I talked to one accountant, a very nice fellow who I would have been glad to have his family marry into mine. He said, "What these other accounting firms have done is very unethical. The [tax avoidance scheme] works best if it's not found out [by the IRS], so we only give it to our best clients, not the rest, so it's unlikely to be discovered. So my firm is better than the others." [Laughter] I'm not kidding. And he was a perfectly nice man. People just follow the crowd...Their mind just drifts off in a ghastly way.
Why would you want to invest with a guy whose thought process says, "If a second layer of fees is good, then let's add a third layer.
We don't have any miraculous way of avoiding taxes at Wesco and Berkshire.
Is anyone really surprised that Warren, who is the ultimate embodiment of concentrated decision-making power, picked somebody [Bill and Melinda Gates] who he thinks is like him in many important ways? It was a noble and sensible decision.
...being an effective teacher is a high calling.
The definition of hell in the legal system is: endless due process and no justice; (in the corporate world) it would be: endless due diligence and no horse sense.
"[Lawyers who file class-action securities suits] is not a group you would want to marry into your family. "That said, more than half the time the people being sued by the Lerach firm are guilty of outrageous conduct. The problem is, they don't mind (suing) the other half. They are an equal opportunity litigator."
Accounting incomes were reduced by discrepancy [ but] "the net amount paid by lawyers for lawyerly discrepancy is close to zippo. In this case, the goddess of justice was blind.
I think it would be a great improvement if there were no D&O insurance . The counter-argument is that no-one with any money would serve on a board. But I think net net you'd be better off.
One could imagine a period like Japan13 years ago, however, in which indexing over time wouldn't work.
What matters most: passion or competence that was born in? Berkshireis full of people who have a peculiar passion for their own business. I would argue passion is more important than brain power.
See's candy company was the first high-quality business we ever bought.
For many of our shareholders, our stock is all they own, and we're acutely aware of that. Our culture [of conservatism] runs pretty deep.
Wall Street has too much wealth and political power.
The Internet bubble circa 2000 is the most extreme in modern capitalism. In the 1930s, we had the worst depression in 600 years. Today is almost as extreme in the opposite way.
'F.A.S.B' ... 'Financial Accounts Still Bogus'.
With Congress and the S.E.C. so heavily peopled by lawyers, and with lawyers having been so heavily involved in drafting financial disclosure documents now seen as bogus, there was a new "lawyer" joke every week. One such was: "The butcher says 'the reputation of lawyers has fallen dramatically', and the check-out clerk replies: "How do you fall dramatically off a pancake?
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