I took away 3 things:
1. CEOs have become very greedy. (Elon's pay package) 2. America will experience a downturn and the market could go down > 50%. 3. He's not giving a penny more to The Gates' foundation.
Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
81–90 of 216 posts
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#82I always had the impression that the guy is playing a role. He is as amoral as the average capitalist can be, but for some reason he wants people to love him and consider him an ethical archetype.
TLDR: have his cake and eat it.
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah he’s not quite Jack Welch level of dissonance between reality and his fanboys, but he’s hardly some superhero for profiting from the great financialization of the US economy. He made sure his book got bailed out during the GFC. He cheered on Wells Fargo while they opened up a bunch of fraudulent accounts. And so on.
And when he found out about Wells Fargo's behavior, he liquidated the position and has remained out of it. I fail to see the problem with what he did in that case. As a ~5% holder he (Berkshire) had no special control over the company in terms of micro-audits to surface such fraudulent behavior promptly as it was happening.
That’s simply not true. The WSJ started reporting on it in 2011 [0]. Berkshire didn’t fully exit their position until 11 years later in 2022 [1].
[1]https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/17/investing/berkshire-hathaway-...
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#84Here's a person with integrity. They're very rare these days, especially amongst the wealthy.
Ask the railroad workers of BNSF about Buffet’s “integrity”. He’s responsible for them being rampantly abused. If you’re not familiar look up interviews with actual workers. They are asked to work insane hours and with little scheduling, and are unpaid when they’re waiting around. The (local) monopolization of the rail industry and constant lobbying against regulations by Buffet’s minions have let this continue to th…
The BNSF people I’ve talked to have all told me about how much they’ve loved their jobs and what their jobs allowed them to do, including adopting children from Ukraine and get them out of a war zone. Maybe you should talk to more people.
The people to blame for the predicament of the US auto industry are the.. US auto industry.
Perhaps turning every vehicle into a luxury car and getting rid of affordable vehicles is not a good long term solution.
BYD is a fantastic investment, they are not undermining us, we are undermining ourselves and we need to stop being victims.
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#85If only more billionaires would start sounding as aware as this 95 year-old one: > But Lady Luck is fickle and – no other term fits – wildly unfair. In many cases, our leaders and the rich have received far more than their share of luck – which, too often, the recipients prefer not to acknowledge. Dynastic inheritors have achieved lifetime financial independence the moment they emerged from the womb, while others hav…
I have found that it's incredibly hard to get successful entrepreneurs to acknowledge that a lot of their success is down to luck. I think it's got something to do with the Protestant Work Ethic - that if they were smart and worked hard then they "deserve" their wealth , but if they just got lucky they don't "deserve" it. So acknowledging that luck played an important part in their success gives them bad feelings, an…
It's hard because while for a 1 in 10,000,000 achievement, even if they're lucky to get 1 in 1,000 just by being born at the right place/time, they still need to fought hard for the rest of 1 in 10,000.
I've seen people attributing Taylor Swift' success entirely to luck. But eventhough of course she has inherent advantage, she still has to defeat tons of people who also has the same or even more inherent advantage as her. The numbers are arbitrary and a spectrum, and I've seen too many people treating it as black and white.
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chipmunks and Squirrels.
Do they hoard unnecessarily, or do they hoard what they need to get through winter months, without much surplus?
I've heard that a lot of trees are grown from forgotten squirrel seed stashes. So at the very least they do store more than they eat.
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#87> It's hard to beat The Golden Rule as a guide to behavior > There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning. Huh.
The second quote is not from the posted letter. It was a quote attributed to Buffett by a New York Times column in 2006. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26ever...
I'm aware of that. That does not make the second quote any less relevant.
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#88[flagged]
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#89>Greatness does not come about through accumulating great amounts of money, great amounts of publicity or great power in government. When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world. Kindness is costless but also priceless. Whether you are religious or not, it’s hard to beat The Golden Rule as a guide to behavior. >I write this as one who has been thoughtless countless times and made many mistake…
> Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman.
Considering the Warren Buffett wisdom-industrial complex this might be the best place to share these nuggets. And I know his heart is in the right place, but the fact that you need to spell this kind of thing out is somehow extremely depressing.
Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]
#90If only more billionaires would start sounding as aware as this 95 year-old one: > But Lady Luck is fickle and – no other term fits – wildly unfair. In many cases, our leaders and the rich have received far more than their share of luck – which, too often, the recipients prefer not to acknowledge. Dynastic inheritors have achieved lifetime financial independence the moment they emerged from the womb, while others hav…
I have found that it's incredibly hard to get successful entrepreneurs to acknowledge that a lot of their success is down to luck. I think it's got something to do with the Protestant Work Ethic - that if they were smart and worked hard then they "deserve" their wealth , but if they just got lucky they don't "deserve" it. So acknowledging that luck played an important part in their success gives them bad feelings, an…
I once heard one such entrepreneurs (Éric Larchevêque) defining luck as "preparation meeting opportunity"