the wrong world.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/brkmtg05notes.pdf
Future:
“It’s a rare business that doesn’t have a way worse future than it has a past.” http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2006/commentary06053101.htm
Gambling:
“I knew a guy who had $5 million and owned his house free and clear. But he wanted to make a bit more money to support his spending, so at the peak of the internet bubble he was selling puts on internet stocks. He lost all of his money and his house and now works in a restaurant. It’s not a smart thing for the country to legalize gambling [in the stock market] and make it very accessible.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/brkmtg05notes.pdf
“Berkshirein its history has made money betting on sure things. http://www.tilsonfunds.com/
“You have a lottery where you get your number by lot, and then somebody draws a number by lot, it gets lousy play. You have a lottery where people get to pick their number, you get big play. …People think if they have committed to it, it has to be good. The minute they’ve picked it themselves it gets an extra validity. After all, they thought it and they acted on it. Then if you take the slot machines, you get bar, bar, walnut. And it happens again and again and again. You get all these near misses. Well that’s deprival super-reaction syndrome, and boy do the people who create the machines understand human psychology. And for the high-IQ crowd they’ve got poker machines where you make choices. So you can play blackjack, so to speak, with the machine. It’s wonderful what we’ve done with our computers to ruin the civilization. But at any rate, mis-gambling compulsion is a very, very powerful and important thing. Look at what’s happening to our country: every Indian has a reservation, every river town, and look at the people who are ruined by it with the aid of their stock brokers and others.” http://www.loschmanagement.com/Berkshire%20Hathaway/Charlie%20munger/The%20Psychology%20of%20Human%20Misjudgement.htm “To me, it’s obvious that the winner has to bet very selectively. It’s been obvious to me since very early in life. I don’t know why it’s not obvious to very many other people.” http://www.ndir.com/SI/articles/quotes.shtml
GM:
“I have a greater sin to confess to. I once thought GM was a bulletproof franchise. But we have a method of coping: We just put it in the “too hard” basket. If something is too hard, we move on to something that’s not too hard. What would be more simple?” http://www.designs.valueinvestorinsight.com/bonus/bonuscontent/docs/Tilson_2006_BRK_Meeting_Notes.pdf#search=%22Charlie%20munger%20and%20foundation%20and%20croupier%22
Gold:
If you have the opportunities of Berkshire, an investment in gold is dumb. http://www.tilsonfunds.com/brkmtg05notes.pdf
Government
“We’re here at an institution [Stanford] founded by a man [Leland Stanford] who bribed Congress to get his railroad franchises…I’m not constantly bewailing the failures of government — it’s not our main problem at all.” http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2006/06/26/the_wit_and_wis.html
Greed
“It’s amazing the way people have sold out. It’s insane.” http://www.law.stanford.edu/publications/stanford_lawyer/issues/64/sl64.pdf
“…all man’s desired geometric progressions, if a high rate of growth is chosen, at last come to grief on a finite earth. And the social system for man on earth is fair enough, eventually, that almost all massive cheating ends in disgrace.” http://www.bluechipinvestorfund.com/munger.html
Guilt
“Economic systems work better when there’s an extreme reliability ethos. And the traditional way to get a reliability ethos, at least in past generations in America, was through religion. The religions instilled guilt. … And this guilt, derived from religion, has been a huge driver of a reliability ethos, which has been very helpful to economic outcomes for man.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/MungerUCSBspeech.pdf
Healthcare:
“I think that if you have a single payer system and an opt-out for people who want to pay more [for better service, etc.], I think it would be better – and I think we’ll eventually get there. It wouldn’t be better at the top – [our current system] is the best in the world at the top. But the waste in the present system is awesome and we do get some very perverse incentives.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/wscmtg04notes.doc
“The quality of the medical care delivered, including the pharmaceutical industry, has improved a lot. I don’t think it’s crazy for a rich country like the USto spend 15% of GDP on healthcare, and if it rose to 16-17%, it’s not a big worry.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/
Hedge Funds:
“It’s amazing the brainpower being drawn into the hedge fund industry. When I was young, guys in the investment business were mediocre at best – they had eastern [East Coast] tailoring and didn’t know very much. Now, it’s a cascade of brainpower. Collectively, they add nothing to the GNP. Indeed, they’re adding costs, collectively. If you take the money invested in common stocks, and then subtract the 2% per year that goes out in investment management costs and frictional trading costs, that’s more than companies pay in dividends. It’s more than the twin deficits. This would fit very well into Alicein Wonderland: pay dividends of X and pay the same amount to investment managers and advisors.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/wscmtg04notes.doc
“I don’t think there’s any business that we’ve bought that would have sold itself to a hedge fund. There’s a class of businesses that doesn’t want to deal with private-equity and hedge funds…thank God.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/brkmtg05notes.pdf
“You ask a heard hedge fund operator why the charge 2 and 20, and they say because I can’t get 3 and 30, he says. “[For hedge funds], it’s not about thinking what is fair and right — but merely how much can I get. It’s a ghastly culture … there will be terrible scandal in due course” http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2006/06/26/the_wit_and_wis.html
Hiring:
“This is a good life lesson: getting the right people into your system is the most important thing you can do.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/brkmtg05notes.pdf
Honesty
“I think track records are very important. If you start early trying to have a perfect one in some simple thing like honesty, you’re well on your way to success in this world.” Poor Charlie’s http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1578643031/104-7644521-2497538?v=glance&n=283155
“Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay were caricatures – they were easy to spot. They were almost psychopaths. But it’s much harder to spot problems at companies like Royal Dutch [Shell].” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/brkmtg04notes.doc
“Well in the history of the See’s Candy Company they always say, “I never did it before, and I’m never going to do it again.”
