When I met Bill on July 5th, 1991 I think we probably spent ten or eleven hours talking then.
Two things that I picked up after meeting you is bridge was one and golf was another.
I was never a good golfer and it was an excuse to talk. It certainly wasn’t about golfing.
Whenever I see something, take these very low interest rates, even negative interest rates, I'm always thinking, "Boy, I'm looking forward to talking to Warren about that.”
One thing that's fun is you have a very optimistic view about things.
I think I'm sort of neutral, in terms of optimism or pessimism, and I look at the facts around me. I look at what has happened in my lifetime.
Put three of me end to end and you're back before the Declaration of Independence was written.
That progress, in three lifetimes like mine, it's mind-blowing.
Since I've known you, you've always been good at taking finance things and making them simple.
Do you think that came naturally, or did you learn over time, just answering questions about finance decade after decade?
I started teaching a course when was 21 years old, at the University of Omaha. I did that because I was terrified of public speaking earlier and had taken a Dale Carnegie course, and I felt I just had to get out there and start talking.
Standing up for two hours in front of a class helped me in learning to explain things.
Well, and it's amazing how you've gone through market periods that are utterly different, and yet your basic rules about what to do remain unchanged.
Yeah, the rules work. They’re not the easiest to apply.
They won't tell you exactly when to buy or sell obviously, but you'll never do anything stupid if you follow some fairly simple principles.
When you get a chance to buy something of extraordinary value, whether it's a farm or an apartment house or a piece of a business or an entire business. The time to do it is then and not worry about whether you could do it a little cheaper a month later or two months later.
Warren makes unique compensation agreements for the people who work for him. And having thought through how do you incent good behavior, what’s the best thing for the long term? I’ve learned a lot of how you think about compensation.
Basically, I want the paintbrush to be in their hand, and then when they paint something that they think is beautiful and I think is beautiful, I want to cheer like crazy for them.