Warren Buffett was on CNBC last week, below is the full transcript and the videos.
Buffett: Interest rates are ‘terribly important’ in evaluating assets
CNBC’s Becky Quick talks with billionaire investor Warren Buffett about where he is finding value in the market and whether stocks are overpriced.
Transcript:
good morning, carl. the fed has plenty of people reassessing their opinion of the stock market. notable investors have told usthey think the fed’s reluctance to taper makes stocks much more attractive at least for the immediate term. warren buffett doesn’t disagree but he also thinks stocks don’t look cheap at these prices. here’s his explanation. the lower interest rates are, the lower assets are worth and to the extent that qe3 iskeeping interest rates lower than it would otherwise, it probably keeps asset prices somewhat higher than they would be otherwise. but there are other variables. if that doesn’t exist it’s maybe because business is a lot better. there are dozens of variable. but interest rates are a terribly important variable in the valuation of assets. when you look around, do you still see good positions or have stocks just moved too far? they moved a long way. they were very cheap five years ago, ridiculously cheap, and that’s been corrected. they’re probably more or less fairly priced now. we don’t find bargains around but we don’t find things that are way overvalued either. we’re having a hard time finding things to buy. when he says things like fairly valued to him — right now he says that the economy continues to chug along, at least as best as he can tell. burlington northern moved 237 cars last week. his furniture stores you 8% to 9%. bryan moynihan has seen similar trends. he said consumer spending on his card was up 5% to 6%. one out of two households bank with bank of america. they do see things in the economy continue to chug along. not a terrible economy. i thought it was interesting the way buffett had enormous praise for bernanke, not wanting to pull him out, calling him a .400 hitter, the best hedge fund in history. couple that with what larrylindsey told you this morning, talking about the unwinding thathas to go on and thinking to bust out of that 2% growth range is wishful thinking in his words. it was pretty telling. we asked buffett who he would put in charge of the fed if he had a choice.he is he bernanke. i asked him who his number two choice was and he said nobody. he knows this is unprecedented territory.it’s been a massive buildup and i think he’d like to see someone he trusts in terms of winding it down.
Buffett: Moynihan was doing the right things in 2011
CNBC’s Becky Quick talks with Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway chairman & CEO, and Brian Moynihan, Bank of America CEO, about what prompted Buffett to invest in the big bank two years ago and if he will eventually exercise his warrants to buy 700 million shares of BAC for $7.14 per share.
Buffett & Moynihan on next Fed head
CNBC’s Becky Quick talks with Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway chairman & CEO, and Brian Moynihan, Bank of America CEO, about the Fed’s no taper decision and what it means for the economy and jobs.
Transcript:
i didn’t have any great expectations one way or the other and it doesn’t make a difference to me in terms of our business or our investments whether it’s zero or ten billion or 20 billion. some day it’ll stop and maybe it’ll go the other direction. although you had been telling us for a while that you didn’t think qe-3 was as effective as the earlier programs. well, i think that’s right which is probably why it’s being continued. it hasn’t done the job yet that they — presumably they hoped it would. but it — i don’t think it’s been harmful. and what you see in the economy is just this gradual increase which has been going on ever since the fall of 2009. and now and then people think it’s accelerating, sometimes they think it’s decelerating, kind of creeps along.you made an announcement recently you’d be laying off about 2,000 people because of the huge decline in demand formortgages. i guess you’re seeing some of what the fed has seen in terms of mortgage business. do you think this move tocontinue with $85 billion a month will make a difference interms of what you’re seeing in demand for mortgages? well, you saw it yesterday. so, you know, i think — i think you had an economy which we see very constructive growing at 1.5%, 2%, we don’t see a lot of downside risk, absent the usual things. i think the fed just thinks — and i think the chairman’s clear about it yesterday until unemployment’s down, he’s got to keep this economy going in right directions for fear it might go in the wrong direction and mortgages — low mortgage rates help housing, housing starts helps warren’s carpet factories, all that go on. if qe-3 hasn’t been working until this point and the fed issaying we have to wait until we see the unemployment level come down, you need to see a pick-up in the economy. that’s not necessarily something that will happen next month. no, who knows when it’s going to happen. no, you could be looking at this rate for quite a while. but i’m no good on that sort of thing. i really don’t try and predict it. brian, i know the next fed chairman is going to be your next regulator. do you know janet yellen well? i can — we know all the candidates. that’s a question that anybody will answer. i think it’s up to other people to make that decision. and, you know, we’ll work constructively with all thecandidates i’ve heard mentioned. i’m sure there are some ihaven’t thought of. but we always will. warren, how about you, who do you think the next fed chairman should be? well, i think bernanke. i think if you’ve got a .400 hitter in the lineup, don’t take him out. he may want to leave but i think — i think he’s done since the panic five years ago, i think he’s done a terrific job.and i think he ought to get a chance to play out a little more of a hand. meaning you think the president should ask him to stayfor another term. i don’t think that’s necessarily going to happen. but that’s what i would do. if bernanke doesn’t want todo that, who do you think should step in and who would be yoursecond choice? yeah, well, i don’t have a second choice. i don’t know janet yellen at all. and i just don’t know enough about the various candidates to come up with a second choice. i know bernanke in my view is very, very good. so i would not trade him away. i would trade some of our — what do you worry about interms of what the fed is facing and how difficult the exit strategy might be? well, whoever has that job at some point will have to do something unprecedented starting with a $3.5 trillion balance sheet still growing. and it’s easier to buy than to sell.now they have don’t have to sell. playing out the last — the lasthalf of this game is very different than the first half. he would know more about that than i would. but i think bernanke ought to be given a chance to play the whole game rather than just the buying end of it. what do you think about the exit strategy?they’ve studied it, they’ve thought about it. they’re playing out the exit strategy as we speak, right? in other words the dialogue and transparency and clarity. if you ask the people who work on the trading desks around wall street yesterday, a lot of them set up the wrong way. that’ll happen, it’ll go through the system, ten-year bonds restabilized. the first 100 basis points was a 60% move as opposed to 10% move. it has to be carefully crafted.not only in the united states but around the world. i think people getting the science of this and i think the clarity that has been through all the central banks will get out as the economy improves. they think they’re getting out without the economy improving to the rate they want. given the strong economy growing at whatever rate they need, this will be, i think, less of apressing question given the first thing. and they’re not going to give out until there’s a strong economy. i don’t think it’s possible five years from now you have $3.5 trillion fed balance sheet. they may take it back to where they’re not going one direction
BAC’s Moynihan: Consumers are spending
Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan provide insight on the pulse of the American consumer and the overall health of business, with CNBC’s Becky Quick.
Transcript:
paying ourselves to do what we love? ?? ?? brian moynihan and warren buffett both spr some insight into the consumer.sheshg shire keeps the poll for the conzoomer through many ofits stores. our furniture stores were up 8% or 9% in august against the best figures they had had a year ago. carpet is strong. most of the businesses are strong. railroad, we had 207,000 cars last week. that’s the highest of the year. the peak was 216. the low was 152. but we think this fall, if the harvest is normal, we’ll just be at the peak that we had before everything hit the fan. but that — i mean, you’re back at the peak. that’s –yeah. better than people might think. and housing. but we have a real estate brokerage operation and i look at the median prices and all these different markets each month is — what’s taking place. and that’s coming back. things are coming back.but the slope doesn’t go like this and it doesn’t flatten out. it just kind of keeps going. at a rather can’t rate. although you see pockets of strength in one area or another a little bit as you go along. but business is overall it’s getting better. and i would say that — well, look at our businesses. three quarters of them, atleast, would be doing better. brian, you’ve got, i think, one out of every two american households does business with bank of america. what are you seeing in terms of the economy? we still see consumer spending. in the data that we see, the spending for the month of september so far is about 5% to 6% over last year’s september. the internet spending grows at twice that rate. you might hear different retailers have different outcomes depending on whether they’re at the internet or not, but overall spending levels are up about 5%, 6% for the year. we can see it continue to move forward. and when you talk about corporate side, they’re very constructive. access, the market is there. and the questions, it just takes time and i think people wish we were going faster, but it’s a little on the work to take a huge economy likes ours to get it back to what people want.
Buffett: Health care a huge problem for America
CNBC’s Becky Quick sits down with Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway chairman & CEO, and Brian Moynihan, Bank of America CEO, to talk about the debt ceiling, Obamacare and creating jobs in the U.S.
Transcript:
pace of hiring will pick up. one of the difficult situations going on in america is the producers of products are so efficient that they’re not hiring a lot more people to continue to generate revenue growth. that is one of the dirveth issues of getting us out of the unemployment numbers. the underlying fact, thecompetition for market loans is as severe as i’ve seen it. so it’s really — it’s pretty strong. so what’s holding hiring back at this point? you know, i think final demand is still uncertain for a lot of companies. they’ll sit there and say i’ll squeeze every ounce out of production. all this is good and it will break through where they’ll have to do things. and have to says they’re –they’re pro growth, just it’s a grind. now, 2% versus 1% is better.in the second rt yeaher, there’s a lot of fundamental aspects that we see across businesses that you just are relentlessly moving forward. as long as we don’t do something to knock them off kilter. like not agreeing to lift the debt ceiling? well, that would be pretty dumb. if they do have some sort of government shutdown over this, what happens? what’s the fallout? it would get resolved in a reasonable — the market is not going to fall apart. they expect washington will only act irrationally for a certain length of time. it would have to get solved. so i don’t — it’s so dumb, you know, that it’s disturbing, but it isn’t disturbing in terms of investing or in yao business plans. there were comments in the last week, warren, that you said obama care was wrong. that was wrong. that was just wrong. some firm pulled that out and suggested they had an interview with me. i never heard of the place before. it just isn’t true. what do you think about the health care initiatives that are being put in place because we are getting closer? what i have said consistently is health care costs in this country are a tape worm of american business. and then when overall the economy what the has 17% of gdp going to health care. that lovts leaves 90 cents orthereabouts. it is a huge problem for the country and one we haven’t fully addressed at all. but that is not the fault of obama care. those trends were in place ever since 1970 when we were spending 5%, a little over 5%. brian, have you seen anychanges in your businesses or the businesses that you giveloans to? any impact from obama care? well, i think just that the need to figure something out. when you’re a company like ours that has 250,000 plus employees and has an hr team that’s wonderful and has several thout thousand people, they can figure out how all these rules work. but if i’m running a 25-person manufacturing firm or a 50-person manufacturing firm, to figure out how it works, all this has an impact. so he think it’s more that element than anything else. we’re self-insured. so if we can save money and provide our employees better health care for less dollars, that’s great. i think the affordable care act,the debate around it has focused business on how much this isreally costing them. and we’re all working. at the end of the day, that’s why we exist. so we were trying to — it’s in my best interest and my team’s best interest to have the healthiest, most robust workforce in the world.
Your post-Fed playbook
Discussing any changes investors should make to their portfolio after the Fed’s announcement it won’t taper yet, with the “Fast Money” traders; and CNBC’s Becky Quick offers details of what Buffett and Moynihan had to say about the economy.
Transcript:
this is fast money. here’s tonight’s line-up. bears in hibernation.so far investors in bear suits have gotten destroyed but aseveryone faces the taper fake out, it’s time to face have youcome too far too fast? losing its luster. goldman sachs joins thew on monday. we have a wall street smack down. and back to the future. intel’s futurist is joining us with the machines of the future. karen, guy, and mike are here. both the dow and s&p snapping a rally as yesterday’s fed decision not to taper begins to sink in. gold rallying higher and the u.s. dollar falling to a seven month low. what are the best ways to play this post fed euphoria? we sort of didn’t do much today? the key is you want to let it settle in. you want to let the spike settle in. maybe a three day rule applies the market. you want to see if utilitieshold. what else? this is a different kind of show. it’s technical.you always wait for that you always wait three days. think that those still hold true for the next couple of weeks or so. gold higher right? big day today right? two days in a row. at what point do you say well, if it is on, if risk is on you want to be in equities over gold? i think you can be in both, actually, for the short term. the move to 1725. i think it is overextended to. i think that the gold trade is back in tact. i think the irresponsibility ofthe fed has put you right back into this gold trade. gold had gone from 1800 to 1500. the global tent ral bank, all they had to do is 10 or $15 billion. i think now it’s every man for itself. i think that all leads to weakening dollars. i think that it was such a fluid event. look at that one line talking about emerging markets.then you saw it spike higher. i got to bring up thing? the last two days, you have not seen a move of this magnitude in quite some time. i would be surprised if this was it. this may be a really dumb question but i’m going to ask. the moving goal to me looks like — i don’t know if something rolled over orsomething. i saw it do 50 during the day. i know gold was up 40 or 50 bucks today and an additional 40 or 50 bucks today. i don’t know exactly. the august contract with any number of things. but gold has rallied significantly. he has had the move lower. all right. i think i would want the ejected volatility. much of bernanke’s tomorrow trying to get communication in the market. i have no idea what they are really doing. the way markets are setting up they have injected a ton of volatility. they are going to taper. look at the housing numbers. look at the fed today. you had amazing data. if you believe any of this is real and the fed had this information in their meeting, you have to be selling bonds. you have to be expecting that ten year closer to three before it goes to 260. and finally, it’s nice that people suddenly think that emerging markets are cool again, but emerging markets were underperforming by 40% over the last year and a half. that is the reason you want to own them. not because the fed is out of the way. yeah, but this was anincredible move where they sold off. and then the rally back. it is hitting resistace here. i am still long because i think people view this as an all clear sign. to tim’s point, yes they are going to taper, but we don’t know that. we didn’t know when before. there is too much — he just said they’re trying to be transparent but everyone is more confused than ever before. so now people are starting to think maybe they took the taper off. they took the real sting out of taper, out of the trade. mike? it’s interesting. tim referenced today something that looked good. recognize the fact that we had an epic increase in rates earlier. when everyone was anticipating the taper, it was easier to anticipate the fed’s action. as they did you saw lenders say we have got to start laying off mortgage brokers because we are expecting fewer loan applications. the fed has to recognize that there has been a big shift in the marketplace. everyone is asking them totelegraph way in advance. the hand they are dealt is not so hot.you have to wait for that to play out. you can even leave all of thegovernment spending issues out of it. those items alone were enough reason for them not to step in at that stage. i think equities are fully valued here. i’m not exactly sure whateveryone thinks is the upside. economic growth is really not that spectacular. we do want to go down to washington d.c. where becky saturday down just moments ago with warren buffet and brian moin han. we are here at georgetown because brian and warren buffet will be sitting down and speaking with a group of about 700 students. before that they had the chance to sit down with us. obviously we talked about what the fed did yesterday. to brian moinahan, maybe a little less so. recently. bank of america announced that it would be laying off mortgages. we asked if the fed’s decision to not taper just yet would help the economy. we see very constructive, growing at you don’t kneel a. of course, the mark has also been wondering who is going to be calling the shots. we asked warren buffet who he would like to see as the next fed chief and his answer might surprise you. if you have a .400 hitter in the line up you don’t take himout. he may want to leave, but i think he has done since thepanic of five years ago, i think he has done a terrific job. stocks were ridiculously cheap but at this point he thinks stocks are more or less fairly valued with what they have seen in the markets. they have a greattive with what is happening. with industrial businesses and beyond. we will go measure in-depth tomorrow morning on squawk box. we will talk about that and regulation. we will talk about the pros and cons and how a company decides to sethle with a government. we will have all of that. right now, melissa, i will send it back over to you. thank you so much, becky. she spoke to those two before their live conversation on stage. your alma mata, yes. we have some breaking news here. melissa, this is interesting news coming out regarding j.c. penney, the embattled retailer. on friday 13, we told you that steven roth was stepping down. now dow jones has learned, according to dow jones, 13.4 million shares has been sold via an underwritten deal by citigroup. via a deal with citigroup. more details to come as the story develops here. last week, steven roth, the ceo steps down from j.c. penney’s board.we will bring you more details as they become available. we should keep in mind that they filed last week saying theyintended to sell their stake so it’s not entirely surprising today. it was a surprise the delay of the sale. i don’t know why you would say i intend to sell and then don’t do it. i talked about it, i still think it could easily go from 15.5 we have seen rimmblackberry bounce before they were left for dead. i wouldn’t be surprised to see jcp drop to 10.5. coming up, a look at yourbest short plays. plus strap on your seat belts. you have another new all time high. find out what he is willing to pony up to get back in.
Buffett: Hard time finding things to buy
CNBC’s Becky Quick is joined by Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and Brian Moynihan, president and CEO of Bank of America. Buffett says he’s having a hard time finding things to buy.
Buffett: Economy continues to just creep along
CNBC’s Becky Quick is joined by Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and Brian Moynihan, president and CEO of Bank of America, to discuss the Fed’s decision to keep intact the bond buying program. Buffett explains why he didn’t have any “great expectations” on whether the Fed would taper or not. And Moynihan feels the “economy is very constructive.”
Transcript:
meanwhile, banks and billionaires are feeling the impact of the fed’s taper te sigs or nondecision, depending on your point of view. two men listening intently to fed chair ben bear nank’s words yesterday, bank of america chairman brian moynihan and billionaire investor warren buffett. they were in the nation’scapital today. our colleague, becky quick, caught up with them both. becky, over to you. reporter: maria, thank you very much.thank you for joining us today. here with brian moynihan andwarren buffett. i know you gentlemen are here because you’re going to be speaking to about 700 people just after this. we want to thank you for joining us in advance. there has been an awful lot of news. an awful lot of surprise about what happened with the federal reserve. warren, i just want to wonder, it took us by surprise. did this catch you by surprise that the fed decided not to taper? only because i’ve been reading every place people expected something. but i don’t have any — i didn’t have any great expectations one way or the other. and it doesn’t really make any difference to me in terms of our business or investments whether it’s zero or 10 billion or 20 billion. some day it’ll stop. maybe it’ll go the other direction. although you had been ingtelling us for a while you didn’t think qe-3 was as effective as some of the earlier programs. i think that’s right.probably why it’s being continued. it hasn’t done the job yet thatthey they hoped it would. but it — i don’t think it’s been harmful.what you see in the economy is just this gradual increase,which has been going on ever since the fall of 2009. every now and then people think it’s accelerating. sometimes i think it’sdecelerating. just kind of creeps along. brian, ever since thisdecision was made about 26 hours ago we’ve been trying to figure out what the fed saw or everyone else didn’t. or at least everyone we were talking to ahead of time. you’ve made an announcement recently you’d be laying off about 2,000 people because of the huge decline in demand for mortgages. i guess you’re seeing some of the what the fed has been seen in terms of mortgage business. do you think this move to continue with 85 billion a month will make a difference when it comes to what you’re seeing in terms of demand for mortgages. you saw it yesterday. i think i’d second what warren said. you have an economy which we see very constructive. growing 1.5%, 2%.we don’t see a lot of downside risk absent the usual things youcan make up. you don’t see a lot of downside risk. i think the fed just thinks, i think the chairman was clear about it yesterday, until unemployment is down he’s got to keep this economy going the right direction for fear it might go in the wrong direction. mortgages are another way, low mortgage rates helps house wk helps housing starts, helps warren’s carpet factories. what are you seeing in terms of the overall economy, brian? you’ve got, i think, one out of every two american households does business with bank of america. what are you seeing in terms of the economy? we still see consumersspending. the data that we see, spending for the month of september so far is about 5% to 6% over last year’s september. the internet spending grows at twice that rate. you might hear different retailers have different outcomes depending on whether they’re on the internet more or less. the overall spending levels are up about 5% to 6% from last year.we see it continue to move forward. corporate side, they’re veryconstructive. access to markets is there. it’s okay. the question is, it just takes time. i think people wish this were going faster.it’s just a lot of work to take a huge economy like ours and get it completely back to where people want it, 3% plus growth.warren, if qe-3 hasn’t been working to this point and the fed is now saying we have to wait until we see the unemployment level to come down before this happens, is it going to get us there faster? i don’t want to say it isn’t working — it’s hard to say what would have happened if they’d gone the other direction.the economy is improving. but i think probably bernanke was hoping to see an acceleration of the rate of improvement. and what he’s seeing, i think, is a continuation of more or less the same rate. maybe if they hadn’t been doing it, you’d have seen even less than 2%. who knows. i think my question was,though, if you look at them saying we need to see a big pickup in the economy, that’s not necessarily something that’s going to happen next month. no. who knows when it’s going to happen.no. you could be looking at this rate for quite a while. but i’m no good on that sort of thing. i really don’t try and predict it. brian, i know the next fed chairman is going to be your regulator. do you know janet yellen well? do you have any thoughts aboutwho you’d like to see as the next fed chairman? we know all the candidates. so that’s a question that anybody will answer, i think it’sp to other people to make that decision. we’ll work constructively with all the candidates i’ve heard mentioned. i’m sure there’s some i haven’t thought of. we work constructively with the fed and always will. warren, how about you? who do you think the next fed chairman should be? i think bernanke. i think if you’ve got a .400 hitter in the lineup you don’t take him out. he may want to leave. but i think — i think he’s done — since the panic of five years ago, i think he’s done a terrific job. i think he ought to get a chance to play out a little more. you think the president should ask him to stay for another term. that’s what i would — yeah. i don’t think that’s necessarily going to happen.that’s what i would do. if bernanke doesn’t want to do that, who do you think should step in? who would be wrour secondchoice? yeah. i don’t have a second choice. i don’t know. i don’t know janet yellen at all. i just don’t know enough about the various candidates to come up with a second choice. i know bernanke in my view is very, very good. i would not trade him away anymore. — anymore than i’d trade some of our great managers at berkshire away. what do you think of — whoever has that job, at some point is going to have to do something that’s pretty much unprecedented starting with a $3.5 trillion balance sheet, still growing. it’s easier to buy than to sell. they don’t have to sell. i mean, but playing out the last — the last half of this game is — is very different than the first half. brian would know a lot more about that than i would. but i think bernanke ought to be given a chance to play the whole game rather than just the buying end of it. brian, what do you think just about the exit strategy? we spoke with stan ckenmiller today. you said he worries the academics at the fed don’t necessarily know some of the problems that could come up with this exit strategy. i think they’ve studtied it. they’ve thought about it. they’re playing out the exit strategy as we speak. in other words, the dialogue and transparency and clarity. if you ask the people who work on a trading desk around wall street yesterday, a lot of them were set up the wrong way. nal happen. it’ll go through the system. 0 year bond’s restabilized at a different level. remember, it doesn’t go far back that it was 100 basis points lower. the first 100 basis points was a 60% move as opposed to 10% move. it has to be carefully crafted. not only in the united states but around the world. but i think people can get in the science of this. i think the clarity that has been through all the central banks, we’ll get out as the economy improves. that’s the piece people aremissing. they’re thinking they’re getting out without the economyimproving to the rate they want. given a strong economy growingat whatever rate they need to feel that unemployment is comingdown, this will be, i think, somewhat less of a pressingquestion. given the first thing. they’re not going to get out until there is a strong economy. you have sort of a chicken and egg. i don’t think it’s impossible that five years from now that you have a $3.5 trillion fed balance sheet. they may take it back to wherethey’re not going one direction or the other. but i don’t think it’simpossible that they just decide they’ll sit at $3.5 trillion like they used to sit at $1.5 trillion. stan druckenmiller also said today in terms of qe-3 as a citizen he’s concerned. but he said as a money manager he thinks this is great news. because he thinks equities will move higher. at least in the intermediateterm. what do you think about that, warren? well, the lower interest rates are — the more assets are worth, basically. to the extent that qe-3 is — is keeping interest rates lower than they would otherwise, it probably keeps asset prices higher than they might be otherwise. there’s other variables. if that doesn’t exist maybe it’s because business is a lot better. there’s more than one variable. there’s really dozens of variables. interest rates are a terribly important variable in the valuation of assets.when you look around at the market, though, it’s definitelymoved significantly over the last four or five years. sure. we’ve seen some major pickup. when you look around, are there still deals that you can see like the deal you did with brian with bank of america? do you still see good positions or have stocks just moved too far? they’ve moved a long way. they were very cheap five years ago. ridiculously cheap. that’s been corrected. they’re probably more or less fairly priced now. i don’t think — we don’t find bargains around. but we don’t think everything — things are way overvalued, either. we’re having a hard time finding things to buy. great. we’re going to continue this conversation. we will air it tomorrow morning on squawk box. in the meantime, maria, is there a quick question you have? i’d like to get their thoughts on regulation. it seems the profit story is very much in place. as profits have gone off for so many companies, so have theexpenses of regulation. jpmorgan paying $800 million. what’s on the horizon for bank of america in that regard? yeah. brian, maria asks just in terms of regulation, obviously you see what’s happened with jpmorgan today with the amount they’respending on this. with the expenses that have gone up along with this, can you just tell us what’s on the horizon with the regulatory front for bank of america? well, we’ve had a lot ofdiscussion about this the last few years with maria and othersand yourself. because we got through this — we got into some of these issues especially on the mortgage area earlier. we put a lot of this behind us. we continue to work through it. this is is a period a lot of regulations got passed to stop all the different things we weren’t doing right. if you look at it from a broadperspective, we doubled our capital. in the company and industry. we’ve quadrupled liquidity. we’ve simplified the company. that is where the right place to take it for the customers was and the shareholders. i think most of the people in the industry are doing that. i think the regulations arepushing us harder towards that outcome. gentlemen, haung very much. we’ll continue this conversation as we mentioned on tape. maria, right now back to you. the rest of this conversationtomorrow morning on squawk