28 Aug 2010 Warren Buffett’s New 80th Birthday Vow: "Work Past 100"
“I plan to work past 100 but to do so I may have to learn to think outside the box,” Buffett tellls Deal Journal...

08 Jul 2010 Video: Warren Buffett On The Economy, The Deficit, LeBron James And BP
In an exclusive interview today with Huffington Post and Yahoo! News, Buffett told Willow Bay that he disagreed with the recent statement by New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman that we are "in the early stages of a third depression." ...

02 Jun 2010 CNBC INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT: Warren Buffett on Moody's & Credit Ratings Agencies
This is a transcript of Warren Buffett's live interview on CNBC before appearing before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission...

Dataroma's opinion: Sorry Warren, we are a huge fan but, to say that Moody's made the same mistake that 300 million other Americans made, is like excusing a doctor for making the same medical mistake as 300 million other Americans! By the same argument, why not excuse the CEOs of corporations that required government bailout - and that you suggested we should come down hard on - for making the same mistake as 300 million other Americans?!

02 Jun 2010 Buffett Testifies Before FCIC
Warren Buffett answers questions about the rating agencies before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Committee. The Commission is holding a hearing entitled "Credibility of Credit Ratings, the Investment Decisions Made Based on Those Ratings, and the Financial Crisis."



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13 May 2010 The Unadulterated Wit And Wisdom Of Charlie Munger
Away from the madding 40,000-person crowd at the Berkshire Hathaway meeting, I was the only journalist present to hear Munger give perhaps his last 45-minute monologue on the world as he sees it.

03 May 2010 Video: Buffett on CNBC
CNBC's Becky Quick goes one-on-one with Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett to discuss the Goldman Sachs fraud charges, financial regulation and more...

02 May 2010 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting Liveblog Archive
Morningstar markets editor Jeremy Glaser blogs live from the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting in Omaha...

30 Apr 2010 Video: Charlie Munger: Lehman Was the Worst, But 'Impressed' By Goldman's Blankfein
Charlie Munger tells CNBC that Lehman Brothers' behavior was the worst of the big Wall Street firms in recent years, and it "came right from the top."

30 Apr 2010 Video: Berkshire Wingman
Flying through an economic storm, with David Sokol, MidAmerican chairman...

02 Mar 2010 The Oracle's Tips for the Rest of Us
Most investors who bet on the auto industry in 1910, planes in 1930 or TV makers in 1950 ended up losing their shirts, even though the products really did change the world. "Dramatic growth" doesn't always lead to high profit margins and returns on capital. China, anyone?

01 Mar 2010 Video/Transcript: Warren Buffett on CNBC


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27 Feb 2010 Berkshire Hathaway - 2009 Annual Report
The ideal standard for measuring our yearly progress would be the change in Berkshire’s per-share intrinsic value. Alas, that value cannot be calculated with anything close to precision, so we instead use a crude proxy for it: per-share book value. Relying on this yardstick has its shortcomings, which we discuss on pages 92 and 93. Additionally, book value at most companies understates intrinsic value, and that is certainly the case at Berkshire. In aggregate, our businesses are worth considerably more than the values at which they are carried on our books. In our all-important insurance business, moreover, the difference is huge. Even so, Charlie and I believe that our book value – understated though it is – supplies the most useful tracking device for changes in intrinsic value. By this measurement, as the opening paragraph of this letter states, our book value since the start of fiscal 1965 has grown at a rate of 20.3% compounded annually.

Charlie and I avoid businesses whose futures we can’t evaluate, no matter how exciting their products may be. In the past, it required no brilliance for people to foresee the fabulous growth that awaited such industries as autos (in 1910), aircraft (in 1930) and television sets (in 1950). But the future then also included competitive dynamics that would decimate almost all of the companies entering those industries. Even the survivors tended to come away bleeding. Just because Charlie and I can clearly see dramatic growth ahead for an industry does not mean we can judge what its profit margins and returns on capital will be as a host of competitors battle for supremacy. At Berkshire we will stick with businesses whose profit picture for decades to come seems reasonably predictable. Even then, we will make plenty of mistakes.

Last year we saw, in one instance, how sound-bite reporting can go wrong. Among the 12,830 words in the annual letter was this sentence: “We are certain, for example, that the economy will be in shambles throughout 2009 – and probably well beyond – but that conclusion does not tell us whether the market will rise or fall.” Many news organizations reported – indeed, blared – the first part of the sentence while making no mention whatsoever of its ending. I regard this as terrible journalism: Misinformed readers or viewers may well have thought that Charlie and I were forecasting bad things for the stock market, though we had not only in that sentence, but also elsewhere, made it clear we weren’t predicting the market at all. Any investors who were misled by the sensationalists paid a big price: The Dow closed the day of the letter at 7,063 and finished the year at 10,428.

We told you last year that very unusual conditions then existed in the corporate and municipal bond markets and that these securities were ridiculously cheap relative to U.S. Treasuries. We backed this view with some purchases, but I should have done far more. Big opportunities come infrequently. When it’s raining gold, reach for a bucket, not a thimble.

We’ve put a lot of money to work during the chaos of the last two years. It’s been an ideal period for investors: A climate of fear is their best friend. Those who invest only when commentators are upbeat end up paying a heavy price for meaningless reassurance. In the end, what counts in investing is what you pay for a business – through the purchase of a small piece of it in the stock market – and what that business earns in the succeeding decade or two.

In evaluating a stock-for-stock offer, shareholders of the target company quite understandably focus on the market price of the acquirer’s shares that are to be given them. But they also expect the transaction to deliver them the intrinsic value of their own shares – the ones they are giving up. If shares of a prospective acquirer are selling below their intrinsic value, it’s impossible for that buyer to make a sensible deal in an all-stock deal. You simply can’t exchange an undervalued stock for a fully-valued one without hurting your shareholders.
Imagine, if you will, Company A and Company B, of equal size and both with businesses intrinsically worth $100 per share. Both of their stocks, however, sell for $80 per share. The CEO of A, long on confidence and short on smarts, offers 11⁄4 shares of A for each share of B, correctly telling his directors that B is worth $100 per share. He will neglect to explain, though, that what he is giving will cost his shareholders $125 in intrinsic value. If the directors are mathematically challenged as well, and a deal is therefore completed, the shareholders of B will end up owning 55.6% of A & B’s combined assets and A’s shareholders will own 44.4%. Not everyone at A, it should be noted, is a loser from this nonsensical transaction. Its CEO now runs a company twice as large as his original domain, in a world where size tends to correlate with both prestige and compensation.

If an acquirer’s stock is overvalued, it’s a different story: Using it as a currency works to the acquirer’s advantage. That’s why bubbles in various areas of the stock market have invariably led to serial issuances of stock by sly promoters. Going by the market value of their stock, they can afford to overpay because they are, in effect, using counterfeit money. Periodically, many air-for-assets acquisitions have taken place, the late 1960s having been a particularly obscene period for such chicanery. Indeed, certain large companies were built in this way. (No one involved, of course, ever publicly acknowledges the reality of what is going on, though there is plenty of private snickering.)
In our BNSF acquisition, the selling shareholders quite properly evaluated our offer at $100 per share. The cost to us, however, was somewhat higher since 40% of the $100 was delivered in our shares, which Charlie and I believed to be worth more than their market value. Fortunately, we had long owned a substantial amount of BNSF stock that we purchased in the market for cash. All told, therefore, only about 30% of our cost overall was paid with Berkshire shares.
In the end, Charlie and I decided that the disadvantage of paying 30% of the price through stock was offset by the opportunity the acquisition gave us to deploy $22 billion of cash in a business we understood and liked for the long term. It has the additional virtue of being run by Matt Rose, whom we trust and admire. We also like the prospect of investing additional billions over the years at reasonable rates of return. But the final decision was a close one. If we had needed to use more stock to make the acquisition, it would in fact have made no sense. We would have then been giving up more than we were getting.

When stock is the currency being contemplated in an acquisition and when directors are hearing from an advisor, it appears to me that there is only one way to get a rational and balanced discussion. Directors should hire a second advisor to make the case against the proposed acquisition, with its fee contingent on the deal not going through. Absent this drastic remedy, our recommendation in respect to the use of advisors remains: “Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut.”

22 Feb 2010 Video: Warren Buffett Interview on Philanthropy
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett and Courtenay Wolfe, chief executive officer of Salida Capital, talk with Bloomberg's Betty Liu about philanthropy...

20 Feb 2010 A parable about how one nation came to financial ruin - Charles Munger
But even a country as cautious, sound, and generous as Basicland could come to ruin if it failed to address the dangers that can be caused by the ordinary accidents of life. These dangers were significant by 2012, when the extreme prosperity of Basicland had created a peculiar outcome: As their affluence and leisure time grew, Basicland's citizens more and more whiled away their time in the excitement of casino gambling. Most casino revenue now came from bets on security prices under a system used in the 1920s in the United States and called "the bucket shop system."...

09 Feb 2010 Video: Economic "Power Lunch"
Warren Buffett and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have an economic 'power lunch' chit-chat, live at the Chamber of Commerce annual meeting in Omaha.



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06 Feb 2010 Buffett Tells Hog-Product Staff They’re on Farming Superhighway
Warren Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., told employees of the firm’s hog-products unit he expects the operation to expand for decades.

29 Jan 2010 Many fund investors will own a piece of Buffett
If you like your investing no-frills and low-cost, prepare for your introduction to Warren Buffett. Investors in mutual funds that track the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index will soon have a stake in the investing legend's company for the first time...

26 Jan 2010 Investor Buffett holds $1 bln stake in Munich Re
Warren Buffett has built a $1 billion stake in Munich Re, adding to his array of insurance holdings and boosting shares in the world's biggest reinsurer. Munich Re said on Tuesday Buffett's shareholding rose just above the mandatory reporting threshold on Jan. 18 and amounted to 3.045 percent of the voting rights on that date.

20 Jan 2010 Video: One-On-One with Buffett, Pt. 2

20 Jan 2010 Video: One-On-One with Buffett
Berkshire Hathaway is holding a special shareholders meeting today, with Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway chairman & CEO and CNBC's Becky Quick...