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One thing you should understand, if you aren't happy having $50,000 [clears throat] or $100,000, you're not going to be happy if you have 50 million or 100 million. A certain amount of money does make you feel when those feel around, you feel better just in terms of being more secure in some cases, but loads and loads of money.
I probably know as many rich people as just about anybody and I don't think [clears throat] they're happier because they get super rich. I think they are happier when they don't have to worry about money, but you don't see a correlation between happiness and money beyond a certain place. like I see you in our living room a lot.
My dad is constantly playing these videos of you at these meetings and he teaches me a lot of lessons about you guys. But many of them require the delayed gratification skill. I want to know, is there any way that kids can develop the delayed gratification skill? I'll take that because I am a specialist in delayed gratification.
I wrote the whole time to delay it and my answer is that they either come out of the womb with the delayed gratification thing or they come out of the womb where they have to have everything right now and I've never been able to change them at all. So, we identify it, we don't train it in. Charlie's had eight children, so he's become more and more of a believer in nature versus nurture.
He'll probably sign some nice old woman of about 95 out there in threadbare clothing and she's delaying gratification right to the end and probably has 4,000 A shares. It's just these second and third generation types that are buying old jewelry. It's interesting if you think about, we'll take it to a broader point, but if you think of a 30-year government bond paying 3% and you allow for as an individual paying some taxes on the 3% you'll receive and you'll have the Federal Reserve Board saying that their objective is to have 2% inflation, you'll really see the delayed gratification you own a long government bond is that you get to go to Disneyland and ride the same number of rides 30 years now that you would if you did it now.
I low interest rates for people who invest in fixed dollar investments really mean that you really aren't going to have each steak later on after you eat hamburgers now, which is what I used to preach my wife and children and anybody else that would listen many years ago. I don't necessarily think that for all families and all circumstances that saving money is necessarily the best thing to do in life.
I mean you know, I don't you really tell your kids that whatever it may be they never go to the movies or will never go to Disneyland or something of the sort because if I save this money 30 years from now, you know, we'll be able to stay a week instead of two days. I think I think there's a lot to be said for doing things that bring you and your family enjoyment rather than trying to save every dime.
So, delayed gratification is not necessarily an unqualified uh course of action under all circumstances. I always believed in spending two or three cents out of every dollar I earned. I was at everything I wanted. I mean, one thing you should understand, if you aren't happy having $50,000 or $100,000, you're not going to be happy if you have 50 million or 100 million.
A certain amount of money does make you feel and those feel around you feel better just in terms of being more secure in some cases, but loads and loads of money I've probably known as many rich people as just about anybody and I don't think they're happier because they get super rich. I think they are happier when they don't have to worry about money, but you don't see a correlation between happiness and money beyond a certain place.
So, don't go overboard on delayed gratification. We regard investment decisions as proprietary basically. They belong to Berkshire and we are not an investment advisory organization. So, that is counter to the interest of Berkshire for them to be talking about securities they own. It's a counter to the interest of Berkshire for Charlie or me to to doing it.
We've done better because we don't publish every day what we're buying and selling. I mean, if somebody's working on a new product at Apple or somebody's working on a new drug or they're assembling property or something of the sort, they do not go out and tell everybody in the world exactly what they're doing every day.
And we're trying to generate ideas and investment, and we we do not believe in telling the world what we're doing every day except to the extent that we're legally required. But, it's a good idea. Charlie? Well, one of the reasons we have trouble with these questions is because we're Berkshire is so very peculiar.
There's only one thing like it. We have a different kind of un-bureaucratic way of making decisions. There aren't any people in headquarters. We don't have endless committees deliberating forever and making bad decisions. We just we're radically different, and it's awkward being so different, and but I don't want to be like everybody else because this has worked better.
So, I think you're just going to have to endure us. We do think that it's a huge corporate asset, which may only surface very occasionally, and depending very much on how the world is around us. But, to be the one place, I think, in the world, almost, where somebody can call on a Saturday morning and meet on Sunday morning and have a $10 billion commitment, and nobody in the world doubts whether that commitment will be upheld, and it's not subject to any kind of welching on the part of the company that's doing it.
It's got nothing involved other than Berkshire's word, and that's an asset that every now and then will be worth a lot of money to Berkshire, and I don't really think it will be subject to competition. And Ted and Todd, in particular, are an additional pipeline, and have proven to be an additional pipeline in terms of facilitating the exercise of that ability.
I mean, things come in through them that, for one reason or another, I might not hear about otherwise. They have expanded our universe in the markets we've had in recent years. That hasn't been important. I can see periods where they would be enormously valuable. Just take the question that was raised by the fellow from Winnipeg about weak covenants in bonds.
I mean, we we could have a situation, who knows when, who knows where, who knows whether, but we could have a situation where there could be massive defaults in the junk bond type market. We've had those a couple times and we made a fair amount of money off of them, but Ted and Todd will multiply our effectiveness in a big way if such a period comes along or some other types of periods come along.
They're very, very, very useful to Berkshire. The call happened to come in on Friday from Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America, and he's done an incredible job, but we have a better chance of getting more calls and having them properly filtered and everything appropriately filtered the next time conditions get chaotic than we did last time.
And that's that's important. Charlie? Well, I do think it's true that as the world goes to hell in a hand handbasket, that you people will be in the right company. We've got a lot of cash and we know how to behave well in a panic. And if the world doesn't go to hell, are things so bad now? And I also want to report that your vice chairman is getting new social distinction.
I've been invited during this gathering to go to a happy hour put on by the Bitcoin people. And I tried to figure out what the Bitcoin people do with their happy hour, and I finally figured it out. They celebrate the life and work of Judas Iscariot. Is your invitation still good? Oh, Bitcoin, actually, on my honeymoon in 1952, my bride, 19, and I, 21, uh, stopped in Las Vegas.
We just got mar- Alice gave me the car and said, "Have a good time." and we went west. So, we stopped in the Flamingo, and I looked around, and I saw all of these well-dressed, they dressed better in those days, well-dressed people who had come in some cases thousands of miles away. And this was before jets, so transportation wasn't as good.
And they came to do something that every damn one of them knew was mathematically dumb. And I told Susie, I said, "We are going to make a lot of money." Imagine people going to stick money on some roulette number with a zero and a double zero there and the way the they all could do it and they they just do it. And I have to say, Bitcoin has rejuvenated that feeling in me. That happened to
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