeting good managers, other than yourself, as I do bringing Richard Nixon back to life. How do I, as an average investor, find out what good management is?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I think you judge management by two yardsticks. One is how well they run the business and I think you can learn a lot about that by reading about both what they’ve accomplished and what their competitors have accomplished, and seeing how they have allocated capital over time. You have to have some understanding of the hand they were dealt when they themselves got a chance to play the hand. But, if you understand something about the business they’re in — and you can’t understand it in every business, but you can find industries or companies where you can understand it — then you simply want to look at how well they have been doing in playing the hand, essentially, that’s been dealt with them. And then the second thing you want to figure out is how well that they treat their owners. And I think you can get a handle on that, oftentimes. A lot of times you can’t. I mean it — they’re many companies that obviously fall in — somewhere — in that 20th to 80th percentile and it’s a little hard to pick out where they do fall.

But, I think you can usually figure out — I mean, it’s not hard to figure out that, say, Bill Gates, or Tom Murphy, or Don Keough, or people like that, are really outstanding managers. And it’s not hard to figure out who they’re working for. And I can give you some cases on the other end of the spectrum, too. It’s interesting how often the ones that, in my view, are the poor managers also turn out to be the ones that really don’t think that much about the shareholders, too. The two often go hand in hand. But, I think reading of reports — reading of competitors’ reports — I think you’ll get a fix on that in some cases. You don’t have to — you know, you don’t have to make a hundred correct judgments in this business or 50 correct judgments. You only have to make a few. And that’s all we try to do. And, generally speaking, the conclusions I’ve come to about managers have really come about the same way you can make yours.

I mean they come about by reading reports rather than any intimate personal knowledge or — and knowing them personally at all. So it — you know, read the proxy statements, see what they think of — see how they treat themselves versus how they treat the shareholders, look at what they have accomplished, considering what the hand was that they were dealt when they took over compared to what is going on in the industry. And I think you can figure it out sometimes. You don’t have to figure out very often. Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Nothing to add.

WARREN BUFFETT: Ok, we’re back to zone 1.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi there. My name is Lee. I’m from Palo Alto, California. In meeting Ajit Jain, I’ve been very impressed over the years. And I think I even met his parents once they came from India. Please comment on your deepest impressions of his personality and managerial skills, and also how you go about exactly keeping somebody who has such fine skills within the fold. He might go to Walt Disney someday and, you know, pull down 200 million.

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, if he gets offered 200 million — (laughs) — we may not compete too vigorously at that level. (Laughter) We basically try to run a business so that — Charlie and I have two jobs. We have to identify and keep good managers interested after we’ve figured out who they are. And that often is a little different here, because I would say a majority of our managers are financially independent, so that they don’t go to work because they are worried about putting kids through school or putting food on the table. So they have to have some reason to go to work aside from that. They have to be treated fairly in terms of compensation, but they also have to figure it is better than playing golf every day or whatever it may be. And, so that’s one of the jobs we have and we basically attack that the same way — we look at what they do the same way we look at what we do. We’ve got a wonderful group of shareholders. Before I ran this, I had a partnership. I had a great group of partners. And essentially, I like to be left alone to do what I did.

I like to be judged on the scorecard at the end of the year rather than on every stroke, and not second guessed in a way that was inappropriate. I like to have people who understood the environment in which I was operating. And so the important thing we do with managers, generally, is to find the .400 hitters and then not tell them how to swing, as I put in the report. The second thing we do is allocate capital. And aside from that, we play bridge. (Laughter) Pretty much what happens at Berkshire. So, with any of the managers you might name here, we try to make it interesting and fun for them to run their business. We try to have a compensation arrangement that’s appropriate for the kind of business they’re in. We have no company-wide compensation plan. We wouldn’t dream of having some compensation expert or consultant come in and screw it up. (Laughter) We try to — some businesses require a lot of capital that we’re in, some require no capital. Some are easy businesses where good profit margins are a cinch to come by, but we’re really paying for the extra beyond that.

Some are very tough businesses to make money in. And it would be crazy to have some huge framework that we try to place everybody in that — where one size would fit all. People, generally, are compensated relating in some manner that relates to how their business does as opposed to — there’s no reason to pay anybody based on how Berkshire does, because no one has responsibility for Berkshire except for Charlie and me. And we try to make them responsible for their own units, compensated based on how those units do. We try to understand the businesses they’re in, so we know what the difference between a good performance and a bad performance — And that’s about — that’s how we work with people. We’ve had terrific luck over the years in retaining the managers that we wanted to retain. I think, largely, it’s because — particularly if they sell us a business — to a great extent, the next day they’re running it just as they were the day before. And they’re having as much fun running their business as I am running Berkshire. Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I’ve got nothing to add, but I think that concept of treating the other fellow the way you’d like to be treated if the roles were reversed — it’s so simple, when you stop to think about it, but — It’s a rare evening when Ajit and Warren aren’t talking once on the phone. It’s more than a business relationship, at least it seems that way to me.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, well, it is. It will stay that way, too.

CHARLIE MUNGER: And by the way, we like our businesses — our relationships — to be more than a business relationship

WARREN BUFFETT: Charlie and I are very — we basically — it’s a luxury but it’s a luxury that we should try to nurture — we get to work with people we like. And it makes life a lot simpler. It probably helps in that goal of being the oldest living American, too. (Laughter)

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, and we tend to like people we admire. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, who do we like that we don’t admire, Charlie? (Laughter) Start naming names. These people have names. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 2.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Peter Bevelin from Sweden. How do you perceive Guinness long-term, economics growth-wise?

WARREN BUFFETT: Fitz — would you repeat that please, Fitz. What was it? What firm growthwise?

VOICE: Guinness.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Guinness.

WARREN BUFFETT: Oh, Guinness. I’m not as much of an expert on Guinness’ products as Charlie is.

CHARLIE MUNGER: We approved that. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: You didn’t hear him. He said, “I approved that.” I made the decision to buy Guinness and Guinness has — it’s down somewhat from — actually, the price in pounds is about the same but the pound is at about $1.46 or -7 against an average of $1.80-something, so we’ve had a significant exchange loss on that. The — Guinness’ — despite the name — you know, the main product, of course, is scotch. And that’s where most of the money is made, although they make good money in brewing. But, distilling is the main business. And, you know, the usage of scotch, particularly in this country, the trends have not been strong at all, but that was true when we bought it, too. There are some countries around the world where it’s grown and there are certain countries where it’s a huge prestige item. I mean, in certain parts of the Far East, the more you pay for scotch, the better you think people think of you.

Which I don’t understand completely, but I hope it continues. (Laughter) But — the scotch — worldwide scotch consumption has not been anything to write home about. Guinness makes a lot of money in the business. But, I would not — I don’t see anything in the — in published history that would lead you to believe that the growth prospects, in terms of physical volume, are high for scotch. The — Guinness itself, the beer, actually has shown pretty good growth rates in some countries. Actually, from a very tiny base in the U.S. as well. But, they will have to do well in distilling or — I mean that will govern the outcome of Guinness. I think Guinness is well run and it’s a very important company in that business. But, I wouldn’t count on a lot of physical growth. Charlie, what — any consumer insights?

CHARLIE MUNGER: No. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 3.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mr. Buffett, my name is Arthur Coleus (PH) from Canton, Massachusetts. And I’d like to know how you’d respond to the question that my associates ask me when they say that Berkshire Hathaway has been a good investment up to now, but what happens to your investment if, God forbid, something happens to Mr. Warren Buffett?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I’m glad you didn’t say Charlie Munger. (Laughter) No, there — Berkshire will do just fine. We’ve got a wonderful group of businesses. I’ve told you the two things I do in life. And, in terms of the managers we have, you have to come in and really want to mess it up, I would think. And we don’t have anybody like that, in terms of succession plans at Berkshire. And then there’s the question of allocation of capital. And, you could do worse than just adding it to some of the positions that we already had. The ownership is — if I die tonight, the ownership structure does not change. So, you’ve the same large block of stock that has every interest in having good successor management as I would. I mean, there’s no — there would be no greater interest. And it is not a complicated business. I mean, you ought to worry more about, if you own Microsoft, about Bill Gates, I think, or something of the sort.

But, this place is, you know, we’ve got a group down here that are running these. You didn’t see me out at Borsheims selling any jewelry the other day. I mean, that’s somebody else’s job. So, I — it is not — it’s not very complicated. Incidentally, I think I’m in pretty good health. I mean this stuff (Coca-Cola) will do wonders for you if you’ll just try it. (Laughter) Charlie, do you want to add anything as the —?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. I think the prospects of Berkshire would be diminished — obviously diminished — if Warren were to drop off tomorrow morning. But it would still be one hell of a company and I think it would still do quite well. I used to do legal work, when I was young, for Charlie Skouras. I heard him once say, my business, which was movie theaters like this one, was off 25 percent last year, and last year was off 25 percent from the year before, and that was off 25 percent from the year before, and then he pounded the table and he’d say, “But it’s still one hell of a business.”

WARREN BUFFETT: It’s not a formula we want to test, incidentally.

CHARLIE MUNGER: No, no. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: It is one hell of a business that we’ve got here. I mean — and if you saw what happened at Berkshire headquarters, you would not worry as much. There’s very little going on there that contributes to things. (Laughter) We’re, right now, at our peak of activity. This is it.

We don’t care what accounting — we sort of rewrite the accounting for any business that we’re looking at, because in our heads we want to have, in effect, a standardized way of looking at businesses. And if one company goes through pooling transactions and another goes through purchase transactions, we’re going to recast them in our own minds so that there is comparability. Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, the published accounting results are in accordance with standard convention and they’re a place to start economic analysis. The figures are frequently quite silly on a functional basis. I’m not criticizing accounting conventions except for some. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah.

CHARLIE MUNGER: But, I think it’s just a place to start thinking about economic reality. By their nature, they can’t tie perfectly — they can’t even tie very well — to economic reality.

WARREN BUFFETT: We regard it is a negative when we find a management that’s preoccupied with accounting considerations. But, we find it so frequent that we can’t afford to use it as a total exclusionary factor. It really surprises me how many managements focus on accounting, and the time they spend on it, the — it’s really unproductive. If you find a management that doesn’t care about the accounting but does explain to you in clear terms what’s going on, I think you should regard that as a plus in owning a security.

30. Buffett praises new Salomon Brothers management

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 1.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mr. Buffett, my name is Bill Ackman. I’m from New York City. And my question relates to the appeal of Salomon Brothers as an investment. You talked earlier about leverage and the dangers of leverage. Salomon is a business which is levered 30-to-1, which has very narrow margins, and earns a relatively modest return on equity, in light of the amount of leverage that they use. What is the appeal of the business to you?

WARREN BUFFETT: We have here today the chief executive of Salomon, Inc., the parent company, and also the chief executive of Salomon Brothers, the investment banking arm. And, I would say one of the things we — Charlie and I — feel extraordinarily good about are the two fellows that are running that operation. They did an exceptional job under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, as did John Macfarlane, who’s also here today. The three of them — I mentioned four people in the annual report — and Salomon wouldn’t be here today without those three. And it wouldn’t be the company in the future that it’s going to be without them. They did an absolutely fabulous job. It’s the sort of business that, as you point out, uses a lot of leverage. It doesn’t — in one way it doesn’t use as much as it looks like and in another way it uses even more than it looks like. But — it — the test will be: A, whether they control that business in a way that that leverage does not prove dangerous, and secondly, what kind of returns on equity they earn while using it.

You certainly should expect to earn somewhat higher returns on equity when you are necessarily exposed to a small amount of systemic risk and significant amounts of borrowed money, than you would in a business that’s an extremely plain vanilla business. But, I don’t know whether you’ve met Bob and Deryck, but, I think you’d feel better about having a leverage in their hands than about any other hand you can imagine. Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Why don’t we have those three gentlemen stand up?

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, you ought to give them a hand.

CHARLIE MUNGER: They really have done a job for Berkshire in this last year.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, I’ll lead the applause for them. Where are they? There they are. (Applause). I mentioned this before, but it’s worth mentioning again. Deryck took on the job of being the operating head of Salomon Brothers on what, August 18th, 1991. He didn’t know what — he couldn’t know what he was getting into, exactly. He — two months later or three months later, we’d never had a conversation about compensation. He did not ask me for Berkshire, or my, guarantee for indemnification because he was walking in not knowing legal problems. We didn’t know what we would finally uncover. And he worked incredible hours to keep that place together, which was not easy. Bob Denham, I called — I guess on the 23rd or so, 20th. I called him on a Friday. I got home on a Saturday, the 24th of August. He was living a nice pleasant peaceful life in California. And had a first class law firm, a good group of clients, wife had a good job there.

And I told him I was in a mess and there wasn’t any second choice and three days later he was back in New York and living in a small apartment in Battery City and handling the general counsel’s job at Salomon. They found John Macfarlane on that Sunday, on the 18th. I think he was running a triathlon or something. Not a practice that Charlie and I follow, but, ah — (Laughter) And he was yanked from that and came down, and I think John was over in New Jersey, but he holed up in the Downtown Athletic Club. And it was his job to keep funding what was then $150 billion balance sheet during a period when people right and left were canceling. It’s not because we weren’t a good credit, but because they just didn’t want to have anything to do with us for a while. And the World Bank and the State of Texas pension fund and CalPERS, all these people were shutting off funding at a time — and funding in a business is — gentleman just indicated — is the lifeblood of an enterprise like Salomon.

And so those three deserve an enormous hand by — really by the Salomon shareholders — but by this group in turn because we have an important investment. So I thank them publicly. (Applause)

31. Wesco sold small savings and loan as regulations tightened after crisis

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 2.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’m Kelly Ranson from San Antonio, Texas. And I wondered if you could comment on the Mutual Savings and Loan. There was just a footnote that the deposits have been assumed by a federal savings bank. And also, what about the annual report for Wesco Financial that I know it used to be in the annual report for Berkshire. Just wondered if you could comment on that, please.

WARREN BUFFETT: The question is about — we — our 80 percent-owned subsidiary Wesco Financial sold its ownership in Mutual Savings and Loan of Pasadena last year. I’ll let Charlie comment on that. And then the second question is about the Wesco report, which is available to any Berkshire shareholder simply by writing Wesco. But, we found that the stapling problems and other things made it a little difficult to keep adding that every year to the report. So, now we just — we make it available to anyone who would, at Berkshire, who would like to have it. But Charlie, want to comment on the sale of Mutual?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yes. The savings and loan business became very much more heavily regulated after the huge nationwide collection of scandal and insolvency and so on. And meanwhile, we had a very small savings and loan association. And the combination of the new regulation, and the fact that it was a very small part of our operation, made us decide that we were better off without it. That does happen from time to time in Berkshire. We do exit once in a while. And, by the way, we would reserve the right to change our mind. I always liked Lord Keynes when he said that he got new facts or new insights, why he changed his mind and then he’d say, what do you do? So we changed our mind.

WARREN BUFFETT: They start — they asked our directors at Mutual to start going to school on Saturday, didn’t they, Charlie? Or something? I think that helped change our mind about Mutual.

CHARLIE MUNGER: There’s a time to vote with your feet. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: And even your wallet.

32. Shoe industry is tough, but Dexter has great managers

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 3.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible) Chicago. Can you speak to some of the economic characteristics of the shoe industry that allow the business to be profitable and, in your view, attractive?

WARREN BUFFETT: I didn’t hear that. Did you hear that, Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: He wanted you to comment on the merits of the shoe industry.

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I think our feelings for the shoe industry are very clear from what’s been happening the last few years. We think it’s a great business to be in as long as you’re in with Frank Rooney and Jim Issler and Peter Lunder and Harold Alfond. Otherwise, it hasn’t been too good. The — we have a couple of extraordinary shoe operations, but they’re not extraordinary because we get our leather from different steers or anything of the sort. It’s — we have two companies, really three now that Lowell’s been brought in, too, but that have truly extraordinary records. I think those same managements would have been enormous successes in any business they’d gone into. But, they have gone into the — they are in the shoe business and the companies earn unusual returns on equity. They earn unusual returns on sale. They’ve got terrific trade reputations. And I think that to the extent we can find ways to expand in the shoe business while employing those managements, we’ll be very excited about doing so.

It isn’t because we think that the shoe industry is any cinch, you know, per se, or anything of the sort. But we’ve got a lot of talent employed in the shoe business and whenever we’ve got talent we like to try and figure out a way to give them as big a domain as we can. And it’s not inconceivable that we would expand the shoe business, perhaps even significantly over time.

33. Buffett on investing in tobacco companies

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 4.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, thanks Mr. Buffett. My name is Stewart Hartman from Sioux City. After the brevity of the last question from section 4, I’ll try to be extremely brief. The — given the scrutiny that the tobacco business is going under right now, number one, what do you see as the business prospects for those huge cash cows? And, at any point, would that be attractive to you given their liability?

WARREN BUFFETT: The question is about the future of the tobacco business? I don’t — I probably know no more about that then you do because it’s fraught with questions that relate to societal attitudes and you can form an opinion on that just as well as I could. But, I would not like to have a significant percentage of my net worth in the tobacco business myself, but — They may have better futures than I envision. I don’t really think that I have special insights on that. Charlie, you —?

CHARLIE MUNGER: No.

WARREN BUFFETT: You have to come to a conclusion as to how society is going to want to treat — and the present administration for that matter. And the economics of the business may be fine, but that doesn’t mean it has a great future.

34. “Hard to argue with the market”

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 5.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’m Harriet Morton from Seattle, Washington. I’m wondering, when you are considering an acquisition, how you look at the usefulness of the product?

WARREN BUFFETT: In looking at any business?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. Well, obviously we look at what the market says is the utility. And the market has voted very heavily for Dexter Shoe, just to be an example. I don’t know many how many pairs of shoes they were turning out back in 1958 or thereabouts, but year after year, people have essentially voted for the utility of that product. There are 750 million or so 8-ounce servings of one product or another from the Coca-Cola Company consumed every day around the world. And there are those of us who think the utility is very high. I can’t make it through the day without a few. But there are other people that might rate it differently. But essentially, people are going to get thirsty and if this is the way they take care of their thirst better than — and they prefer that to other forms — then I would rate the utility high of the product. But, I think it’s hard to argue with the market on that. I mean, people — some people may think that, you know, listening to a rock concert is not something of high utility. Other people might think it’s terrific.

And so, we would judge that — I don’t think we would come to an independent decision that there was some great utility residing in some product that had been available to the public for a long time, but that the public and not endorsed in any way. Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I think that’s right. But, that’s averaged out. We’re in a bunch of high-utility products. I mean, nurses’ shoes, work shoes, casual shoes. We don’t have a lot of, what, Italian pumps? (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: Don’t rule it out, Charlie. We may be here next year defending it. (Laughter)

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, right, well. No, I’m just saying, if you judge the existing portfolio as indicating what the future’s likely to be like, why —

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, certainly a lot of essentials were sold out of Borsheims yesterday.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yes. (Laughter and applause)

WARREN BUFFETT: I hear my family clapping.

35. No question from zone 6

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 6.

VOICE: We have no question up here.

36. Insurers have “head in the sand” on catastrophes

WARREN BUFFETT: OK, zone 7.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning, Mr. Berkshire, uh, Buffett. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: I have a niece here who has a son named Berkshire so it —

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’m Chris Blunt (PH) from Omaha. My first question is, in years past, we’ve had samples of various products. When are we going to have some Guinness?

WARREN BUFFETT: Some what now?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Guinness samples?

WARREN BUFFETT: (Laughs)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And my second question is, in light of the multiple disasters that have taken place in LA, has that had any impact on the cats for Berkshire?

WARREN BUFFETT: On our super-cat business?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes.

WARREN BUFFETT: The LA earthquake, which is originally — I believe the first estimate of insured damage was a billion-five, which struck us as kind of ludicrous, but has now escalated. The last official estimate, the one we use that’s a trigger in our policies, I think is either 4.5 billion or 4.8 billion. But it’s going to be higher than that. Our losses are fairly minor. If it gets to eight billion of insured damage, that would trigger another policy or two. But, I would say that the LA quake — which did considerably more damage, I think, than people would have anticipated from a 6.7 for various reasons having to do with how quakes operate — that quake is not going to turn out to be of any real — it’s not the kind of super-cat that a 15 or $20 billion hurricane which hit Florida or Long Island or New England would be. That’s the kind of — we could lose — or we could pay out — 6 or $700 million in sort of a worst case super-cat. Now our total premiums this year might be, say, 250 million or something in that area.

So one super-cat in the wrong place would produce — and there could be more than one — could produce, we’ll say, a $400 million or thereabouts underwriting loss from that business. The LA quake is peanuts on that scale, but it wouldn’t have taken a whole lot more in terms of numbers on the Richter scale, if it happened to have an epicenter where it did, and be of the type that it was, relatively shallow, that we could have had that sort of thing happen. I think that the insurance industry has vastly underestimated — maybe not now, but up till a few years ago — the full potential of what a super-cat could do. But Hurricane Andrew and the LA quake may have been something of a wake-up call. They were far from a worst-case situation. A really big Type Five hurricane on Long Island would end up leaving a lot of very major insurance companies in significant trouble. We define our losses — essentially, 700 million sounds like a lot of money. It is a lot of money. But, there are limits on our policies. That is not true of people that are just writing the basic homeowners or business. Those losses could go off the chart.

There were certain companies in the LA quake that thought they had a — what they call a “probable maximum loss” for California quakes. And the LA quake, which was far from the worst case you can imagine, turned out to far exceed those probable maximum losses. So, I think the industry has had, and may still have, its head in the sand a little bit, in terms of what can happen, either in terms of a quake in California or, more probably, in terms of a hurricane along the East Coast. So far this year we’re in reasonable shape, but that doesn’t mean much because, by far, the larger exposure is in hurricanes and essentially 50 percent of the hurricanes hit in September. And about — I think it’s about 15 percent would be in August. Close to 15 percent in October. So you have 80 percent, roughly, in those three months and there’s a little tail on both sides. But that’s when you find out whether you’ve had a good or bad year in the super-cat business, basically.

It’s a business we like at the right rates because there are very few people who can afford to write it at the level that the underlying company, the reinsured companies, need it. And we’re in a position, if the rates are right, to do significant business. Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Nothing to add.

37. Book recommendations

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 1,

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Clayton Riley (PH) from Jacksonville, Florida. This is a little different than all the other questions, but what were the three best books you read last year outside of the investment field? Why don’t — even one will do.

WARREN BUFFETT: I’ll give you — I’ll tout a book first that I’ve read but that isn’t available yet. But it will be in September. The woman who wrote it, I believe, is in the audience and it’s Ben Graham’s biography, which will be available in September, by Janet Lowe. And I’ve read it and I think those of you who are interested in investments, for sure, will enjoy it. She’s done a good job of capturing Ben. One of the books I enjoyed a lot was written also by a shareholder who is not here because he’s being sworn in, I believe today or tomorrow, maybe tomorrow, as head of the Voice of America. And that’s Geoff Cowan’s book, which is on “The People v. Clarence Darrow.” It’s the story of the Clarence Darrow trial for, essentially, jury bribery in Los Angeles back around 1912, when the McNamara brothers had bombed the LA Times. It’s a fascinating book.

Geoff uncovered a lot of information that the previous biographies of Darrow didn’t have. I think you’d enjoy that. Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I very much enjoyed Connie Bruck’s biography Master of the Game, which was a biography of Steve Ross, who headed Warner and later was, what, co-chairman of Time Warner.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, he’s a little more than co-chairman. (Laughs)

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, and — she’s a very insightful writer and it’s a very interesting story. I am rereading a book I really like, which is Van Doren’s biography of Benjamin Franklin, which came out in 1952, and I’d almost forgotten how good a book it was. And that’s available in paperback everywhere. We’ve never had anybody quite like Franklin in this country. Never again.

WARREN BUFFETT: He believed in compound interest, too, incidentally, as you may remember. (Laughter) What did he — he set up those two little funds, one in Philadelphia, one in Boston?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Right.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, to demonstrate the advantages of compound interest. I think that’s the part Charlie’s rereading. (Laughter)

38. Nike and Reebok

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 2.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you for teaching me — teaching so much to all of us about business. My name is Mike Assail (PH) from New York City. You mentioned earlier that Berkshire’s shoe business was great, but that other shoe businesses were not so good. What are the uncertainties of the global brand leaders that Berkshire seems to like? They like Coke and Gillette. The global brand leaders in the shoe business being Nike and Reebok. What are their uncertainties, in terms of long-term competitive advantage, business economics, consumer behavior, and the other risk factors that you mentioned in the annual report this year? Thank you.

WARREN BUFFETT: So, you’re really asking about the future prospects of Nike and Reebok? Yeah. I don’t know that much about those businesses. We do have one person in this audience, at least, who owns a lot of Reebok. But I am not expressing a negative view in any way on that. I just — I don’t understand that — I don’t understand their competitive position and the likelihood of permanence of their competitive position over a 10 or 20 year period as well as I think I understand the position of Brown and Dexter. That doesn’t mean I think that it’s inferior. Doesn’t mean I think that we’ve got better businesses or anything. I think we’ve got very good businesses. But I — I’m not — I haven’t done the work and I’m not sure if I did the work I would understand them. I think they are harder to understand, frankly, and to develop a fix on, than our kinds. But, they may be easier for other people who just have a better insight into that kind of business.

39. “You don’t have to do exceptional things to get exceptional results”

WARREN BUFFETT: Some businesses are a lot easier to understand than others. And Charlie and I don’t like difficult problems. I mean, we — if something is hard to figure, you know, we’d rather multiply by three than by pi. I mean it’s just easier for us. (Laughter) Charlie, you have any —?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, that is such an obvious point. And yet so many people think if they just hire somebody with the appropriate labels they can do something very difficult. That is one of the most dangerous ideas a human being can have. All kinds of things just intrinsically create problems. The other day I was dealing with a problem and I said, this thing — it’s a new building — and I said this thing has three things I’ve learned to fear: an architect, a contractor, and a hill. (Laughter) And — if you go at life like that, I think you, at least, make fewer mistakes than people who think they can do anything by just hiring somebody with a label.

WARREN BUFFETT: We don’t comment — excuse me, go ahead.

CHARLIE MUNGER: You don’t have to hire out your thinking if you keep it simple.

WARREN BUFFETT: You don’t have to do — we’ve said this before — but you don’t have to do exceptional things to get exceptional results. And some people think that if you jump over a seven-foot bar that the ribbon they pin on you is going to be worth more money than if you step over a one-foot bar. And it just isn’t true in the investment world, at all. So, you can do very ordinary things. I mean, what is complicated about this? But, you know, we’re $3 billion pretax better off than we were a few years ago because of it. There’s nothing that I know about that product, or its distribution system, its finances, or anything, that, really, hundreds of thousands — or millions — of people aren’t capable of, that they don’t already know. They just don’t do anything about it. And similarly, if you get into some complicated business, you can get a report that’s a thousand pages thick and you got Ph.D.s working on it, but it doesn’t mean anything.

You know, what you’ve got is a report but you don’t — it — you won’t understand that business, what it’s going to look like in 10 or 15 years. The big thing to do is avoid being wrong. (Laughter)

CHARLIE MUNGER: There are some things that are so intrinsically dangerous. Another of my heroes is Mark Twain, who looked at the promoters of his day and he said, “A mine is a hole in the ground owned by a liar.” (Laughter) And that’s the way I’ve come to look at projections. I mean, basically, I can remember, Warren and I were offered $2 million worth of projections once in the course of buying a business and the book was this thick.

WARREN BUFFETT: For nothing.

CHARLIE MUNGER: And, if we were given it for nothing, and we wouldn’t open it.

WARREN BUFFETT: We almost paid 2 million not to look at it. (Laughter) It’s ridiculous. I do not understand why any buyer of a business looks at a bunch of projections put together by a seller or —

CHARLIE MUNGER: Or his agent.

WARREN BUFFETT: — or his agent. I mean, it — you can almost say that it’s naive to think that that has any utility whatsoever. We just are not interested. If we don’t have some idea ourselves of what we think the future is, to sit there and listen to some other guy who’s trying to sell us the business or get a commission on it tell us what the future’s going to be — it — like I say, it’s very naïve.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, and five years out.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. We had a line in the report one time, “Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut.” And — (laughter) — it’s quite applicable to projections of — by sellers — of businesses.

40. Cutting USAir’s costs will be “enormously tough”

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 3.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mr. Buffett, Greg Elright (PH) from Washington, DC. In the last year, United Airlines and Northwest have resolved some of their financial problems by moving ownership over to the employees. With USAir’s current positions — uh, problems — what do you see as occurring with USAir and do you see any movement toward employee ownership? And how will that affect Berkshire’s interest in the company?

WARREN BUFFETT: USAir has a cost structure which is non-viable in today’s airline business. Now that, in an important way, involves its labor cost, but it involves other things, too. But it certainly involves its labor costs. And they’ve stated this publicly. And I think — and they have — they are talking with their unions about it and they’re talking with other people about other parts of their cost structure. And I think you’ll just see what unfolds in the next relatively few months, because there isn’t any question that the cost structure is out of line. I think the cost structure could be brought into line. But whether it will be brought into line or not is another is another question. And, looking backwards, the answer is not to get into businesses that need to solve problems like that. It’s to — but — that was a mistake I made. And I think in Seth Schofield you’ve got a manager who understands that business extremely well, who probably is as — in my view, anyway — is as well regarded and trusted by people who are going to have to make changes as anyone could be in that position.

But that may not be enough. I mean that — there’s enormous tensions when you need to take hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars out of the cost structure of any business. And when you need cooperative action, all by various groups, each one of which feels that maybe they’re having to give a little more than some other group, and understandably feels that way, you know that is an enormously tough negotiating job. I think Seth is as well-equipped for that as anyone. But I would not want to — you know, I cannot predict the outcome.

WARREN BUFFETT: Charlie, do you —?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, if I were a union leader, I would give Seth whatever he wants because he’s not the kind of a fellow who would ask for more than he needs. And, it’s perfectly obvious that’s the correct decision on the labor side. But whether the obvious will be done or not is in the lap of the gods.

WARREN BUFFETT: It’s a lot of people with a lot of different motivations and, I mean, those are really tough questions. I mean, we — Charlie and I’ve been involved in that sort of thing a few times and frequently it works out, but it’s not preordained.

41. We’re “not in any hurry” to retire

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 4.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Sheldon Scizick (PH) from Chicago, Illinois. I have two questions. The first one is concerning Mr. Munger. We know what Mr. Buffett’s retirement plans are. I was wondering what yours — your plans for the future concerning Berkshire are?

CHARLIE MUNGER: I have always preferred the system of retirement where you can’t quite tell from observing from the outside whether the man is working or retired. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: He does it well, too. (Laughter)

CHARLIE MUNGER: You know, a problem in many businesses, particularly the more bureaucratic ones, is that your employees retire, but they don’t tell you. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: I think I can speak for Charlie on this one. Charlie and I are not in any hurry to retire. He’s trying to outlast me, actually. (Laughter)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you.

42. Berkshire sold some Cap Cities shares in tender offer

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My second question is, I was just curious why you sold a portion of Cap Cities?

WARREN BUFFETT: We thought that — we thought it was a good idea for Cap Cities to have a tender offer. They had cash that we thought that they could not use in any — they were not likely to be able to use — in a better way than repurchasing their own shares because they do have some very good businesses. They, and we, felt that a tender offer would not be successful, in terms of attracting a number of shares unless Berkshire were tendering. We felt the price was reasonable to tender at. It turned out that the business was getting stronger during that period and various things were happening in media, so there were only 100,000 shares or so tendered outside of our million. That isn’t necessarily what we thought was going to happen going in, but that is what happened. It’s acceptable to us, but that doesn’t mean that it was the desired outcome. We would not have tendered all of our shares or anything of the sort. We want to remain a substantial shareholder of Cap Cities.

We’ve always — most of the time we favored Cap Cities buying in its stock and it’s bought in a fair amount of stock since the ABC merger took place in 19 — started in 1986.

43. Structured settlements business isn’t big, but is “perfectly satisfactory”

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 5.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning. My name is Matt Voke (PH). I’m from Omaha. In last year’s meeting you made reference to structured settlements. I was wondering, how is that business progressing for you?

WARREN BUFFETT: Question’s about the structured settlement business, which is a business in which Berkshire guarantees, in effect, an annuity to some claimant of another — usually — of another insurance company, who suffered an injury and instead of getting a lump sum now wants to get a stream of payments over many years in the future, sometimes going out 75 years. We have set up a life company to do that business. We formerly did it all through our propertycasualty companies. And, we have done some business, but it’s not been a big business yet, and it may never be a big business. It’s a perfectly satisfactory business, but it’s not an important item at present in the analysis of Berkshire’s value. Are you getting — having a problem with sound out there on this or no? Just — no?

44. No comment on Wrigley

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 6.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is David Samra. I’m from San Francisco, California. In your annual report, I noticed you mention Wrigley as being a company that has worldwide dominance, somewhat like Coca-Cola and Gillette. And, was curious to know if you had looked at the company in any detail. And, if so, whether or not — if you decided not to invest, what were the reasons why?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, we wouldn’t want to comment on a company like that because we might or might not be buying it. We might or might not be selling it. We might or might not buy or sell it in the future. (Laughter) And, since it falls under that narrow definition of things that we don’t talk about — It’s a good illustration of a company that has a high market share worldwide, but you can understand the Wrigley Company just as well as I can. I have no insights in the — into the Wrigley Company that you wouldn’t have and I don’t — I wouldn’t want to go beyond that in giving you our evaluation of the company. I hate to disappoint you on those, but on specific securities, we are not too forthcoming sometimes. Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: I’m good at not being forthcoming. (Laughter)

45. “No specific desire” to buy companies in certain parts of the world

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 7.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mr. Buffett, Kathleen Ambrose (PH) from Omaha. I have a question regarding global diversification. Just in general, what do you look for in a company and, if so, as far as Europe or Latin America, if you’d like to be specific?

WARREN BUFFETT: The question is about global diversification. All we want to be in is businesses that we understand, run by people that we like, and priced attractively compared to the future prospects. So, there is no specific desire to either be in the rest of Europe, or the rest of the world, or Far East, or to avoid it. It’s simply a factor that — it’s not a big factor. There may be more chances for growth in some countries. We — 80 percent of Coca-Cola’s earnings, roughly, will come from outside the United States. Eighty percent of Guinness’s earnings will come from outside the United States, but they’re domiciled outside the United States, whereas Coca-Cola is domiciled here. Certainly, in many cases, there are markets outside the United States that have way better prospects for growth than the U.S. market would have, but they probably have some other risks to them that this market may not have. But, we, you know, we like the international prospects, obviously, of a company like Coke. We like the international prospects of a company like Gillette.

Gillette earned 70 percent of its money outside this country. So, if you look — on a look-through basis — Coke — we might this year get something like $150 million of earnings, indirectly, for Berkshire’s interest from the rest of the world just through Coca-Cola alone. But, we don’t make any specific — we don’t think in terms of, I like this region so I want to be there or something of a sort. It’s something that’s specific to the companies we’re looking at, then we’ll try to evaluate that. Coke is expanding in China. Well, it — you know — I think that — I forget what they showed last year, maybe 38 percent growth, or something like that, in cases. Maybe — It’s nice to have markets like that that are relatively untapped. Actually, Gillette is expanding in China in a big way and the Chinese don’t shave as often. And more of them are what they call “dry shavers” than “wet shavers” there, which is electric shavers.

But you know, maybe we could stick something in the Coke that would — (laughter) Maybe a little synergy at Berkshire, finally. Who knows?

46. Hurricanes are bigger insurance risk than riots

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 1.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning. I’m Marshall Patton (PH) from Bandera, Texas. And back to the insurance losses. What is the comparison between natural disasters, such as the earthquake, and so on, and the LA riots?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, we do define risk as the possibility of harm or injury. And in that respect we think it’s inextricably wound up in your time horizon for holding an asset. I mean, if your risk is that you’re going — if you intend to buy XYZ Corporation at 11:30 this morning and sell it out before the close today, I mean, that is, in our view, that is a very risky transaction. Because we think 50 percent of the time you’re going to suffer some harm or injury. If you have a time horizon on a business, we think the risk of buying something like Coca-Cola at the price we bought it at a few years ago is essentially, is so close to nil, in terms of our perspective holding period. But if you asked me the risk of buying Coca-Cola this morning and you’re going to sell it tomorrow morning, I say that is a very risky transaction. Now, as I pointed out in the annual report, it became very fashionable in the academic world, and then that spilled over into the financial markets, to define risk in terms of volatility, of which beta became a measure.

But that is no measure of risk to us. The risk, in terms of our super-cat business, is not that we lose money in any given year. We know we’re going to lose money in some given day, that is for certain. And we’re extremely likely to lose money in a given year. Our time horizon of writing that business, you know, would be at least a decade. And we think the probability of losing money over a decade is low. So we feel that, in terms of our horizon of investment, that that is not a risky business. And it’s a whole lot less risky than writing something that’s much more predictable. Interesting thing is that using conventional measures of risk, something whose return varies from year to year between plus-20 percent and plus-80 percent is riskier, as defined, than something whose return is 5 percent a year every year. We just think the financial world has gone haywire in terms of measures of risk. We look at what we do — we are perfectly willing to lose money on a given transaction, arbitrage being an example, any given insurance policy being another example. We are perfectly willing to lose money on any given transaction.

We are not willing to enter into transactions in which we think the probability of doing a number of mutually independent events, but of a similar type, has an expectancy of loss. And we hope that we are entering into our transactions where our calculations of those probabilities have validity. And to do so, we try to narrow it down. There are a whole bunch of things we just won’t do because we don’t think we can write the equation on them. But we, basically, Charlie and I by nature are pretty risk-averse. But we are very willing to enter into transactions — We, if we knew it was an honest coin, and someone wanted to give us seven-to-five or something of the sort on one flip, how much of Berkshire’s net worth would we put on that flip? Well we would — it would sound like a big number to you. It would not be a huge percentage of the net worth, but it would be a significant number. We will do things when probabilities favor us. Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, we, I would say we try and think like Fermat and Pascal as if they’d never heard of modern finance theory. I really think that a lot of modern finance theory can only be described as disgusting. (Laughter)

51. Buffett favors a “steeply progressive” consumption tax

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 6.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning, I’m Paul Miller (PH) from Kansas City, Missouri. I’ve got two questions. First, not too long ago, I believe it was Fortune Magazine that ran an article regarding personal tax rates. And at the risk of misquoting you, my recollection is that you favored higher personal rates, rates even higher than those proposed by those in Washington. The second question is, I’ve heard Berkshire Hathaway referred to as nothing more than a highpriced rich man’s mutual fund. Would you care to comment on that also?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, on tax rates, if you ask me what I personally favor, I personally favor a steeply progressive consumption tax. That has a little more attention being paid to it now, although the “steeply progressive” might be modified by most of the advocates of the consumption tax, maybe to “mildly progressive” or something of the sort. There’s a Nunn-Domenici proposal along that line, and there are other people that are talking about it more. It may be examined by the new Kerrey-Danforth Commission, of which we’ve got a member in the audience. But I believe, in one way or another, I believe in progressive taxes. So I am not shocked in terms of my own situation, and I don’t think Charlie is particularly, about having a progressive income tax. Although, like I say, I think society would run better over time if it were a progressive consumption tax instead. Do you want the comment on the tax situation, Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I think there is a point at which income taxes become quite counterproductive if their progression is too high. But I don’t think we’re there yet.

WARREN BUFFETT: We think — at least I think — I’m extraordinarily well treated by this society, and I think most people with high incomes are. I think if you transported most of them to Bangladesh or Peru or something, they would find out how much of it is them and how much is the society. And I think there’s nothing better than a market system, in terms of motivating people and in terms of producing the goods and services that the society wants. But I do think it gets a little out of whack, in terms of what the productivity may be of an outstanding teacher compared to somebody who is good at figuring out the intrinsic value of businesses. I don’t have a better system on the income side, but I think society should figure out some way to make those who are particularly blessed, in a sense, that have talents that get paid off enormously in a market system, to give back a fair amount of that to the society that produces that.

52. Berkshire isn’t a “rich man’s mutual fund”

WARREN BUFFETT: The question about Berkshire being I think it was, was it rich man’s mutual fund or something like that? We don’t look at it that way at all. We look at it as a collection of businesses, and ideally we would own all of those businesses. So it’s, to the extent that a mutual fund owns stock in a lot of companies and diversifies among businesses and we try to own a lot of businesses ourselves, I guess that’s true. But I guess you could say the same thing of General Electric, or an operation like that. We are more prone to buy pieces of businesses than the typical manager, but we are trying to do, in a sense, the same thing Jack Welch is trying to do at General Electric, which is try to own a number of first-class businesses. He gets to put the imprint of his own management, which I think is very good, on those businesses, and we are more hands-off, both in the businesses we own outright and in the ones that we own pieces of. But we’re going at it the same way.

And General Electric has been very successful under Jack’s leadership, and doing it his way. We think, in terms of what we bring to the game, and the problems of putting money to work all the time, that our own system will work best for us. Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, I’ve got nothing to add to that.

53. Don’t need interest rate outlook to value companies

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 1.

CHRISTOPHER DAVIS: Hello, I’m Christopher Davis from New York City. I’m interested in that many of the holdings of Berkshire are in industries that are perceived as interest rate-sensitive industries, including Wells Fargo, Salomon, Freddie Mac, even GEICO. And yet you have an admitted sort of ambivalence towards interest rates or changes in interest rates. And it therefore seems that you don’t feel that those changes affect the fundamental attractiveness of those businesses. I thought maybe you could share your thoughts on what you see in these businesses that the investment community as a whole is ignoring.

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, the value of every business, the value of a farm, the value of an apartment house, the value of any economic asset, is 100 percent sensitive to interest rates, because all you are doing in investing is transferring some money to somebody now in exchange for what you expect the stream of money to be, to come in, over a period of time. And the higher interest rates are, the less that present value is going to be. So every business, by its nature, whether it’s Coca-Cola or Gillette or Wells Fargo, is in its intrinsic valuation, is a hundred percent sensitive to interest rates. Now, the question as to whether a Wells Fargo or a Freddie Mac or whatever it may be, whether their business gets better or worse internally, as opposed to the valuation process, because of higher interest rates, that is not easy to figure. I mean, GEICO, if they write their insurance business at the same underwriting ratio — in other words they have the same loss and expense experience relative to premiums — they benefit by higher interest rates, obviously, over time, because they’re a float business, and the float is worth more to them.

Now, externally, getting back to the valuation part, the present value of those earnings also becomes less then. But the present value of Coke’s earnings becomes less in a higher interest rate environment. Wells Fargo, it’s — whether they earn more or less money under any given interest rate scenario is hard to figure. There may be one short-term effect and there may be another longterm effect. So I do not have to have a view on interest rates — and I don’t have a view on interest rates — to make a decision as to an insurance business, or a mortgage guarantor business, or a banking business, or something of the sort, relative to making a judgment about Coke or Gillette. Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: I’ve got nothing to add.

54. “Retroactive” insurance is small part of our business

WARREN BUFFETT: Zone two?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello, I’m Benjamin Baron (PH) from New York. Could you speak about your insurance business a little bit? And especially the retroactive policies you’ve been writing.

WARREN BUFFETT: Can we speak about the — you say the reinsurance business?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Retroactive —

1994年年度会议

第四部分

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，我想说，在过去两年左右——我只是大概估算——我可能看到过《华尔街日报》、《今日美国》、美联社或《先驱报》等一些重要报纸上的报道，说我们可能在那段时间里总共收购了10家公司。我会说，其中绝大多数都是错误的。我们不纠正那些错误的报道，因为如果我们不纠正错误的，而只对正确的保持沉默，那实际上等于我们辨别出了正确的报道。所以我们永远不会对这些报道发表评论，无论它们多么荒谬。有趣的是，你知道，它们还是不断被刊登出来。坦率地说，从我们的立场看，大部分报道不准确可能对我们有好处。

我们不会做任何事去鼓励这种行为，但是——实际上，人们读到我们在收购A、B、C或X、Y、Z而实际上并没有——你知道，那——我认为人们不应该因为在报纸上看到我们在买什么就去买股票。但如果他们这么做了，他们迟早会吸取教训的。也许当报纸在不知道事实的情况下写这些报道时，它们也会吸取教训。但这是我们不得不接受的事情，而且我们可能还会继续这样下去。而且我会说，根据历史经验，如果你读到关于我们买卖什么的消息，除了我们已经向SEC或监管机构提交的报告之外，那么有超过50%的可能性——我可以告诉你，根据历史这是正确的——它是错误的。

10. 伯克希尔不太可能成为道琼斯或标普500成分股

沃伦·巴菲特：第三区？

参会者：您是否预期伯克希尔会成为标准普尔500指数或道琼斯指数的成分股？

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，我认为它不太可能成为道琼斯指数的成分股。我不知道标普500的具体标准是什么。但我想象中可能有什么原因让我们不符合条件。我不知道他们是否对流通股数量有疑问——我从未向标普咨询过。如果我们是市值最大但不在标普500中的公司，我也不会感到惊讶，虽然我不知道是不是这样。但他们可能有一些标准将伯克希尔排除在外。我一直认为，如果我们是标普500的成分股，并且有足够多的人进行指数化投资，以至于60%的市场资金都被指数化了，而查理和我又不会卖出（我们确实不会），那么指数基金试图复制标普500却要拿到那60%的股票，这将是一个非常有趣的问题。

我不知道他们是否甚至有关于所有权集中度的规定。同样的思路可能也适用于沃尔玛或其他一些公司。极端情况下，假设一家公司90%的股票由一个人持有，而市场上12%的资金被指数化了，那90%的人又不会卖出，这就有点像当年的”北大平洋铁路逼空案”了。无论如何，我认为这不会成为问题。而且我认为我们最终也不会成为这两个指数的成分股，所以——

11. 如果不了解企业，就应该分散投资

沃伦·巴菲特：好的，第一区？

参会者：巴菲特先生，我叫Aaron Morris，来自加利福尼亚。我想知道的是，您如何看待在某一特定证券上愿意持有的仓位规模，无论是您的情况——有新资金流入可以投资，还是投资者的情况——他们有固定数量的资本，正试图决定他们真正喜爱的证券中哪个最具吸引力。

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，查理和我在我们目前的规模下，可能永远找不到能让我们投入足够多资金的东西。你不这么认为吗，查理？如果我们真的喜欢它？

查理·芒格：是的，我认为这很可能。

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，所以我们可能永远不会达到那个极限。我们很希望能达到。我们希望能找到我们感觉如此强烈的东西，而且偶尔我们确实会找到。但我们无法投入我们希望的那么多资金，就好像我们在运作自己的100万美元或其他数额的资金一样，所以——我们愿意把大量资金投入单一证券。当我运作合伙公司时，单一股票的最大仓位达到过40%左右。我想查理，当你运作你的合伙公司时，你的仓位超过40%——

查理·芒格：当然。（笑声）

沃伦·巴菲特：如果我们运作较小的合伙公司，或者我们自己的资本较小且自己运作，我们也会做同样的事情。因为，不，我们不会那样做，除非我们认为非常了解这家企业，而且我们认为企业的性质、我们支付的价格、经营它的人，所有这些都导致几乎没有风险，但——你偶尔会发现这些东西。我们会把——假设它比第二、第三、第四选择有吸引力得多——我们会把净资产的很大一部分投入其中。我们只建议你这样做——嗯，也许我们根本不建议你这样做——但我们会建议你这样做，只有当你是基于自己对价值的结论，基于你真正认为自己足够了解、可以买下整个企业（如果你的资金足够并且有人向你提供整体出售）的东西。你必须真正了解这家企业。但顺便说一句，在私人企业中，人们一直都在这样做，即使那些企业前景糟糕。

我的意思是，他们购买干洗店、加油站或其他什么东西，他们把很高比例的净资产投入到某种特许经营中，投入到本质上风险很高的生意上。人们把所有的钱都投入到农场里，你知道。那是一门生意。它承受着各种商业风险。所以，如果你非常了解这门生意，并且价格足够有吸引力，将净资产的很大比例投入其中并非疯狂之举。但如果你不了解企业，那你最好分散投资，并且相当广泛地分散。请继续——抱歉。

查理·芒格：伯克希尔有一位重要股东，他父亲当初积累的仓位，去世时留下了一大笔遗产，几乎所有资产都集中在两只证券上：伯克希尔和另一家杰出公司。一家银行是共同受托人。银行信托官说必须分散投资。这是一大笔遗产。而这位与银行共同担任受托人的年轻人说，“嗯，你知道，如果我父亲像你那样想，他可能就会成为银行的信托官，而不是留下这笔巨额遗产。“（笑声）（掌声）这位年轻人至今仍持有伯克希尔。我想银行还在给出同样的建议。（笑声）

12. 我们不喜欢”给你们答案”——关于可口可乐

沃伦·巴菲特：第二区？

参会者：巴菲特先生，我是来自奥马哈的Chuck Peterson。我只是想知道您能否评论一下可口可乐公司——您今天没有怎么谈到它——关于您预测未来五年它的每股收益增长情况，以及增长可能来自哪里。

沃伦·巴菲特：这是关于可口可乐增长的问题吗？

查理·芒格：是的。

沃伦·巴菲特：你真的需要自己得出结论。可口可乐公司写的年报非常好。我是说，信息量很大。你知道，你——我的猜测是，至少，如果你读了几份年报，你绝对会和我一样了解可口可乐公司。但最终，你必须自己决定增长潜力、盈利潜力等所有问题。但我可以向你保证的是，可能你花相对很少的时间，你用来决策这个问题所能获得的事实，基本上会和你在可口可乐工作20年，或者你是华尔街的食品饮料分析师，得到的事实一样好。这就是我们喜欢看的那种企业，是我们认为可以这样理解的东西。而且通常，我认为你也可以这样理解。但我们不喜欢给你们我们的答案。

我的意思是，那不是一个好主意。

13. 安联的交易”近乎持平”

沃伦·巴菲特：第三区？

参会者：David Swab，来自德克萨斯州奥斯汀。我有一个关于大约四年前发行的可转换债券的问题。如果让你当老师打分，你认为那是一笔好交易、坏交易，资金的使用与退出债券的成本相比如何？有什么想法？

沃伦·巴菲特：查理，什么？你听到了吗？

查理·芒格：他想知道，回顾过去，你认为与安联的交易对伯克希尔来说是否是一笔好交易。

沃伦·巴菲特：不，我会说，如果我在做安联交易时就知道一切——那是可转换股东息票债券——如果我现在知道一切——那么——我们会做吗？可能差不多。当我们（他）要求赎回时，只有相对较少的债券被转换。所以——那——从这个意义上讲，它真的不是一个负面因素。但如果有更多转换——我们很容易就会有更多被转换。那显然就不太好了，如果我们最终以11800左右的价格卖出了很多股票。很难精确衡量我们当时用大约4亿美元做了什么。因为资金是可互换的，将这笔4亿美元与其他资源分开来衡量拥有这笔钱所带来的正面效应是很难的。但我的猜测是，如果你能重来一次，发行它们可能只是一个小小的减分项。你怎么看，查理？

查理·芒格：它当然近乎持平。

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。

查理·芒格：现在，你可以问关于全美航空的事，那是我们应该回避的。（笑声）

沃伦·巴菲特：我可以说查理与那个决定毫无关系。（笑声）他直到我做了才知道。而当他知道了的时候，嗯……（笑声）

14. “规模是劣势”——在买卖中

沃伦·巴菲特：第一区？

参会者：巴菲特先生，我是来自多伦多的Joe Sirdevan。关于伯克希尔那些非永久性但规模庞大——因此流动性差——的持仓，考虑到市场对伯克希尔的高度关注，您在卖出时管理市场冲击的策略是什么？

沃伦·巴菲特：我没听清那个问题。你听到了吗？

查理·芒格：我也没听清楚。

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，我不知道你是否离麦克风太近了——我们有点听不清。

查理·芒格：说慢一点。

沃伦·巴菲特：或者监控员可以重述一下——你能重复一下问题吗？

参会者：抱歉。只是关于伯克希尔那些规模庞大、非永久性、因此流动性差的持仓，我想知道当您决定出售部分持仓时，鉴于您受到的高度关注，您在管理市场冲击方面有什么策略？

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，关于我们可能卖出东西的问题，以及当我们卖出时市场会发生什么。这取决于具体情况。可能有非常大的影响，也可能可以忽略不计。这取决于市场状况，取决于我们是否可能通过几笔大宗交易卖给一些机构，取决于——可以是，你知道，可能通过要约收购等方式出售。所以很难衡量。但这确实是一个劣势。规模是劣势，你基本观点完全正确，无论是买还是卖。我们不知道有什么办法绕过它。我们会在预期中考虑它，考虑我们需要看到什么样的可能性。而且我们——我们卖出得如此不频繁，以至于它不是一个致命的负面因素，但这是我们有而你却没有的一个负面因素。

15. 伯克希尔没有为巴菲特和芒格投保”关键人物险”

沃伦·巴菲特：第二区？

参会者：我叫Anna，来自弗吉尼亚州罗阿诺克。伯克希尔·哈撒韦或其任何子公司是否为您和芒格先生投保了关键人物险？

查理·芒格：伯克希尔有关键人物险吗——

沃伦·巴菲特：哦，没有。没有。据我所知，我们没有为任何人投保人寿保险，除了可能的标准——人们有的团体人寿保险。我们没有关键人物险。这真的不——它不会很重要。我是说，如果我们有180亿左右的市场价值，如果它只产生1%的差异，那就是1.8亿美元。基本上，聪明地出售保险的数学比聪明地购买保险的数学要好。（笑声和掌声）

16. 帝亚吉欧-LVMH重组是”合乎逻辑的”

沃伦·巴菲特：第三区？

参会者：巴菲特先生，我是来自亚利桑那州梅萨的Barry Siskind。您的长期崇拜者。问题关于帝亚吉欧。我记得在《杰出投资者文摘》（纽约的Henry Emerson主编，我极尊重这份出版物）中读到，早在——我想是58年或59年——您在古巴做了一笔投资，然后决定再也不在美国以外投资。但后来您投资了帝亚吉欧。我也是帝亚吉欧的投资者。我投资帝亚吉欧及其姊妹公司路易威登轩尼诗（LVMH）已经超过五年。顺便说一句，我对这些投资非常满意。如您所知，帝亚吉欧与LVMH的关系进行了重组，帝亚吉欧不再持有LVMH 24%的股份。相反，它只持有其蒸馏业务，或者我应该说，酒精饮料相关的业务——

沃伦·巴菲特：就是酩悦轩尼诗部分。

参会者：对，酩悦轩尼诗部分。LVMH的其他部分最近表现更好，即路易威登箱包以及克里斯汀·迪奥香水。它们去年还扩展进入了报业，这是一个您懂的行业。首先，您是否考虑通过其他形式参与那些在帝亚吉欧-LVMH重组后不再拥有的业务？第二个问题涉及帝亚吉欧投资固有的货币风险，如您所说，买入时英镑兑美元约1.80，现在英镑跌到约1.48。由于英国利率下降而美国利率最近上升，通过外汇对冲货币的成本已降至几乎为零。我认为我们都是投资公司而非投机货币的人。所以第二个问题是，您是否打算对该投资的货币风险部分采取任何行动？

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，LVMH，如你所说，曾被帝亚吉欧持有24%——你知道，那是我们可能买入或卖出的数千种证券之一。所以，我真的不想评论LVMH的具体吸引力或其匮乏。至于帝亚吉欧，我认为帝亚吉欧所做的相当合乎逻辑。我的意思是，它们对那项业务的兴趣，主要是通过将其与酩悦轩尼诗连接起来，为帝亚吉欧自有品牌在全球带来的分销优势，反之亦然。所以，我认为他们所做的合乎逻辑。关于汇率等问题——他们在烈酒业务中得到的东西与他们在箱包业务（包括克里斯汀·迪奥等）中放弃的东西之间的汇率问题——你可以自己形成看法。但我认为逻辑是合理的。但至于我们是否想单独投资LVMH，那就像任何其他证券一样，我们真的无法回答。

17. 伯克希尔不对冲货币

沃伦·巴菲特：第二个问题关于——

查理·芒格：对冲。

沃伦·巴菲特：对冲。是的，货币对冲——

查理·芒格：我们对冲吗？

沃伦·巴菲特：答案是我们不对冲。而且正如我提到的，可口可乐80%的收益来自多种货币，日元和马克是两个非常重要的货币。五年后、十年后，它们仍将有非常高比例的收益来自海外。它们会做一些货币交易，但那是出于实际考虑。如果你拥有可口可乐，你就拥有了一堆以外币计价、附有息票、永续存在的外国债券。现在，你是否应该试图对这些息票进行货币互换——你还不知道这些息票是多少，因为你不知道它们在日本或德国能赚多少钱——但你知道它会持续几十年，而且数额会非常巨大。你是否应该尝试进行一大堆货币互换，将所有这些未来现金流转换成美元或其他货币？我们基本上认为这不值得。我们不认为我们在货币方面的判断力有多好。

我们不认为——我们认为市场可能知道——嗯，我们知道市场知道得和我们一样多——市场可能比我们更了解货币，但——我们不知道——我们在货币方面并不比市场知道得更多。所以对冲是有成本的。即使利率结构使得远期曲线看起来平坦，以至于实际上没有升水，仍然有成本——其中存在成本。现在，这是一个相对有效的市场，所以成本并不巨大。但我们认为没有理由为一个我们认为——完全是五五开的事情——承担这些成本。而且它实际上也持续不了那么久。我的意思是，我们可以做几年。但如果用我们看待企业的方式——即从现在到世界末日的未来现金流的折现值——我们实际上无法对冲那种风险。我们可以不断滚动对冲，但会有成本，我们不想承担。

我们不会——我们不会太担心我们收益的一部分，无论来自帝亚吉欧、可口可乐还是吉列，是以马克、英镑、日元和美元的组合计价，还是全部以美元计价。我们稍微偏好全部是美元，但我们不会因为收益可能来自这样的货币组合而失眠。当然，就一些非常疲软的货币而言，我们不会喜欢那样。

18. 保险业务的内在价值远超账面价值

沃伦·巴菲特：第一区？

参会者：Lawrence Grawning，来自加利福尼亚州米尔谷。在年报第13页，谈到保险业务时，您说它的内在价值超过其账面价值”很大一笔——事实上，比伯克希尔任何其他业务都要大”。为了细化之前有人问过的一个问题，您能告诉我您是说百分比更大还是绝对金额更大——

沃伦·巴菲特：绝对金额。而且——

参会者：您指的是这个？

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，绝对金额——很难给保险业务定一个百分比数字，因为我们在里面放了那么多资本——而且——我们还有其他业务。我认为——我们有些业务账面价值只有几千万，但价值高达数亿。所以你不能把这个比例应用到保险公司（听不清）。所以，是绝对金额。但就绝对金额而言，我们认为内在价值超过账面价值的部分——至少我认为——保险业务远大于我们拥有的任何其他业务。查理，你有什么看法吗——

查理·芒格：没有——

沃伦·巴菲特：——有什么想法？

查理·芒格：——完全正确。

19. 对可口可乐的继任问题没有担忧

参会者：Joe Little，来自加拿大温哥华。可口可乐公司最高管理层的继任问题会让您担忧吗？

沃伦·巴菲特：管理层情况，你打算做什么？

参会者：未来几年的管理层继任问题。

沃伦·巴菲特：哦，是的。

参会者：最高职位。这会让您担忧吗？

沃伦·巴菲特：在可口可乐——

参会者：是的。

沃伦·巴菲特：我认为任何这样的公告都会来自可口可乐公司。

查理·芒格：他是问你喜不喜欢它？

参会者：这会让您担忧吗？

查理·芒格：这会让您担忧吗？

沃伦·巴菲特：哦，我一点也不担忧，不。不，可口可乐管理得很好。（笑）

20. 所罗门CEO的2400万美元奖金目标”极其难以实现”

沃伦·巴菲特：第三区？

参会者：纽约的Chris Stavrou。根据所罗门兄弟最新的委托书，如果董事长兼CEO Deryck Maughan在所罗门兄弟分配股本上的回报率达到30%，并且该回报率至少比竞争对手高10%，他就能获得2400万美元的奖金。我的问题是，这个回报率数字是否扣除了优先股股息？

沃伦·巴菲特：我，查理，你在薪酬委员会记得吗——？

查理·芒格：我记不住那个细节。

沃伦·巴菲特：我认为股本——我——我相当确定，但不肯定，股本数字会包括我们的优先股，但不包括不可转换优先股。并且它将适用于我们的优先股加普通股的收益，但不包括——但会在扣除不可转换优先股股息之后。但是，你知道，我不是薪酬委员会的成员，而且我没有那么仔细地读过那个描述。

查理·芒格：嗯，我是，但我也记不住。（笑声）但我要告诉你，关于那个我确实记得一件事，那就是一个目标——那是一个极其难以实现的目标。

沃伦·巴菲特：那会难以置信。我是说——

查理·芒格：是的，你是在说贝比·鲁斯——

沃伦·巴菲特：的平方。

查理·芒格：是的，一个赛季打出150个本垒打而不是——如果真发生了，你会很乐意付钱的。（笑声）

沃伦·巴菲特：非常乐意。无论哪种计算方式，是的。但这真的——但是，你知道，我很高兴它在那里。（笑）我希望Deryck注意到它。

21. 所罗门”比几年前好多了”

沃伦·巴菲特：第一区？

参会者：嗨，我是来自纽约的Chris Davis。我想问的是，我觉得您持有的某些证券之间的估值存在巨大差异，无论是市盈率还是市净率。在您看来，所罗门兄弟的增长前景或质量——或者您预期从所罗门兄弟提取息票的能力——是否足以证明其相对于可口可乐或吉列的增长前景存在如此巨大的折价，从而影响我们作为伯克希尔股东提取息票的能力？如果您能解释，或者分享一下您对市场认知——如果确实存在这种差异——的看法？

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，我不确定能否在不讨论你提到的公司相对优势的情况下回答这个问题——在当前价格下——但所罗门和可口可乐显然是截然不同的企业，或者所罗门和吉列也是。查理和我尽力去理解这些企业。当然，理解可口可乐的未来比理解所罗门要容易。但这并不意味着它是更好的买入对象。你在我持仓中看到的，某种程度上也是历史偶然——我们何时买入，何时有可用资金等等。但这也反映了当时的一个积极决策。我们的猜测是——你知道，对于我们所拥有的任何东西，基于我们的买入价格和当时的实际情况，我们会感觉相当不错。但事实会随时间改变。所罗门，我认为现在比几年前好多了。

但它仍然处于一个可以非常波动的行业中，而且它——像任何投资银行和任何商业银行一样——具有少量的系统性风险。我的意思是，你无法消除它。查理，你想说吗？

查理·芒格：不，我没什么要补充的。

22. 计算内在价值

沃伦·巴菲特：第二区？

参会者：谢谢。Sean Barry，加拿大里贾纳。巴菲特先生，您曾指出这个房间里的绝大多数人可以通过年报获得很多您和查理获得的信息。但你们俩也都指出，GAAP规则很多时候还有改进空间。您能否大概说明一下您和查理是如何得出最终决定投资的企业经济价值或内在价值的？以及你们经历的过程？谢谢。

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，在1992年的年报中，我们详细讨论了这一点。但任何资产的经济价值，本质上，是以适当利率折现的未来所有企业现金流入或流出流的现值。有各种各样的企业，查理和我觉得我们对于未来的现金流模式毫无头绪。如果我们对未来现金流毫无头绪，那我们现在就毫无头绪知道它值多少钱。现在，所以——如果你认为你知道今天股票的价格应该是多少，但你认为你对于未来20年的现金流没有任何概念，那么我想你这就是所谓的认知失调。（笑声）所以——我们寻找的是那些我们感觉——有相当高的概率——能够在未来一段时间内，在某个范围内看清这些数字，然后我们将它们折现回来。

我们更关心这些数字的确定性，而不是去寻找那些看起来绝对最便宜，但基于我们并无太大信心的数字得出的东西。这就是经济价值的本质。任何会计报告中的数字本身，对于经济价值来说毫无意义。它们是指导你如何接近经济价值的指南。但它们什么也不告诉你。财务报表中没有答案。它们是让你找出答案的指南。而要找出答案，你必须对企业有所了解。你不需要懂很多数学。我是说，数学并不复杂。但你确实需要对企业有所了解。但这和你打算买一栋公寓楼、一个农场或任何你感兴趣的小企业时所做的是一样的。你会试图弄清楚你现在投入了什么，以及随着时间的推移你很可能得到什么，你对此感觉有多确定，以及它与其他选择相比如何。

这就是我们所做的，只不过我们基本上是以大企业为对象。会计数字对我们非常有帮助，因为它们通常引导我们去思考我们应该考虑的东西。当然，如果我们发现数字看起来像是有人在GAAP允许的范围内对事物进行了最乐观的解释，我们会对那些看起来以任何方式粉饰数字的人非常担心。有很多人这么做。

23. 增长本身并不能使一家公司成为好的投资

沃伦·巴菲特：第三区？

参会者：我是来自堪萨斯城的Howard Bask。当您估计一家公司的增长率时（听不清），一家非常可预测的公司，我想您会应用很大的安全边际。您通常应用什么样的增长率？我是说，高个位数？

沃伦·巴菲特：在安全边际方面，还是——

参会者：对于一家可预测的公司，您可能会采用什么样的增长率——

沃伦·巴菲特：我们愿意——

参会者：——估算？

沃伦·巴菲特：——购买那些根本不会增长的公司。

参会者：好的。

沃伦·巴菲特：前提是我们在这样做时能获得足够的回报。所以，我们不是在寻找——我们是在预测未来数字，看我们认为随着时间的推移我们能收回多少现金。但是，你知道吗，你宁愿把钱存进一个年利率10%且永远不变的储蓄账户，还是宁愿存进一个年利率2%但每年增长10%的？嗯，你可以算算数学来回答这些问题。但肯定存在这样的情况：一个完全没有增长的企业，却是一个比某个以很高速度增长的公司（尤其是如果它需要资本才能增长）好得多的投资。那些增长但需要大量资本的企业，与那些增长但不需要资本的企业之间，存在巨大差异。而且我会说，通常，金融分析师没有给予这种差异足够的重视。

事实上，很少有人关注这一点，这令人惊讶。相信我，如果你在投资，你应该非常关注这一点。查理？

查理·芒格：我同意这点。但这相当简单，但又不是简单到可以用一句话解释清楚。（笑声）

沃伦·巴菲特：我们——我们全资拥有的一些最好的企业并不增长。但它们产生大量资金，我们可以用来购买别的东西。因此，我们的资本在增长，而业务本身并没有物理增长。我们处于这种情况，比处于一些自身在增长，但增长需要占用所有资金，并且不能随着时间推移产生高回报的企业要好得多。实际上，很多管理层并不太理解这一点。

24. 资本配置不应委派他人

沃伦·巴菲特：第一区？

参会者：纽约的Byron Wien。您说过将运营决策下放，但集中资本配置决策。您在奥马哈有什么样的员工来帮助您进行资本配置决策和股票选择决策？或者基本上就是您和查理自己做？

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，我们没有员工帮助我们。我的意思是，基本上我们告诉他们把所有钱寄到奥马哈——（笑声）——然后当我们到了那里，我们就把它们聚拢起来。（笑）我们亲自进行所有资本配置。这是我的工作。我们觉得不应该委派他人，我是说，我们无论如何也不会那么做。我们的个性不会让我们把分配自己资金的工作委托给别人——让别人替我们分配我们自己的钱。但我们觉得那是我们的工作。这很有趣，而且我过去也写过，这对大多数管理层来说都是一项重要的工作。有些公司不是这样，但对于大多数管理层来说，这通常是一项非常重要的工作。

如果你找一个担任CEO十年的人，他经营的企业股本回报率比方说是12%，而他支付了三分之一的股息，这意味着他每年有8%的股本增长。我的意思是，当你考虑他在任期内配置了多少资本时，这是一个随着时间的推移非常巨大的因素。然而，可能相对较少的首席执行官要么受过资本配置能力的培训，要么是根据这种能力被选中的。我的意思是，他们是通过其他途径到达那个位置的。所以，我说过，这就像一个人弹了一辈子钢琴，然后到了卡内基音乐厅，他们却递给他一把小提琴。我的意思是，它与大多数公司通往CEO职位道路上的职能不同。因此，许多CEO在到达那个位置后，认为他们可以通过让员工来做，或雇佣顾问，或其他方式来解决这个问题。

在我们看来，那是一个巨大的错误，因为——如果不是CEO的关键职能，那也是80%或90%公司中两三个关键职能之一。如果你自己做不到，你会犯很多错误。即使你自己做，也可能犯很多错误。但是，你知道，你不会希望任何其他同等重要的职位上的人基本上说：“我不知道怎么做，所以我请别人来做”，而这恰恰是他们的关键责任。但在商业中，情况就是这样。查理和我对所有资本配置决策负责，除了运营企业的一些常规支出。我们根本不插手那些。我的意思是，如果我们的经理每年在机器设备上花三四百万美元——或者如果其中一位经理是这样——在机器、设备、厂房、新租约上——我们没有任何审查流程。

我们在总部没有员工。我们不会浪费时间去做那些。我们认为那些人知道如何分配与他们业务实际运营相关的资金。我们认为，超出这个范围的、产生的资本，是我们的工作。查理，还有什么——？

查理·芒格：我想说我们在奥马哈总部几乎没有人。巴菲特看起来如此出色的原因之一就是，你知道，他几乎没有用来比较的对象。（笑声）

沃伦·巴菲特：我可以说，一件有趣的事——比如当我们开这个会时，我认为办公室只有一个人在那里。我是说，其他人都下来帮忙准备会议了。我是说——

查理·芒格：现在，沃伦和我正在卖糖果和百科全书等等。伯克希尔·哈撒韦的首席财务官在操作麦克风。我是说，这让西南航空看起来像是不懂——

沃伦·巴菲特：成本控制。（笑声）

查理·芒格：——成本会计。是的。这是一个非常老派的地方。顺便说一下，说到推销我们的商品，如果你们中的任何人保险箱里装满了伯克希尔·哈撒韦的股票证书，并且有孩子或孙辈家里没有印刷版的《世界百科全书》，那么你们正在犯一个非常严重的错误。那是家里有年轻人时一件非常棒的东西——

沃伦·巴菲特：而且折扣只适用于——

查理·芒格：——满是年轻人的地方。

沃伦·巴菲特：顺便说一句，折扣只适用于今天——（笑）——我想是的。

查理·芒格：是的。也就是说，由于当前电脑百科全书的流行，它可能卖得不太好。顺便说一下，那些可用的百科全书与《世界百科全书》相比是逊色的，后者对儿童非常友好，我自己也喜欢那样。而且——

沃伦·巴菲特：我们——

查理·芒格：那是一个你真的应该买的产品。

沃伦·巴菲特：我们俩个人都用它。我的意思是，我在办公室放一套，家里放一套。而且——

查理·芒格：我赠送那个产品——

沃伦·巴菲特：——我经常用它。

查理·芒格：——比伯克希尔·哈撒韦任何子公司生产的其他产品都多。它是一个非常了不起的人类成就。编辑出这样一个东西，对用户如此友好，包含了如此多的智慧。它是一个——一个了不起的东西。

25. 凯恩斯：关于投资的伟大”智慧”

沃伦·巴菲特：第二区？

参会者：（听不清）来自德克萨斯州休斯顿。您不时引用英国经济学家约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯。所以我假设您非常广泛地阅读过他的投资著作。您认为从这位经济学家那里可以学到哪两三条投资经验？

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，我忘了是哪一章，我想是《通论》的第八章，你记得吗，查理？还是第几章——

查理·芒格：不记得。

沃伦·巴菲特：《通论》中有一章是关于市场、市场心理学和市场参与者行为等等的，可能——除了本·格雷厄姆在《聪明的投资者》中的两章（第八章和第二十章）之外——我认为你读那一章得到的智慧，比任何其他投资著作都多。当你在《通论》中看到它时，你会认出来的。那是一章关于证券等方面、会跃入你眼帘的内容。我——可能是第八章，但我可能记错了。但我建议你读一读。凯恩斯和格雷厄姆，从截然不同的起点出发，在30年代左右得出了关于长期最稳妥投资方式的相同结论。他们在分散投资的想法上有些分歧。凯恩斯相信的分散程度远低于格雷厄姆。

但凯恩斯在20年代开始时是错误的理论，我想说，他基本上试图预测商业周期和市场，然后在30年代转向对企业进行基本面分析，并且做得非常好。大约在同一时间，格雷厄姆正在写他的第一本材料。我想Janet Lowe在她写本·格雷厄姆的书中，实际上收录了凯恩斯和本之间的一些通信。所以我建议你读一读。凯恩斯还有一些他写给寿险协会和大学等共同受托人的信件，我想你也会觉得很有趣。