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half our family's wealth is in Brookshire hathway who is actually going to own the voting control uh is it going to be institutions Black Rock are they eventually going to get their way with the ESG well you're thinking very well and uh the interesting thing is uh the big aggregations look like of course they'd be in index funds but what indirect funds want is they want a world in which societ doesn't get upset with them about the fact they've got all the voting power and and uh I was say in the last year or two uh it's looked like a better idea uh for them not quite to get as uh uh what was the phrase that Charlie used they backed off a lot yeah they backed off a lot and and it's it's in their interest to back out off and interest interestingly enough in looking at money management you know the game is not performance it's assets under management and index funds produce a tiny tiny tiny uh fee on assets under management because it was pioneered by Vanguard and uh and it's when it became successful it was very easy to replicate not so easy but I mean it was inevitable to be uh copied but it came with a management fee of two basis points so what people that have offered index funds would really like is you buy their other funds or let them manage money in some other way so that they get a higher higher fee on assets under management which of course is exactly why the index fund was invented in the first place but so it's gotten it it's not a lost leader but it is a way to pull money in and then you hope that people ignore what was said by by uh what's his name that you know that John Bogle Jack Bogle and they ignore him and essentially they give up the I idea and that we'll offer you a fund that does this in India and we'll offer you another fund that does that and of course those management fees are higher so they're really counter selling the idea that John Bogle came along with but in the process they have achieved a lot of votes and that was fun for a while but the last thing in the world they want to do is have Washington or the American public decide that they're throwing around their weight too much so they're tending to back off now if if you figure out where their self-interest is you can judge where their behavior is going to go Charlie want to defend them no you squ what he just said you're totally right on everything well in that case I won't ask anybody else the only real way to see how someone is going to do when when running a company is to let them run it uh this wise statement now applies to Burkshire once the second men are running Burkshire what would you advise owners of Burkshire to watch for specifically what actions if taken should give us concern well I think I would I would have some comfort in the fact that 99% of my net worth is in that company so I I probably got a stronger interest in it and and perhaps a 100 billion or more of philanthropy will be affected by and and uh uh but I would say that I don't have a second choice I mean that it it is it is that tough to find but I've also seen Greg in action and I feel 100% comfortable and uh uh uh and like I say I don't know something happened to Greg I would tell the directors you know they have a problem and they won't I don't have anybody to name and if they put somebody in Bur on automatic pilot can work extremely well for a long time I mean it doesn't it doesn't like the businesses go away or anything the thing sort uh and you can't it's hard to judge successor Management in a really good business because if they if they don't show up at the office it'll keep working for a long time and maybe maybe that La of useful input uh may show itself in five years I it may go a long long long time and uh uh how how are the shareholders you know advised by a bunch of people that are concerned about whether you're meeting earnings projections or something telling them whether the Management's any good thing you know it is very very hard it's very hard I've been on the board of 20 companies it's very hard to if you ask me to rank the management of each one it's uh it's it's very difficult to do because some are just better businesses than others some would be better off not managed hardly at all others really need help but they got a lousy business and uh Tom Murphy told me a long long long time ago he said the secret of business is to buy a good business and it's okay to inherit one too and uh Greg is inheriting a good business and I think it will make it better but I don't think it's easy to put any one of the next 10 nominees in and try and judge three years later whether they've done a good job or not a it's going to be that that'll be a very interesting job for the board but it shouldn't listen to Wall Street on it it they've got the job if they put somebody in there's a surprise we both go down on a plane they put somebody in they've got a real job in assessing that person because uh it'll depend on how good he or she is as a talker it'll depend on you know them courting Wall Street to be supportive of all kinds of things and and uh uh we've got some very good people on the board but they would be challenged in that position as would I where I have been in that position in other companies where a very great leader has left and uh on the way back from the funeral you know nobody knows what to do exactly anticipating a few questions on banks I decided we should start using Bank language here to describe and Charlie the the situation in banking is is uh very similar to what it's always been in banking that that fear is contagious always and historically sometimes the fear was justified and sometimes it wasn't my dad lost his job in 1931 because of a bank run and they had a bank run on State Banks and uh the had of the Almo National Bank said well we're a national bank and they didn't have a run on the National Banks and of course they both face the same problem so it it used to be that if you saw people lining up at a bank the proper response was to get into the line and uh you'll always leave it and the story is that Sydney weberg of Goldman Sachs during one of the great Bank runs um back in 1907 or thereabouts had a job as a runner Goldman Sachs and asked us boss if he could take the week off and boss said sure not much is going on anyway so he got in line whether it was a Nick orbaker trust or wherever and uh as he got toward the front of the line he sold his place in line to somebody he didn't have an account at the bank but that was an asset and uh the banking system has changed so much over the years and we did something enormously sensible in my view uh when we set up the FDIC as many these 2,000 banks failed in one year back after World War I I mean Bank bank runs were just part of the picture and if you have people that are worried about whether their money is safe in the bank and all trying to withdraw you can't run an economy very well so the FDIC was very logical it's got changed over the years some but here we are in you know 2023 and we actually see the FDIC pay off at a 100 cents on the dollar to everybody or make it available on all demand deposits and yet you still have people very worried about their periodically geographically all kinds of crazy ways and that just shouldn't happen so the messaging has been very poor it's been poor by the politicians who sometimes have an interest in having it poor it's been poor by the agencies and I'd say it's been poor by the Press I mean you shouldn't have so many people that misunderstand the fact that although there may be a debt ceiling uh it's going to get changed although there's a $250,000 limit on FDIC the FDIC uh and the US government and American public have no interest in having a bank fail and they have deposits uh uh actually lost by people we had a demonstration project the weekend of Silicon Valley Bank and the public is still confused so it's really it's something to have a law that was passed in 19 or a law that became effective in 1934 all modified in some ways not understood about something as important as a bank system I don't think the American public is that dumb and I I just uh well I made that offer over in Tokyo incidentally that I haven't heard from anybody that wants to take up my Million Dollar Bet on on whether the public will lose money and in in in uh if they have a demand deposit uh at a bank no matter what the size so that's the world we live in it means that a lighted match can turn into a configration or it can be blown out and uh who knows what will happen and we don't have any worry we keep our money at cash and treasury bills at Berkshire because we keep 100 28 billion or whatever it was at the end of the quarter and we want to be there if the banking system temporarily even gets stalled in some way uh it shouldn't I don't think it will but I think it could and uh I think that the incentives in Bank regulation are are so messed up and so many people have an interest in having them messed up uh that is it's totally crazy I mean The Fanny May and Freddy Mack were doing 40 or so% of the mortgage business in the United States that is huge they were regulated those just those two companies were regulated by some group I forget what they called it but they had 150 people that were in charge of just figuring out whether Freddy and Patty were doing the right thing but I could have done it you know Charlie could have done it you know and uh I'm not sure they needed an assistant even to do it but the incentives were all wrong and Freddy and Fanny which were doing fine in August apparently doing fine and July and August of 2008 were put into conservatorship you know early in September and the things that followed from that were just incredible so there are second order and third order and fourth order effects uh that are somewhat unpredictable as to what they will be and sequence and all that but things change and if people think deposits are sticky anymore they they're just living in a different era uh you know you uh you press a button you don't have to get in the line and wait for days and have the teller counting out the money slowly in Gold so they hope the line goes away you got you you can have a a run in in a few seconds so uh the the way it hasn't been addressed properly is is is a problem and who knows where it leads
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