Buffett & Munger Quotes from the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2009

Last weekend the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting took place where some 35,000 shareholders turned up to listen to Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger — otherwise known as the “Woodstock for capitalists”.

Some quotes from the weekend:

Warren Buffett:

• If you have a 150 I.Q., sell 30 points to someone else. You need to be smart, but not a genius.
• If you need to use a computer or a calculator to make the calculation, you shouldn’t buy it.
• [When asked why the conglomerate structure seemed to work so well for him] We’ve got this ability in terms of moving money around into various opportunities [without tax consequences]
• Leverage is what causes people real trouble in this world. You don’t want to be in a position where someone can pull the rug out from under you or, emotionally, where you pull it out from under yourself.
• There is so much that’s false and nutty in modern investing practice and modern investment banking, if you just reduced the nonsense, that’s a goal you should reasonably hope for.
• I think the most important lesson is the world needs a whole lot less leverage.
• In short, bad news is an investors best friend. It lets you buy a slice of America’s future at a marked- down price.
• I’m not worried at all about a run on the banks.
• In poker terms, the Treasury and Fed have gone ‘all in.’ Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful (pumping dollars into the economy) has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once-unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects. Their precise nature is anyone’s guess, though one likely consequence is an onslaught of inflation.
• We’re certain, for example, that the economy will be in shambles throughout 2009—and, for that matter, probably well beyond—but that conclusion does not tell us whether the stock market will rise or fall.

Charlie Munger:

• Some of the worst business decisions I’ve ever seen are those with future projections and discounts back. It seems like the higher mathematics with more false precision should help you, but it doesn’t. They teach that in business schools because, well, they’ve got to do something.
• We do not need insane accounting that rewards people that can’t handle the temptation.
• In my case, I’m so nearly dead anyway that it’s a minor detail.
• Well, we still have a rising young man here named Warren Buffett.
• The stupidity in the management practices of the rest of the corporate world will likely be ample enough to give this company some comparative advantage in the future.
• In show business, they say something ‘has legs’ if it is going to last. I think Berkshire Hathaway’s system ‘has legs’.
• We’re going to have a hell of a time getting this fixed the way it should be fixed.
• This ‘one size fits all’ reasoning in the case of bank stress tests is very likely to be done poorly.
• I think you have to start with the idea that a lot of the current troubles are richly deserved.
• It’s a real privilege to be associated with a place like Berkshire, I think we have more fun doing what we do than practically anybody.