Money and Finance
- Charlie Munger On The Insurance Business And Ethical Limits
Via Whitney Tilson’s notes from the 2007 Wesco Annual Meeting:Views on the insurance business and ethical limits I don’t think the insurance business will be that great for most people in it. I think we will do way better. We have great people....
- Charlie Munger On The State Of Credit In 2006...
Via Whitney Tilson’s notes from the 2006 Wesco Annual Meeting:Now you have the problems of the macro scene. Let’s take credit expansion. Consumer credit has expanded to levels that nobody’s ever seen before. All of these credit cards and all of...
- Charlie Munger On Leucadia And Telecom...
Via Whitney Tilson’s notes from the 2005 Wesco Annual Meeting:We regard the Leucadia people as very smart. Is it conceivable that the Leucadia people could have one outcome that didn’t work very well? Sure, it’s possible. I look at telecom...
- Charlie Munger On A Macro Mistake...
Via Whitney Tilson’s notes from the 2005 Wesco Annual Meeting:Cort benefited from the venture-capital-financed, new-company boom. You could argue that we made a macro mistake. These companies went away for a while and Cort was affected. ...
- Charlie Munger On Having The Right Compensation System...
Via Whitney Tilson’s notes from the 2005 Wesco Annual Meeting:It isn’t enough to buy the right business. You’ve also have to have a compensation system that’s satisfactory to the people running them. At Berkshire Hathaway, we have no [single]...
Money and Finance
Charlie Munger on AIG, GE, and leverage in 2005...
Via Whitney Tilson’s notes from the 2005 Wesco Annual Meeting:
That said, it’s [AIG] a lot like GE. It is a fabulously successful insurance operator, and with success it morphed into a massive carry business: borrowing a lot of money at one price and investing it at another price. AIG was a big operator that was a lot like GE Credit. We never owned either because even the best and wisest people make us nervous in great big credit operations with swollen balance sheets. It just makes me nervous, that many people borrowing so many billions.
As you can tell in our operations, we are much more conservative. We borrow less, on more favorable terms. We’re happier with less leverage. They’ve been successful, but we’re too chicken to join them. You could argue that we’ve been wrong, and that it’s cost us a fortune, but that doesn’t bother us. Missing out on some opportunity never bothers us. What’s wrong with someone getting a little richer than you? It’s crazy to worry about this.
There’s a lot of leverage in those carry-trade games. Other people are more certain than I am that aircraft can always be leased.
- Charlie Munger On The Insurance Business And Ethical Limits
Via Whitney Tilson’s notes from the 2007 Wesco Annual Meeting:Views on the insurance business and ethical limits I don’t think the insurance business will be that great for most people in it. I think we will do way better. We have great people....
- Charlie Munger On The State Of Credit In 2006...
Via Whitney Tilson’s notes from the 2006 Wesco Annual Meeting:Now you have the problems of the macro scene. Let’s take credit expansion. Consumer credit has expanded to levels that nobody’s ever seen before. All of these credit cards and all of...
- Charlie Munger On Leucadia And Telecom...
Via Whitney Tilson’s notes from the 2005 Wesco Annual Meeting:We regard the Leucadia people as very smart. Is it conceivable that the Leucadia people could have one outcome that didn’t work very well? Sure, it’s possible. I look at telecom...
- Charlie Munger On A Macro Mistake...
Via Whitney Tilson’s notes from the 2005 Wesco Annual Meeting:Cort benefited from the venture-capital-financed, new-company boom. You could argue that we made a macro mistake. These companies went away for a while and Cort was affected. ...
- Charlie Munger On Having The Right Compensation System...
Via Whitney Tilson’s notes from the 2005 Wesco Annual Meeting:It isn’t enough to buy the right business. You’ve also have to have a compensation system that’s satisfactory to the people running them. At Berkshire Hathaway, we have no [single]...