Watch CNBC's full interview with Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger and Bill Gates

This was Berkshire Hathaway's 54th annual shareholder meeting, and while shareholder meetings are known for being poorly attended, lingered, and downright boring, this was all but more than 40,000 people attended here, including business leaders like the director Activision Blizzard executive Bobby Kotick, Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert and Spanx. Founder Sara Blakely and for the first time Apple CEO Tim Cook were present. Apple is now Berkshire's largest shareholder and Berkshire's third largest shareholder. We caught up with Cook this weekend and asked him what he thought about everything. I think it's amazing. He had never been to an annual meeting like this before.

You know, I thought ours was lively, but there are over 40 thousand people here and I love the fact that Warren and Charlie answer every question and of course not just the wisdom they exude. but you can feel the integrity and humility that comes out. I think it's a great learning experience for me and everyone in the audience. I'm sure Berkshire Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett joins us now, and he warned you, what does it mean to you? I've been through this weekend, it's a lot of fun. I mean, you see who you're working for and they see you when you interact with them and they come with a kind of Mardi Gras spirit.

I would say in the last 10 years, who is it now? maybe 40, well, from out of town, not 40,000, but a lot from all over the world. I never receive a complaint letter. I mean, I know someone misses planes or doesn't have a rental car available or a hotel room, but They just come in the spirit of enjoying it and the people and all that, so people go wrong with smiles on their faces. I mean, we have 600 of our own people who would come from our various subsidiaries and work for a couple. for days and there was nothing but smiles on their faces.

Well, unfortunately we're not going to let you rest on your laurels this week because we have some big news coming out this morning; They see that the markets have already fallen almost 500 points. futures here for the Dow Jones, what do you think about the possibility of trade tariffs coming back and what that could mean for the trading dogs? Well, I can't, I can't evaluate, both sides will play along and they are always "Some people negotiate in different ways and if we really have a trade war, it will be for everyone and it could be very bad depending on the scope of the war, but There are moments in negotiations when we talk hard about the only thing that is possible.

What you shouldn't do is you can't, you can't shake your fist first and then shake your finger afterwards. I did it, it's not a technique that works well, so when you go ahead you don't know exactly what the results will be. Be okay, you can't shake your fist first and then shake your finger later, I understand that I've actually done it, but hey, that's what you're worried about if you get the other figure back and you have to mean it after a while, of course. otherwise. Obviously it doesn't mean anything when you do that and you're gauging the response of someone else who also has their own calculations and their own internal political considerations etc, so it's a dangerous game, it doesn't mean it's a game where you don't We should participate, but it is a dangerous game, you also negotiate many agreements, would this be your tactic?

Well, it's mine at all, but you know, we'll talk about the deal with Occidental later in the illustration, but, but, I've had a coherent way of negotiating and that has its advantages, although it also has its disadvantages, but I'm just saying the what I will do and I don't do anything else so that people really know what I mean and can decide if what I will do. I've said it's acceptable or not, but you know I don't do it as a game. Now there are a lot of people with acquisitions who really like to play and there you are in your own business and it's their way of doing it. and that's fine, but it doesn't work for me and I don't want it, I can't afford to spend the time on it, I'm serious, you know, you don't know if you'll ever get there and you spent weeks and months and it's just that, It would be a huge waste of time, we did it, you know, I don't know if this is a blessing, it's coming from President Trump, although he already put the tariffs in and I don't know if he would do it. take this lightly and think that we're not going to see something on Friday that you can't, but if you're playing, you're playing, you have to resolve that way, I mean, if it's with some people in negotiations, the best technique. it's kind of a crazy act I mean you know with your kids you can see how it works to negotiate things with no you're not going to shoot them so he really got the upper hand and that happens all the time and it's interesting.

In the reputation industry, we bought a very large car dealership a few years ago and we didn't pretty much have our kind of day winning the award and probably 20 times since then people come out and say we want to do something. And they just never found one that we could do the same way. I mean, it's just part of your life to negotiate and it's part of my life not to negotiate, so I want to present you with a high offer, I'm sure I'm going to say and I understand, I mean, that's how a lot of things happen, but probably most transactions and that reputation of not doing it is good because it makes it much easier to save a lot of money.

Now, let's talk about what it would mean if tariffs on Chinese goods increased to 25 percent from 10 percent on $200

bill

ion worth of goods at the end of the week. How important is that to Berkshire companies? It would mean a lot to the world, it's not just the countries involved, because they know that they take the dollars they have received from us net and buy goods elsewhere. I mean, there, there, there are considerably smaller trade surpluses overall than their trade surplus with us, so everything intersects in the world and it depends on who retaliates with us or with them and it is easier to start it than to stop it and the effects On a large scale over time, imagine Becky that our Constitution was set up differently and that states could set tariffs and Michigan would impose a tariff on those cars and that we would have wanted corn and that the degree to which trade would contract in this country country. country after country because you can't just have this between two countries that did it, it was at this point the very fact that it's kind of a nuclear threat is what brings people to the table, which means that means that many they play the game, but you I don't want there to be too many nuclear threats because one day someone may feel they have to fulfill a right, obviously that's why the global markets are under pressure, it's not just the Chinese markets that are down.

You saw Korea's kospi down about 3.% down markets, it was almost everywhere, it affects everything, so you are saying that the markets reaction is correct, it is not an ovary, it is rational and then we will see what happens next, but obviously if you go to bed. a week ago and you thought there was a 1% chance of a trade war and then subsequent events make you think there's a 10% chance that the markets will reflect that very quickly, what would you put in terms of? I mean, it's an actuarial. mind in terms of probabilities, would you put it in that when talking about two leaders of the world's two major economic powers?

That's not the kind of thing I can bet on. I mean, I was talking about two personalities who are very used to getting their way and and and and in politics and you're talking about how they will be perceived in their own country in terms of our behavior and it gets very complicated yeah, there's no way I can predict That, even if you've written insurance contracts about stranger things than this, yes, what would you do? What would it take to ensure that a settlement was reached at the end of this? A big premium would be needed, yes, this it wouldn't be the kind of thing that I would look to insure Frankly, because it's so unknowable, yes, yes, and you wouldn't need to struggle to find the risk precisely because if they lasted a month and then you go into the duration of how long it was.

I know there are a lot of problems with writing the contract, but there are some types of things that are not exactly identical, but we took an unusual risk, but this is a big one, what will it mean specifically for the Berkshire companies? And I think on Friday we'll have I talked to Jim Weber, who is the boss of Brooks, they've already moved and moved a lot of their operations to Vietnam because of this concern, they've been in the process of doing that since these trade talks first, it's good that I've seen them on our railroad car log or rather all the things that travel on the west coast.

I meant that everyone supplies at once and it distorts things just by thinking about it, you can imagine the distortion if you get into that and then you can't really predict the speed or degree of the effect because it spreads, you can't do anything important between the US and China without affecting all the major markets as they circulate and you're starting a game that you don't know the ending to but you know it's not a good game. I might say that it may be necessary to play another game to avoid that kind of thing. I mean, that's what mutual assured destruction was.

I mean, still. I felt that as long as there was mutually assured destruction, no one would launch a missile and this is a similar game, it may be a similar type, a bit of chicken, you say that the intermodal rail freights that were affected by this, which means that you saw a increase in railroad car loads months ago, months ago, because people were trying to load people with inventory that they thought they could. I mean, if you thought there was a 25% middle, I mean, if you thought there would be a 25% tax on coke next. week I would have my house

full

of coke lazy guys get transported my house would be doing everything very well and boom, everything ends well, that's a big worry, I mean, if we've been

watch

ing this great economy and thinking things are wonderful , but in reality it was just pushing things forward and then you get to a situation where it stops, does that worry you?

Well, they are posting forward. I think actually in the GDP numbers there was a big inventory adjustment and I know if you think about the flow. something will stop or become more expensive and you need it, you will load it in advance, well, that will change your behavior in some way when it comes to buying securities or doing business, no, we will buy the same stocks. today where everything last week I just won't tell you their names, but what do you buy more if you lower them by 5 g? Where do they get the more I buy?

But that doesn't mean you don't think the markets couldn't. go there, I'm not going to buy because I think they're going to wait for the next day or next week, yeah, so it's something you're

watch

ing very closely, yeah, oh yeah, but we look at the prices of the things that we make more than current events because in the end we won't buy them because what's going to happen next month, third, in the next quarter, you know, we'll actually buy them because we think they'll be good businesses ten years from now, if someone came to us with a good business today.

We would buy it and we would buy it regardless of what is happening in the type of situation we may have. This is the case, but you are more likely to get something when other people are afraid and you see it big instantly. in a market that you already know, in the corporate market, but it's still there with people's minds, welcome everyone, we're here and news is coming out, there's only one SEC filing that came out of Crabb Tynes that's obviously a large holding company of Berkshire Hathaway. which will restate 2016 and 2017 earnings due to misstatements in the original filings.

However, he doesn't believe Minh SAR's error, what they call quantitatively material for any individual reporting period, says the impact on adjusted earnings is expected to be minor. 2% for each year Craft Ein says it has now completed an investigation showing that several employees in its procurement operation engaged in misconduct, but none of them were members of senior management. Our guest today again is Warren Buffett, he is the president of Berkshire Hathaway. he owns a significant part of Kraft Heinz and Warren, what do you think of this? This news just came as we sit here. Well, that's pretty much what I heard.

I'm no longer on the board, but he is very capable and crazy. a little bit cooler so I've heard from them and this is an update that I heard last night and that they can't they can't issue the first quarter reports until the 10k is filed and they can't file them. 10,000 until Price Waterhouse approves it and that will apparently require arestatement of a few years and we were not able to report any Kraft Heinz earnings in the first quarter because if we receive a dividend from Bank of America that dividend goes to earnings, but because we own more than 20% of Kraft Heinz, we do not report the dividends , we reported earnings, so we received a dividend of about a hundred and thirty.million in the first quarter, but we didn't report that and we were hoping to get the earnings before issuing our own report, but when it came time for our report and we had nothing , we just put a zero there. and we explained it in our statement last Saturday and it is just one more indication of the facts as they stand now at some point Price Waterhouse Oh, we will have to be happy with the figures that they are reporting and that obviously involve a reformulation and at that time my I guess the quarterly numbers have become quite current and we continue to collect our share of the profits.

I mean, this has been a long period of confrontation between PwC and the company if they didn't meet all the deadlines to send you the numbers in At that time, which we didn't expect, I thought we would have the pending done in time and Kraft announced the earnings last year, but their auditors had not approved them, so, although they published them publicly, they could not present them. the 10k with the SEC subsequently, it's not unusual for companies to announce earnings before getting approval, but in any case, you know we thought we were going to get them this week or next, whatever it may be, and then it came last Saturday and that's the time to release quarterly earnings.

We didn't have them, so we didn't put anything there and a footnote and we also put in our press release that we just didn't have the numbers if they were restating their earnings. Does that mean Berkshire Hathaway will also have to restate its earnings? Annelle, bad, it would be sullen material when you take just our share or a much larger company, so I don't know exactly what we'll do when we get it. enters the second trimester. I don't know if we pick up two quarters in one quarter or exactly how it works. They said this is what they have concluded from this investigation.

Are you satisfied with what you've heard from that part of the investigation or you know I don't know about that, I know because I've been aware of some of the things that I don't hear and on calls from directors or something like that, but Gregg says I, what are the high points or low points of what happened and we have a great boss of the car company, Jack, he's an independent director, he knows this kind of stuff and he and he's put hours into it and so I feel very good about the fact that Jacket is really in charge of things from the directors' point of view.

Does the company have your trust? The company has my competition. He talked about it over the weekend and said what he paid for. because the craftsmanship was too much in hindsight exactly not what you paid for Heinz that's right we just want Heinz would it be a better investment? and no, we don't do fifty-something little more than 50% of the business of doing it well relative to what we paid for it, but in a situation where you determine that you have now paid too much, what do you do? I paid too much for the stock. I paid too much for many things.

Time usually fixes that, but that's how it is. It means the capital could have been better used in other areas, you can always pay too much for a business and I have done this with stocks many times. I've done it with businesses we have in Berkshire. I have at least half a dozen businesses and I can't even use a we there. I have to say that I paid and if we make the next ten deals that we make, then there will be a couple of worlds or not that I paid to leave you Warren. There was other news that crossed the wires last night and another deal that you are involved in that would back Occidental and has been to try to take over Anadarko, which is also in talks with Chevron, which also has something to do with it.

Last night, Occidental issued its own statement and said it would review its proposal. Now we're talking about a deal that's still seventy-six dollars per share, but seventy-eight percent in cash and twenty-two percent in stock. By increasing that portion of cash, it allows for what I call significant immediate value, greater closure, starting with improved creation, because with this they no longer have to ask their shareholders for permission on this, what is their opinion on where it is find the agreement and what are the latest updates? Yes, I got a call yesterday after a first night. I once spoke to Occidental, in fact, since we can go yesterday Sunday, they told me they were going in this direction, which I like, but I have nothing to do with it.

I mean, we committed 10

bill

ion and it had nothing to do with how they would do it. frame your offer how much they offered or anything else that all they knew was that they were sure they could get ten billion dollars from us if they completed the deal without an article one of the parts of the letter that Vicki Holub, the president and CEO, Occidental sent in its letter to Anadarko I was a little surprised with what still appears to be a hostile offer. There are no good faith conversations that appear to be taking place between them based on their letters.

She said we are still perplexed. Given their apparent resistance to getting much more value for Anadarko shareholders, which has been clearly expressed through our interactions over the last week, it seems to me that this remains a hostile bid. As I understand it, take into account the first thing you heard. about this was that we can go on Friday, as Brian White had called us, he said that the Occidental people like to talk to you and I spoke to them on Sunday a week ago yesterday, I understand that Anadarko and Occidental had talked a lot before, long before the Chevron bed. and we're talking about a transaction and then Chevron made an offer that Anadarko accepted, but Anadarko was for sale, I mean, they and that's how it ended up, they had talks about something itself with Occidental, as I understand it, and then they were talking. maybe they were talking to more than two parties, I don't know, but they decided they were willing to sell, I'm sure, obviously, subject to price and they accepted that offer and Occidental felt they had a better offer. and apparently that's where things are, but I don't know some of the details, part of the idea behind this was that Occidental could get approval from its shareholders because its shares were under pressure, some of the shareholders obviously. did not like the deal by using their cash instead of issuing as many shares as they had originally anticipated, which will save them from having to go to their shareholders to ask permission for this and, as they say in their own letter, certainly increases the certainty that This agreement is carried out and eliminates some of that uncertainty.

Yes, I would also think that the shareholders who own Occidental are bullish on oil over the years and would probably clean up the Permian Basin because they have such a significant portion of their assets there, so the idea that they will reduce will use less stock and more cash as part of the deal, although they will receive the cash from us, but I think it is net if I had been a starter at Occidental over time, I would probably like that type of deal like at Berkshire. I hate their stock, so generally speaking, if any company we own buys something, we like it better when they buy it in cash than when they use stock because we like their stock a lot.

I'll see what the reaction is to this, but I imagine it had been a stock offering to begin with. I don't think people will write their shareholders, but the shareholders will speak, but I think that shares their shareholders. I would like the change Andrews received a question from Beckon Studio to Andrew Hi Warren. I was just curious if you were surprised that Anadarko hadn't engaged with Occidental on this at this price and also if there was a price that you would think about. that Anadarko instead of Occidental should not pay, which means that if Chevron went back there, you know, five times the size of oxen, I think they could just write a check and this could end if they wanted, but if the price were to go up I know that you will ultimately get preferred stock, is there a price at which you wouldn't view it favorably?

We have committed the ten billion dollars of 100%, but we do not have any control nor do we want any control over what Occidental did with our 10 billion in terms of reading, there is nothing in our agreement that states that they have to go back to us and really ask for permission to do anything. It's an extraordinary deal, but that's how we make them and in that sense and They get our ten billion if they close the deal without a bow and don't have to consult us, that certainly doesn't need our vote, they don't need it. It was a matter of courtesy.

I have to call. he said yesterday, but it wasn't a matter of necessity on his part, that's one of the advantages of dealing with Berkshire. I mean, we can do things that other people don't like to do and that their lawyers don't like them to do, and this is not a deal, but our lawyers would have written whether this deal is a bet on the Permian Basin and the oil prices or is it just a bet that it's great to have an eight percent preferred well. I'm Gregg, but a preferred percentage in any oil. it's about his bet on long-term oil prices more than anything else.

It's also a bet on the fact that the Permian Basin is what it appears to be and all that kind of stuff, but oil prices will determine that. If almost any oil stock is a good investment over time, whether it's Exxon or some Wildcat Rover, that oil goes down a lot, that can't be solved for almost nothing and if it went up a lot, you make a lot of money and you edit, it's not . What you will do next week or next month or next year is buy reserves that extend into the future, so you have to have a view of oil over time and Edie Charlie and I have some opinions on that, Not very specific because they are not very well informed, but yes, we feel good about doing the financing, why don't you buy it yourself?

It's only a thirty-five billion dollar deal and you have 110 billion and cash lying around. It could have happened if it was a bow husband, but we wouldn't jump into any other deal that we just found out about because someone came to us and looked for financing. No, we hope, we hope that people will approach companies, but I had no idea what this transaction was. was going to happen, I mean, we could go on Friday when I got the call from Brian Moynihan. Well, he had read in the newspaper about the agreement, but I have never had any contact without an R: of any kind.

David Faber reported last week that you had said you would offer up to $20 billion, double the $10 billion you made in this deal, that's the case if they needed it, but I think, I mean, obviously They have an agreement with the Bank of America that called us. I don't know anything about that deal, I just know that eBay is as fixed as that financing would be if there was a different kind of thing, but what do I mean to some except that? I would also be very happy. If someone calls tomorrow and needs 20 billion, Western only needed the 10 billion, that's fine, but you like to do these deals in larger sizes, not smaller sizes, exactly back to Andrews' point, this is there to always, it doesn't matter if the offers go up.

No matter what happens down the road, your $10 billion is in this deal, no matter what, yes, lawyers don't write deals like this, but we tell you there is no material adverse change, there is no if the stock market closes, but Steel closes, we are there, we are there under all circumstances and we have not written any exit, but that is part of the appeal of doing business with Berkshire and, furthermore, we do everything ourselves, so It is not something that is a package between ten parties and each one comes and has to get your permission to make changes and all that when they came to my office at ten o'clock on Sunday that we did on Sunday they knew that if we agreed What We did at eleven o'clock, they knew that Berkshire had a percentage of honor and now they had their own board of directors meeting the next night, but they could tell their board of directors: "You will receive ten billion dollars from Berkshire, if you reveal that you don't" .

You don't need to think about it, obviously, a lot of stocks are under some pressure, from what you were seeing in these Chinese trade talks, what are the implications of all that action that on a stock that is under pressure today, Apple stock , yes I want to take a look at the chart closed on Friday at two eleven seventy five this morning, the offers at 204 ninety one, the demand is at 205 ten and that is because China has been a very important component for Apple . Tim Cook spoke in last year's latest earnings. week about how things seem to be improving there Tim Cook also traveled to Omaha this weekend he was here for the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting is thefirst time here but for Berkshire Apple is now the largest investment they have in their stock portfolio Berkshire is also the third largest investor in Apple stock, so when we sat down with Tim Cook this weekend I had the opportunity to ask him what he thought and how he discovered that Berkshire was the first to buy Apple shares by listening. probably like you did, that 13f comes around and someone tells me about it and, oh, this is really cool, Buffett is investing in Apple.

You know, we welcome all shareholders, but we run the company for the long term, so the fact that having the best long-term investor in the stock is incredible because our interests are aligned and then if I met Warren before , but we had no idea we were looking. In the company, they obviously do all that secretly and have their own method of doing it, and it's been a privilege and I'm so happy that they accumulated what happened when you found out if there were conversations in the office , if there was something high. five or it was a oh boy now what seemed like a recognition in a way and an honor and a privilege and I don't want to say that it was a happy way, I mean, wow, it's more Buffett is not investing in the company and yeah, and it felt great, I think for the whole company because we knew he didn't do it.

He has been very clear that he did not invest in technology companies or companies that he did not understand. He's been totally clear about that and obviously he sees Apple as a consumer company and in a different way. I think that's really special. Warren, what did you think when you heard this? Because when I told you that we were going to tell you how I found out, you said, "Oh, well, I'd like to hear the story." You never talked to him about that and that, not that specifically. No. I've gotten to know him a little over the years.

He had seen it maybe at least once a year. and maybe twice a year and I spoke to him on the phone several times and Salmon Ladder I sent him a speech by Martin Luther King a few years ago that was lost to history, it was fantastic and I thought you would enjoy it. but no, I didn't, I didn't call him while we were shopping. I try to stay as quiet as possible. What would I buy anything? China, although a big problem for Apple, is why the stock was under pressure earlier this year in the Late last year, last week, on the earnings call, it certainly sounded like they thought China, The situation there was improving, what does this news today mean to you?

Well, the important thing is really what the relationship is with China, three years, five years, ten. Twenty years from now, I mean, all of this comes in and it's certainly hard for me to imagine that the two most important countries in the world would do dumb things over a long period of time, but you could say that the possibility always exists that there are miscalculations, egos, national pride or whatever and things escalate. I don't think that will happen. I know it shouldn't happen. I think it's a bit likely, but that would be bad. It's going to be bad for everything Brooks owns, I mean, it's not an Apple thing nor is it going to have a very negative effect on our economy or global economies and there are chain reactions of sorts of things so I don't think it will.

This will happen, but I don't think it will be a zero. You'd probably say it would be bad for virtually every company Berkshire owns, but Apple is in a pretty unique position because it's front and center because it's already become a potential target. For some of these things, do you think Apple is at special risk or not? Well, I mean, obviously, in terms of our electric service in Iowa, it's going down, we would have a very minor effect relative to the other types of businesses, but ripple effect if you're in a recession and it affects everything almost eventually, so which I think is very reckless, it's like having a nuclear war that you don't want to say ha ha ha, you know, if you're in Canada why aren't we attacking the United States or something like that?

It's impossible to contain it if you have two superpowers and in trade and by and and and you can't predict exactly how it spreads. Apple shares are down three percent this morning. I'm just looking at a chart, yes that's good, because they are buying back shares and when they buy back shares our interest increases and we don't pay a dime. I love it, you know? and obviously it is better to buy it for double what they have. they said they will buy they have reauthorized up to seventy-five billion dollars in additional shares your fine you are not in favor of that I should say wildly I am in favor let's talk a little more about share buybacks not only with Apple but in general because it is a question that came up quite often this weekend at the annual meeting that buybacks may be the dumbest thing in the world or the smartest thing I've ever seen, but are they just buybacks by the company or just like purchases from us, are they dumb at one price and they are smarter than another price and I like it when companies I like it when we invest in companies where they understand that many companies just buy back and buy back, you know it's the right thing to do and some shareholders and their brokers encourage them to do it and buy back can be done can be smart at Apple they have been smart and warm we talked in the last hour about what China Tariffs can mean for companies and what they mean for Berkshire, but we are seeing the markets down almost 500 points this morning and for people who are just waking up and just trying to figure out what this means for them for their portfolios. your businesses today I'm sure you have some questions, what can you tell them?

What do you say when you look at the markets? I guess right now the Dow Jones is down 460 points. Well, what I'm saying is that if you own a farm and you're worried about something on your farm because you read the paper this morning or you own a perfectly decent business in your town and you're worried about something that you think you should worry about selling your business today because then you should think about I'm worried about thinking about selling stocks, but if you look at stocks as businesses, since you own little pieces of why you should be solid based on headlines of any kind, I mean, if you expect a business, If you expect the farm to be a good investment over ten years, if you expect an apartment building to be a good investment over ten years, and if you want a marketable security that is an interest in the business and you expect that business is a good business over ten years, there is no point in feeling good or bad about what stock prices do in one day unless you have extra money and they go down and then you feel better because you can buy more of them cheaper, as if I could buy the farm right next door cheaper than I would.

I love that if you were a farmer, normally it's an analogy that I understand and agree with, but this time, in relation to a particular farm, I would be quite concerned if I were the farmer trying to figure out if he should plant soybeans. or yes I think that this time I will be able to earn enough money to get the things back. The tariffs have hit farmers especially hard, and many of them have said they support the president. They want us to get to a better situation, but many of them are also in a position where they were already asked to give a lot, they thought we were about to reach an agreement and they hope that when they make decisions for this planting season they will have something Well, it's true that businesses in general have improved markets and programming and the farmer hasn't participated in that, so this has been a very good economy for a long time.

I mean, we've been coming back for eight or nine years and the companies just kept getting better. The best interest rates have been low for company stocks, they have gone up and the farmer hasn't participated in the same way, so maybe I shouldn't have used that example, but if you have a decent business, I mean, you buy a business you don't have. buy a stock that moves around you, you know and people understand it, but then they behave like it's bad news when the business goes down in price, if you had half a stake in a wonderful business and the person from which the other half came. and they were depressed by these headlines today and also my part of the business is much cheaper than yesterday because I think this whole thing is going to end the world just say here I wish you were proud of being cheaper you know the business will be here in five years and in ten years and all the headlines you don't know what the world will be like in three years or five years or ten years what you do know is not the United States is going to grow over time and companies are going to do well in general and if you own decent businesses you will make money, that's a great long term prospect, but short term not just for stock prices, even for companies that are trying to think about their quarterly profits or try to figure out how will be able to pay for some items or how the relationship with the supplier will work at this point could have an impact and they are fairly new terms.

Obviously, where they thought rates could be increased, they had loaded more inventory. I mean, you make business decisions, but you don't make a decision about whether to buy or sell the business if you have a good business and you have, if you're going to own the business for ten years, you're going to see a lot of terrible headlines, you know, I bought my first business in 1942, they didn't realize I did it, but just Imagine all those headlines at that time in the world. You know the Philippines was falling. I mean, we were losing the war and America is leaving.

The new children will look better than you and your grandchildren, but better than them and in general. Generally speaking, productive assets are going to be worth more in this country and if you own a diversified group of productive assets you will be fine as long as you don't read the newspapers, although an hour ago you said that the liquidation when the Dow Jones fell about 500 points It was not an improper liquidation it was not exaggerated at that time if we really get around to raising tariffs well India it may not be improper I mean day or week but it shouldn't.

I don't have the slightest idea how to buy and sell stocks during a day, a week or a month. I know how to buy companies over a long period of time. I'll be wrong about some of them, you won't be wrong about America. In terms of that, when you look at the markets today, if you see cheaper prices, that would mean you would buy more shares than you could have bought last week. Yes, a few more levels reached levels below which it could have been. I will always react well to lower prices, but if I like it, I like to buy a business.

You know, if I could buy this hotel we're in and they lower the price, that's good news or bad news for me if I like buying hotels. so, but the fundamental point some people understand, some people don't, but when you are buying a stock that you want, you are buying something that is moving or is in a contract has a target price, you are buying part of a business if you are you are right about the business, you know that crazy price, you can be right about the stock, as long as you don't do stupid things over the weekend a lot of questions came up about stock buybacks, people were asking specifically about Berkshire, why don't you do it?

Buy back more Berkshire stock, especially when you have a hundred and ten billion dollars in cash on hand. What is your answer? Well, we want to buy, we will only do so on the Berkshire side if we think the shareholder the next day is or claims to be richer later. We have bought the stock, in other words, we bought it for a little less or maybe a lot less, but at least a little less than what it is really worth and we are not setting out to buy a certain amount at which we set out to buy shares. prices below intrinsic value for sure, now intrinsic value for sure is not something accurate to the penny or it's probably a 10% band or something like that and my partner Charlie Munger, if you asked us to give you a piece of paper with The intrinsic value per share wouldn't be the same number, but it would be close and we would both have the band or something if you buy them both at the figure, you know, if we have a dollar and you will sell me yes and we put it on the table and you can't reach it for a while you say well I can't reach it it's also my share for ninety-five cents I'll give you a ninety-five cents, you know, she's worth $1.

Yeah guys, so it's not complicated, maybe it's beyond my ability to figure out the intrinsic value of certain types of businesses, but with Berkshire I have a reasonable idea and I tried to give the shareholders the same information that I consider important to calculate which may now change, presumably who wanted to change up over time because we held back and said we should generate more value, but that's the question, first of all, you have to have the cash you need. I need to run the business, I mean, Steve Jobs called me once, I mean, he called me, I don't know how many years ago, but I even think he was thinking about buying back shares and I said, Steven, there's only two questions, I said, you know .

Have everythingthe business, all the money you need to build the kind of business you have in your head for the next five or ten years and all it says is we have a lot of money and then I said the second question. Their shares are selling for less than they're worth and he said they're Allianz, so for a lot less than they're worth and I said, well, you answered your own question and you answered with a bottle, we need, we need the money that we have. Actually, we are here to

full

y develop our business and we have opportunities to do it, forget it, you know, build the new planets and do it, maybe the cash will come later, where you can buy things and secondly, if he said that actions do not.

It's not really cheap. What is the reason for buying it? Did you buy back shares after that? He didn't like it. I think he expected me to give him a different answer, but I think he maybe expected a different answer. It's interesting that you say that because Tim Cook the current CEO of Apple was here this weekend and we had the opportunity to ask him about the stock buybacks also because the stock buybacks have been such an important business for Apple that they have invested so much cash on that and announced last week in earnings that we would be buying back an additional $75 billion in Apple stock or at least have authorized the buyback of that amount again.

We sat down with Tim Cook this weekend and here's what he had to say about it to hear from Warren, this is a funny debt story going back to 2012. I was in the CEO role, maybe a year or so . We had a growing amount of cash. I think we just cost 100 billion market rate. My memory is correct and I was and I was getting. a lot of input from a lot of different people, as you can imagine, and when I don't have experience in something, I always make a list of people who I think are the smartest people I can contact to talk to and get advice and Warren was on the At the top of the list, as you can imagine, I had never met Warren before, so I got his number.

I called Omaha and told him I wasn't sure if you would take a call, you know? Calling out of the blue, he doesn't know me from Adam, but he took the call and I had a great conversation with him and that was the first time I met Warren and he was very clear with me. I still remember it. He said, "let me fix it, if you think your stock is undervalued, you should buy it and I thought that was the easiest way to look at it, so here's what we do: First and foremost, we take care of our people and we take care of the company in the future of the company and we have been investing a ton both in this country and in other countries.

We are going to spend three hundred and fifty billion dollars in the United States and build their sites and we just found such a new expansion in Austin and so on, so everything. that's number one, and then if we have money left over, we look to see what else we do, part of what else they do, he said it's to make acquisitions and what I didn't realize is he said they're making an acquisition every week. or two, they make a lot of small, like he said, they've made twenty to thirty acquisitions in the last six months, small acquisitions that they don't really talk about and they don't tell people things about themselves, you knew if you look at the 10-. q and you know you can see, but they make a lot of acquisitions, yes, and I expect Berkshire to make a lot of acquisitions and I would rather buy a It's a more attractive business than buying our own shares at their intrinsic value of the business if our shares fall much below that.

I still have this strength and fortunately I can do both, but why can an executive pay if he says we are going to spend ten billion? dollars buying stocks and then not paying attention to the price at which they buy them, they wouldn't buy any other business that way and therefore we are price sensitive, on the other hand when the price is right there is no easier way . to make money for your shareholders you say you like Apple buying back shares so you think the price is there well they have done a great job they have done a fantastic job they have made their shareholders much richer because Kim has done it aggressively when the price was right, what do I mean, how do you know in hindsight?

If she knows and how can she tell when a company is doing a bad job at buybacks and if she has to be able to figure out how to value these guys. correctly it's easier than you're making it to tell the truth about the dress if you look back and I was a director of the company but coca-cola kept buying back its shares at a time when it didn't make sense if you look back over the years previous ones, they just had a tremendously good idea of ​​buying back a future company, it only had a market value of, you know, less than ten billion and they bought a lot of shares and were aggressive about it, but I fell in love with the idea and I was a director at that time and, but they are one of many, I mean, the same thing happened, you'll add every eight.

It's interesting, sometimes it's hard for CEOs to be objective. own stock price and they think this, but they think that the higher it sells, the better you will know and that's a good way to feel example if you are buying back and you bought at high prices when coca-cola was buying back shares and it turned out that it was too high a price and you are a director. Did you know that at that point you had a pretty good idea why he didn't say something? Well, maybe I made some comments, but the management did. he did a sensational job, I mean that's one of the reasons he got so high, they did a great job, they made me a ton of money and if you burp too often at the table you don't get invited to parties anymore , which is the difficulty, I think probably with anyone it's just that you can't be a director if you look, maybe you're an activist or something, but yeah, people don't like it when you talk and some CEOs like it a lot less. that others, some CEOs really encourage a good amount of dialogue and others, you know, make sure that all the important things leave at 5 o'clock 12 1 you have to leave at 12 to catch your plane explain six hours later that's interesting the forums are run in different ways, have you known every board you've been on, which ones have been well run and which ones haven't, some that are well aged in some ways and may be financially foolish?

I mean, you have some assistant managers who really have money sense and then I have others who are very good managers, but they are not good. I always love it when I hear management, you know, and I asked the guy what he's doing with his own money and he says, well, I couldn't. Possibly you know that you like stocks and everything. I gave it to someone else and then he goes out and does a five billion dollar acquisition or something like that. I really don't want to think about just buying a large amount of stock. good at some arts, that's true for our managers, we have fantastic managers, some of them are good at bold acquisitions and some of them would be terrible.

Do you let those who would be terrible at it go ahead and do both very often? some of them don't have a great operational sense, they don't exactly have a money sense, you know you talk to a lot of managers, CEOs, and they don't want to manage their own stock portfolio, those are decisions and those are allocation decisions. capital and they know a lot about business and they know how to value things that you would think would be good investors, but I used one that I thought was a great partner and when I was running a previous ship a long time ago and I had stock options and I regularly exercised and took money and bought Berkshire, well, it was actually, you know, it's unique to have someone who understands both the operations and the monetary side of some I really do and I'm thinking I would say that Tim Cook, for example, does X-rays, has real knowledge, I mean, he has a minor operating knee and someone in mind too, what about Greg's capable energy?

I asked because You know Berkshires in a unique position and you have people doing all kinds of things, some managing money, some managing operations, yeah, can anyone do it? Both guys have extreme financial aspects but I don't want to freak out I understand I can't help but try welcome back to the squawk box President Trump tweeted just a few minutes ago United States but has been losing for many years between 600 and 800 billion dollars a year in trade now with China we lose 500 billion dollars sorry I'm not going to do that anymore, take a quick look at the futures they are still going down about 500 points 471 Point 472 Nasdaq down 161 that's a P down 50 I guess that Becky, if I were to ask Warren a question, just be those trade deficit numbers, you can know that we get stuck and talk about whether they're good or bad or how to fix them and it's a symptom of what it really is a symptom rather than a because of what is happening with China.

I was wondering, Warren, you've done very well over the years with the status quo with the way the United States approaches China and trade with China. Berkshires did very well, we have all done very well, everything is good. Do you wish Trump hadn't confronted China at all? and we're just not addressing any of these long-term problems with intellectual property or you know what problem we're trying to solve, but I just wish we'd left it alone and just let Berkshire do its business. how have you been doing it or do you think there is any reason to confront China with China in the United States over the next hundred years.

I can tell you two facts about it: there will be two superpowers in the world and we will always have some. tensions with them and it may well be about intellectual property certainly in the last 20 years or it's around 30 years and it will be about trade, it will be about policies that they are carrying out, you know, in terms of their neighbors or what we are doing, there's no way you're coming to such dominant countries in the world without them having done it, unless you just don't know, there will be tensions, there will be negotiations and sometimes we.

We'll both come out thinking we lost, but it's inevitable, so I and how you play the game if you're negotiating with some people who are tough negotiators on the other side, I mean, not that those aren't easy decisions to make, I mean, If you're doing with work you know that no one really wants to strike, it's bad for both sides, but sometimes things develop at that point, so I think you should get used to the fact that if you're a young person, we'll see a lot different tensions over time and a little bit in the people involved and in the specific details of the situation, but every time we sit down you know it's not going to be like a garden party Warren, did you mention that there are going to be times when Both sides will walk away and feel like they lose.

There will be times where both sides might walk away and feel like they win because that's usually the sign of success where you want both sides to feel like they want to be and you. I know the idea of ​​a negotiation is to take something that you have that the other person needs and and and and in a sense to exchange that for something that they have and that you need and and it will be constant and and and and there are times when it's going to be tense, it's just nature of the things that you have, yeah, a very different level when you're negotiating nuclear arms reductions or something like that.

I mean, we know that it is in the interest of reducing nuclear stockpiles. and all that, but that doesn't mean it's easy and you, you, you, you try to come to agreements that are good for both parties, but that's not always easy. I mean, I try to think about that in this scenario and it is. It may be particularly different and difficult in this scenario because for a long time we have been dealing with China as if it were not yet a superpower and that is why we have been giving them better sides of the agreements, it is really difficult for everyone.

All of a sudden we say we're going to get some of that back, what do you get out of this deal when we're trying to change a negotiation that we think has been unfair for this? Well, it's hard for us to accept the hardest fact. accept the fact that, after World War II, the Soviet Union was a superpower in terms of military power and, as you know, obviously there are all kinds of tensions involved in that and in the negotiations, and it remains a concern. that you have to do it, we have the two largest nuclear reserves in the world and you worry in terms of mistakes that are made.

I mean it's a big game and with China it's overwhelmingly an economic game and it's an economic game that we don't think about. We would be 40 or 50 years ago, I mean the Chinese, the growth of their economy has been extraordinary and they do some things that we don't like in relation to that and, sometimes, you have to be tough to make changes and we do some things that they don't like, but it's a reality now and it will be a bigger reality as the years go by and it's very easy for it to become a big political problem, I'm serious, so you'll have people fan the flames for their own personal interest in politicsor your own interest in business.

It's easy to navigate, but leadership has to take on the major issues, having said that the economy has held up very well. Against the strains we've seen up to this point, the jobs report was incredibly strong on Friday, the latest GDP report was also very strong, so you can't stop America, you can't stop China either, but You can't stop the United States. I mean, we are good, we live as a country. You know, it's extraordinary what we have compared to 30 or 40 years ago, which even in agriculture makes it difficult because we become more productive all the time and that tends to be depressing. prices, but this country is going to move forward.

I mean, there's no doubt about it, but China is making some progress and the way to try to do it is to do it in a way that maximizes what both countries can do well and more trade. It's better, but trade in specific industries can hurt specific industries here and that's a big problem, that the president, the heads of both countries, have to be the educators in chief and have to explain why trade is good for the population as a whole and it can be terrible for people in certain industries and that a rich country takes care of those people who many people on Wall Street are not going to be so optimistic about this news today.

I was reading some reports from Goldman Sachs last night that said not only is this rapidly increasing the odds that we won't get a trade deal with China, but it's also increasing the odds that Trump could be seen announcing that he's pulling out of NAFTA or imposing tariffs. to cars over European imports, what do you think of that? What would that mean? It is the problem of escalation and all we have the problem with is nuclear weapons. I mean escalation and it becomes increasingly dangerous as people feel more and more threatened and their own local political situation demands more. and more action, I mean, that's the dynamic that you face every time you get to these big problems between countries and that requires the wisdom of the leaders, but to some extent it requires the wisdom of the people, I mean, and then and how Leaders conveyed people and how they behave, but these kinds of things will happen to us.

Obviously, it has happened to us and we occasionally turned into wars in the past. We can't do that anymore in the nuclear world. You can not. He gets to that point and at any moment the same person realizes it, but he doesn't want to, he doesn't want to get too close to that powder keg. We, MCA, also better known as new NAFTA, that agreement is there, but now I think Pelosi is saying. They are not going to vote on it at this time. Are you in favor of the new knife working well? I was in favor of the original.

We are very fortunate to have Canada and Mexico bordering us. that and then the oceans on the other side, I mean, it's geographically, it's a very attractive position in comparison, our countries are situated around the world and we have a lot of common interests and we're the big guy in the game and there's the big man In the game, we should do more than our share to make sure our neighbors grow and prosper at a rate that is consistent with ours. It doesn't mean they are equal, but that when they live better, they live better and trade with Mexico and Canada. .

It is very important that we treat them as neighbors and not as adversaries. We live in Omaha, where we've been talking for the last hour and a half with Warren Buffett, who is the president. and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, we're joined right now by Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, he's also president of Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, president of The Daily Journal, and he's on the board of Costco, and Charlie, thank you. Thank you very much for being here with us this morning. I'm glad to be here. It's great to see them. We're coming out of the annual shareholders meeting and obviously we're going to talk to you about the news of the day, but first I'd like to.

Taking the opportunity while I have you two here together just to talk a little bit about what your partnership has meant to each other. How many years have they not been partners with Charlie? I met him in 1959 and we instantly became partners. Thinking and then over the years we've developed all these financial relationships, but I knew right away, Charlie, that we were going to be, we were in sync and we've lasted a lot longer than I thought, but yeah, but we've had We've been. incredibly fun together, we've done all kinds of things, some work, some haven't worked and we've never had an argument, sometimes we disagree on things but we've never had an argument and you never second-guess. -guess, I try not to doubt him, it's a great relationship, Charlie, 60 years old, did you know at that first meeting that you would have a partnership?

Well, I knew we were on the same page, but it's been very lucky that a little bit of the company became as big as it did, hasn't it? We've had the streak we've had. How is? I think we have a lot of talent and all that, but we've also had a tailwind of good luck. What is it like in terms? of how they use each other as sounding boards, how does that work here? If they collaborate in their own way, they are better off. Einstein wouldn't be able to do what he did if he didn't have several people to do it. talking to him is more fun - yes, the ideas are better clearly, but it's also more fun and when we disagree, Charlie says: you'll end up agreeing with me because you're smart and I'm right, they're both pretty.

They both act pretty one-sided, although they both do their own things and then grow closer to each other. He knows what I'm thinking, I know what he's thinking, and any of us would do something that we really think others would object to. we could feel that with something - no, but we're in sync, let's talk about a deal you made recently in the West, right where you agreed to back them, cut that deal and then called Charlie, but you knew what he was already thinking I didn't want to wake him up Doctors in the costa I thought it wasn't very verified Yes or I knew I would be in favor of that deal I'm sure I know How did you know that?

How do you know so much about each one? others and what do you think well Occidental is in my part of the world and of course I have followed to some extent the developments that are interesting and what do you think of the accidental agreement why you like it I like it why I think it has potential because well, because I think that Occidental is right in wanting to do it to buy the Permian Basin to get more assets at all and what do you like about the Permian Basin? It has a lot of, I don't like it, desert just for its For your own good, I asked Warren this today if there's a great deal in the Permian Basin, it's a great deal, why didn't you buy a Darko?

Nobody asked us, that may sound strange, but who knows if they would come. for us, you know, we normally wait until people come to us, so it's not that if we wanted to buy in the field, necessarily then, you know, we start marking and flying and everything that westerner knows a lot about the basin and we don't really like to have someone with us who knows anything about it, yes, a word, Salomon, we had something called Anglo-American that some promotional operation, but there is no person who sells it anyway, but there was something, but It wasn't and it wasn't either and the Swiss actually stood up to the Swiss and they went to the directors and they had a big plan to drill in Russia and we were going to put up a lot of money and send it to Siberia in the hopes of getting the money back. oil and Charlie said, you know who that is.

Anglo and who is Swiss, he was Swiss and of course none of these people were, I mean they were lying in the name of the company and I didn't check, so what was a Salomon board? Charlie pointed out and sent a lot of money to Siberia and they got a little jar of oil, the guy came to see me one time after I became president, he showed me this magnificent one, you know exactly the kind of oil they wanted, that's the only one oil that the Weavers saw and was producing 50,000 barrels. one day towards the end they just kept it off and yeah and come on swiss anglo swiss no fishermen no swiss just wise to the end let me ask you about Occidental and steel in particular if you like the Permian Basin but you have Also both commented on moments where you believe you have paid too much in the past.

Is there a number that seems correct to you? This is paying too much for the Permian Basin to Charlotte, of course, we always think that way all the time. Yes, but it's nowhere near the price they're paying right now. Yeah, we don't know, we don't know, it might be the last dollar. All we know is that we are willing to do it. You both have made some comments. You recently told us that you think the prices are too high in terms of what you have to pay for a premium to buy a company directly, it is because there is more competition to buy companies from people who use other people's money and because therefore they are less price sensitive and they are willing to borrow much more and are offered the possibility of borrowing much more with less than the agreements, the competition is tough and makes it part of the advantages and none of the idea . of none of the downsides, I think they make money off the downsides, yeah, so that's really terrible competition for us, it's getting worse every year, that's why you're sitting on a lot of cash at this point, some of the residual .

On the other hand, you know I would rather have a lot of common stocks than bonds and of course I think stocks are compared to bonds and you have to compare them. They're the old lady that we've talked about about bond yields and the fact is gravity and when they're very low, there's very little rising gravity to drive stocks down and that condition that exists today, you know, weeds out so much weed. in America, American businesses then get 3% for 30 years from the government and people were making those decisions. all the time in the investing world that stocks actually in many cases seemed like perfectly smart investments Charlie, you're okay with that, sure, let's talk about some of the IPOs that have been hitting the market recently because there's been a little bit of fervor in many of them.

These IPOs have done very well, although not all Lyft stock is under pressure. Uber hits the market this week and Warren you mentioned this weekend and you talked again about how you had seen Uber about 18 months ago and conveyed that. Do you think about the new strawberry that will hit the market now? Well, because I looked, I don't really want to discuss that, do I? I don't have any special feeling about it than any other arrival in Martin, but I would say 54 years from now. Well, I don't think Berkshire has ever bought a delicious. I mean the idea of ​​saying that the best place in the world where I can invest my money is something where all the sales incentives are there, the commissions are higher, you know, the animal spirits are increasing, that's it.

It's going to be better than a thousand others. things I can buy where there is no similar sales enthusiasm and desire to close the deal and additional commissions. That's the best thing to buy on any given day. I mean, it is and I can't. Think about that time you ever bought an idea, yes, never good, but how could it be the best thing to use your money for on a given day? Is it something you have? They have everyone in the world pushing you. I know, it just doesn't make any sense. I mean, I'm not necessarily saying that what we're buying is going to work better, but there always has to be better things than a single problem if you're making a decision about investing if you can't find something among all the options we see that's better than something. that and as I say, you know, the commission is used.

I think now on this, but I'm talking about the highest commission that a stock seller gets on securities. was the new thing, so yeah, all this momentum, why don't we like to buy things? Nobody makes a dime, selling them to us, Charlie, just specifically on some of these companies and I'm not going to talk about Uber versus any of the others. but many of these companies are coming very late in the cycle, they have had a lot of private capital put to work up to this point and they still have massive losses and the need for more capital, which is even worse than that, some of them.

You have preference for each round, so the rounds are really fair, there are a lot of lies and modern finance, so you are not in favor of any of these big lies, what do you think of these? I'm asking you this because we have a lot of retail investors who look and see this and feel the enthusiasm behind it. It was about 5 euros, whatever you buy a share, let's say your bicycle and General Motors, 1.4 billion shares, I'll say the stock is a little bit below what you should be able to pull out a one-page sheet of paper and say, "I'm buying the General Motors company, that's $56 billion because what if you can't answer that question, If you can't write it, then continue." to anotherthing and if you are buying Berkshire you have to say I am buying Berkshire Hathaway for 500 billion dollars because and if the answer is not something you can write, you cannot say I am buying it because my neighbor thinks it is I have to go up or because you know about what everyone is talking about on CNBC this morning or whatever it is, I already like it, yeah, no, yeah, you have, yeah, that's the question you answer now when you shop, you know, buy groceries, buy everything As much as you can.

Answer that question, but if you can't answer it about something you're spending your savings on, it may be better here. Why should I do it? Why should I do it? Let me ask you, gentlemen, about a topic that came up. over the weekend at the annual shareholder meeting and that's the stock of Wells Fargo and just the company up to this point. I've gotten a lot of questions from shareholders asking me why you all have been supporting Wells Fargo without saying more about what happened. There Charlie, what do you think? Well, I think they're a good company and that's why they made a bad decision about an incentive plan.

I considered it an honest mistake, not a profound moral failure. Nobody was in my ranks at Wells Fargo, they just had a blind spot they had a blind spot when it became clear very quickly, although that's the problem, yeah, yeah, but we get it, right, they lost their jobs because of a blind spot and Uh, but I don't think Tim Sloan had a blind spot. I think he just lost his job because life is hard. You thought Dick Kvass. I don't like. You thought Dick Cavass had a blind spot. Yeah, sure. The next guy, John, stunk, yeah, but you don't think there was any criminal activity, of course, no, but a car like I tell you is full, and that was forgivable, they were under a crazy crazy system, The problem is solved now, I think so. a very, very, very high percentage of what it would be, certainly, the intention is correct, I mean, it has cost the shareholders a lot of money and they want to correct that when I came into Sol and I wanted to correct that.

I could never say it was over, even though people kept asking, it was over. I don't know, I wanted to finish. I hope it runs out and I'm trying to do it and I'm looking for things, but when you have 200, well. They have about 260 thousand people, it's a scary job running a city of 260,000 people without police and we've got some, we've got some things wrong in Berkshire now I don't know about the Charlie meats that this I all the time, you know, as soon as you find a bug, do something about it and sometimes that's unpleasant, but I have to do it.

I'm serious. I may have people in charge of doing it, but it's mine, yes, and you. do it too quickly. Is Wells Fargo different because it is a joint stock company and not an actual Berkshire company that you own outright of course we have no control over you you know what they do who should be the new CEO Charlie Well, have I been? taking it would have been Tim Sloan, but now they're going to get someone. Sometimes a new person is better and sometimes worse. I think half and half, yeah that's something, yeah I met him two weeks or more ago with four people including Betsy.

Duke, the president, and I never thought about the first time I ever met her in my life or talked to her, but we talked about it then and it's a difficult position to fill. What did she tell you that she spoke with the president? from Wells Fargo and I said what do you think, what's going on? No, they think they called me. I didn't call them. I mean, she was. I didn't launch into the topic, but they simply asked me what I thought. That was the first time they did better, but I. I thought about it and gave a suggestion or two and these people, but I suggested, well, I suggested publicly that it's not a Wall Street thing, not because they're not even good people on Wall Street, I just think. that politicians are looking for the next one to be a pot and for it to be good television or the right place in the campaign and they need someone to direct it and not carry the additional baggage of having a label on their forehead that says Wall Street, which will make half of the viewers applaud whoever heard at the top all this concern about China this is scaring the markets a little today Joe is right, it is a drop of less than 2% for the day, but still 460 points down as a number that catches your attention and when you look at the China markets dropping five and a half percent and seven percent, that's certainly something that's catching your attention today as well.

I can't think of three better people to talk to about this bill this morning. You've spent so much time going back and forth with China. You know the Chinese leaders very well and maybe you can understand what they are thinking about some of these things. Charlie, you've spent so much time excited about investing there and Bill, you've invested. There too, Warren, same thing, you three traveled there and spent this time. I wonder what you're thinking this morning hearing these headlines and Bill, you're the new guy at the table today, so I'll ask you. To start, what do you think about what you hear in this tweet and the potential for a real trade war?

I think good trade relations are incredibly beneficial for both countries and it is dangerous for people to think this is a zero-sum outcome. game and that is why I am hopeful that despite the latest announcement there will be a trade agreement in which the two countries can find ways to work together it is the most important relationship in the world both sides bring many strengths so I understand why the markets a little worried that these tariffs are going to go higher and higher when we first got the tweet, there were some initial reports that Lee and the Chinese delegation might not be coming here, that's what we heard last night.

I first heard a moment ago that the Chinese have confirmed that they will send that delegation this week, which in itself is good news, but how do the Chinese deal with this when they are forced when they are forced? In the face of a real force like I think yesterday's tweet was good. I'm not a negotiation expert, but it creates a dynamic where both sides could start escalating each other, which would be a loss for both sides, so you know you know. The week will be interesting, you know that they did it, although China is not a democracy, that the political dynamics do not allow them to give the impression that they are giving in to a unilateral position.

Charlie, you're an expert in negotiations, what do you do? Don't think hard, but hey, if you support, we put a tariff on trucks to Varennes, the Japanese are totally crushing the entire American auto industry and that lasted a long time, it wasn't the end of the world, so if we end up with some trade deal that involves some tariffs for both sides I'm not excited at all Rarely as part of normal life in general I think a good deal is better than a beautiful World War some tariffs are a thing 10% we look like our own The economy has been doing well even with the 10% tariffs that existed on those 200 billion dollars today;

They are 25% tariffs on potentially the more than 500 billion of imports that enter. Would that worry you about the American economy? Well I don't think they want a full scale tariff or one that is as high as both sides can make it, that would be tremendously stupid and if they are both a little disappointed with the negotiations they would feel a little mistreated, so they should feel what do you mean? ? They should feel mistreated by both sides as a deal is much better for war, trade war for both sides, they should get used to losing a little bit of face and come to some kind of deal, and I think they will.

Do you think we take a stance like the United States takes a stance with China up to this point? Well, I don't think Trump is totally crazy to say that sometimes tariffs are imposed to save some, no, since the end industry is right. that we have been on the losing side of the deal for some time, there are many Americans, I think he sees it more as a loss that we have a trade deficit and I don't think it's all automatic, so I don't totally agree with him, but I agree with Jonathan Barge War on what you think in terms of who pays the tariffs.

I mean, that has boosted the US Treasury, but a lot of those tariffs are paid by the companies that import the goods and then passed on to consumers, yeah, their attacks on consumers and as such, you know it changes what people buy, it changes where things are produced, it readjusts, you can readjust the world, you know it was through tariffs and generally speaking, I mean obviously there are exceptions. for key equipment, military equipment or you know, but in general I think that in a world that adapts to something very close to free trade, more people will live better than in the world with significant tariffs and tariffs that change over time.

I was subject to constant negotiations and second war of this heavy box on both sides yes, no, it is not a trade war, you mean a real war, yes, yes, but you must remember that, like our country, the United States applied tariffs for the first 150 years, that was all we had, this is not like that. something new and novel is coming this is an old topic is it a good thing or a bad thing well of course I prefer to have total good will and for everyone to get along, but I don't think it's the end of the world, there's something small The tension over The issue that has been going on since the inception of the country's bill has just said that he is not surprised by the market's reaction.

Justifies the same this morning. And you? Well, what do I care about a brief temporary reaction to one or more? Trade negotiations mean that there are so many little rebels in space-time. To me, if you look at Chinese stocks in one market with a drop of five and a half percent and in the other in the Shenzhen market with a drop of more than seven percent, they are our futures. they are going down, but it's still a drop of less than 2% this morning, does that mean it's more painful for China than it is for us? Well, I don't think China would like its market to fall as a result of a trade rampage.

I think people like This Deal better because they had this fuss today. The deal is that it sounds like a great alternative, but it certainly is. There has been a lot of friction along the way. The biggest may be how it is applied and at least among many. Of the trade negotiators and the negotiators in the United States who, when we have made agreements with China in the past, say things and then do not follow through, how can we ensure that if we have an agreement, it is really enforceable? I think China buying big is a pretty good place, it certainly worked well for the Chinese and I think it's desirable, but it's worth it, it works well.

We want China to prosper. Yes, we want it if you postulate a world where in the next 50 years China or for that matter the United States, but it feels like they are being abused and the word is not kept and yes, it is for one thing and then you want to ask for one more thing, I mean, you should always have done it. tension between the two countries we all don't disagree but you can't really you can't take it where it goes no if there is something running out of control and things can't get out of control partner but I guess I'll go back to try to find out which side you think he's right.

Nobody wants to say that. Does anyone believe that they are both right to be as worried as they are and predict that they will come to an agreement? Would everyone agree to the same thing? prediction, however, what do you think you know? It is a dilemma when it seems that you are reacting to an ultimatum that you know that in the Chinese case there are no elections scheduled so that their leader does not remain unelected simply because they have had to do so. take a tough stance in trade negotiations, you know, until recently the markets assumed that this deal would get done, so that's part of the reason you see the Delta, the fundamental reason would be that a deal got done and I you know I still rate it as likely I agree that bill deadlines are a bit complicated, so I mean yes, they do produce reactions and people and they may think you're responding to public opinion, they couldn't, no.

They can inflame people and then they start reacting on their own, difficult things, on the other hand, sometimes it's the best way to do things, a good sign, although it may be that they just said that the Chinese delegation will still come because I had real questions about it or doubts about it. After seeing that yesterday you want to carry out a negotiation so that it doesn't seem like the other person has to give in or something like that, the ideal is to make him a hero and still get the deal you want over the weekend at the annual meeting .

Meeting you two had an aside on stage, a lot of people noticed that they didn't follow up, so I thought we could do that. Here you were talking about Dairy Queen and how your presence in China is not large, but I do have a presence in China for Dairy Queen, it is a very large presence, but not for Berkshire Hathaway, no, but you made the comment, Warren, of who would have had a much bigger presence if there had been a big problem, he did it as part of Charlie, he was on the microphones, well, DairyQueen, no, not turning Dairy Queen into a global giant, yes, we have seen some good sized things in China.

I would do it anyway. You know, we've done a couple of things in China and Charlie has done more individually. It stands to reason, I mean, with the kind of capital that we have, the big markets outside the United States will be the place where something is most likely to get done and certainly China will be the largest market and then outside the United States and there . There should be opportunities there and I think we are someone in Berkshire. I think if they're looking for capital around the world, we're a very logical prospect. Why didn't that deal work?

Was it due to trade tensions? Don't go into detail about that thought. I would try. You will be the first to know in terms of what you do with your businesses. Do these trade conversations have any impact on you in your investments, even personal ones, because everyone has a big individual portfolio that you have and Charlie, I know you focus on others no, you focused a lot on China, does this dampen your enthusiasm? by Chinese investments in some way? They understood and liked from China and were looking for a lot of that, it was great. You know, we would be happy to get that call and we would go ahead and see if something happened, but that would be very interesting.

We, Bill, what about you? Well, I'm sure you know that, in parallel with the trade talks, there are talks about what the technology export regime will be like in terms of things like artificial intelligence, so I have some concerns about whether that will try to divide the Chinese. U.S. students, the general sentiment toward China right now has gone down a little bit, so there are companies or trade deals that have to go through a new process and they're talking about even making that stricter cefeo beyond, I think. yes. You know I'm, I'm We're worried that even kind of intellectual cooperation will slow down, well, we'll see where that goes, but it's just that if they take away our intellectual property at Dairy Queen, no, we can handle it.

We've talked a lot on our air recently about socialism vs. , capitalism defending capitalism, all the different political pressures that are building as we approach another election year and I thought maybe we could talk about that this morning; Several questions arose over the weekend about Warren's defense of capitalism. come out and say that you are a card-carrying member, a card-carrying capitalist in front of everyone, what do you think of the attacks we have seen up to this point on capitalism? Well, I guess I don't think people are exactly the same. I know what they're talking about, it's not capitalism, it's perfect, but if you look at what was here in 1776 and you look at what's here now, this country is an amazing job. in terms of deployment of resources and human ingenuity. and that is a product of the system and now that means that every decision must be made simply by open market determinants.

We know that obviously there is a need for regulation and there are things that have long-term costs that may not be incorporated, but the idea of ​​people unlocking their potential using the resources they have to create what we have now from what there was here two hundred and forty years ago, it is absolutely a miracle and yet what the three of us have seen in our lifetime and if we compare it to any centralized planned economy. You know, I think we won hands down and I think we just started with what capitalism couldn't produce in the United States, but I think it obviously needs certain rules and regulations.

Well, you did an

interview

. In Davos, with someone and me, you made a pretty harmless statement: you looked around, you thought capitalism was the best system and you can be attacked online by all these people who came out with these crazy statements about how you could say things like I want I mean, what do you think about climate when you see things like that, well some people think that when you defend capitalism you are defending the tax rates we have today and saying that higher absolute tax rates are more progressive tax rates which you don't agree with. agree with them.

I don't think Warren and I disagree that taxes could be made more progressive; In fact, we have been very explicit in some areas like the estate tax and have said that we think it would be a good thing. You have socialism where she returned from. It means that the state controlled the means of production and many people who promote socialism are not really using that classic definition, so what we are going to have is capitalism with some level of taxes, most people are not really arguing against it. capitalism. There may be some, but most people just say that taxes should change, although there is someone who I think is second and the Democratic Party right now, which was socialist until very recently, Bernie Sanders, well, regardless of whether he was a socialist throughout the term, now there are some monetary areas when you start saying that there shouldn't be billionaires, that you have some limit to wealth or something like that that goes beyond what I think and you could say I'm interested , but in the current ones a government needs to reallocate some resources.

I mean, the extreme case would be in World War II. I mean, that's the closest we've ever gotten to socialism. You had a Price Administration office. You had a war production. board, yes, but in peacetime you are always prepared for warnings, you do it through the government, the government needs to reallocate some resources, but the market system that exists under capitalism is an extraordinarily effective way and is proven to use human and other resources to produce incredible goods and Henry Ford was able to learn to come up with a system that could produce a couple million cars a year, but he could only use half a dozen, or his entire family could use 50.

I mean, had to produce a couple million cars that other people got deals for and that wouldn't have happened in my opinion. I think if you had created a government office in 1850 and given it a hundred years, you would have come up with something like the assembly lines of Ford and everyone else. the things that have happened human ingenuity is incredible and you want something that maximizes its use and then slows down some of the people may have evolved on their own Charlie, you have done the big test of how capitalism works in China when China copied Singapore and he left the farmers in their own plots and the manufacturers in their own businesses, etc.

China's productivity increased many times over and they went from rural poverty to modern extreme wealth and they did so by adopting a fair amount of capitalism without the The Democrat politician doesn't understand that he is crazy. Charlie, you said the same thing about how you think the private sector does much better than the government sector; However, many of these people running also want to make government much bigger. a fight with it or now well, as they say, if you love your post office, you will love socialized medicine, they don't necessarily want to make it bigger in terms of redistribution, they want the market system to be brutal and leave behind people who are Perfectly wonderful people who have no market-related talents and who are just plain unlucky, yeah, just plain unlucky, and in a rich society, believe me, if we have a war or something, we call those people up and you know, we don't tell them.

We pay practically nothing for them to go. fight for us and for that and then we want the products to slow down, but this is going to displace the textile worker that we used to have, so the role of the government does not necessarily become bigger, it can be in an important way to take care of the people who for one reason or another are left behind in a market system that they also considered to be essentially a huge source of wealth, goods and services, so how do you solve the problems or at least the perception of the problems, that there is a huge perception out there? and the American swelling right now obviously with the help of our government we are wiser and it would be wiser if the two sides did not hate each other so much anger drives out reason and there is cold and absolute fury between the politicians on one side and the politicians on the other hand is quite counterproductive that's why I don't allow myself to get angry with politicians how would you fix it well I just don't let myself get so angry well there I don't expect them to do the job of bursar better because Charlie and I have never done that to each other, That is, it is much better that we be angry with each other.

You'd know I'm trying to break their deals, you don't make my deal, it just doesn't work that way. I don't need a couple of alpha males to put up with bravado or these things to just cool down and take a little reputation hit and get the feathers, but we, Otto, should care about the people who don't break the system, but we want the system and many people are falling further and further behind because as capitalism advances it becomes more specialized and there is actually a greater difference between those who have and those who have not and those who have can take care of that at the moment interesting for both parties. and they basically agree that just yes, how do you get there, how to examine and come.

The tax credit can take a big leap in that direction. I mean, you know, Social Security, everything we've done various things over the years, we've gotten better, we've gotten better. Public school systems have shown us things that give people more equal opportunities and take care of the people who fall by the wayside. We just have to keep doing it right. You've spent a lot of time educating yourself on this. The country is trying to figure out how to fix it and how to make things work. Which is the answer? If that's one of the problems, we're not giving people the advantages they need before they get into that system.

How do we solve that aspect? Yes, I believe that better education is critical for America to live up to the dream of equal opportunity, and particularly as more and more of our students are inner-city and come from low-income households. income, we really have to take the initiative. The best teachers understand what they do and spread it. That is the best path towards equality reform. Progress has been fairly modest, but many of you know that you are smart people. It's not just about the technology, it's about helping teachers discover who they are. By doing things very well and spreading that even in the university system, we still have very high dropout levels and the way kids are caught early when they stray, certain Internet use.

I am hopeful in the area of ​​education, although progress has been slow. Surprisingly slow, yes, when we compare improvements in global health, which is the other big area for the Gates Foundation, with improvements in education. It has proven more difficult to achieve breakthroughs in the last decade. It was what you expected when you started. No. actually it's the opposite because global health involved going to poor countries whose governments are really weak and there's not even stability, there's some corruption which we thought would be a slow area to work on, but it's very important that we were surprised how much The progress has been in the overall statistics, like cutting child deaths in half in education, although there are some bright spots, some excellent schools, some are charter schools, some are using a new curriculum, the overall numbers, the U.S. math scores, dropout rates have moved only slightly.

Charlie just got back. To your idea of ​​people not hating each other so much and getting along, how do we make that happen? How do you try to move towards that? Because it seems like things like that, I think you have to do it one relationship at a time and, of course, I think it would help, but both parties didn't commit suicide in the primaries. We have these extremists on both sides and they take over every party. It's just horrible. The California Legislature has two types of evil. He kicked out everyone else. This is not a good system.

Why did it end like this? Particularly in California. Hate. Much hate. Is it our district? How would you disappear as part of a majority? It is simply a wonderful product of hate. Gentlemen, just take a look. In what we've been watching today in the markets, obviously things are under a little bit of pressure today, but we've been watching markets much higher if we get back to the Christmas Eve low and the concern of what the Fed might or might not do, since so the Fed has sounded much more dovish and I wonder if you couldn't talk a little bit about your own view of the markets and again, Bill.

I've talked to Warren and Charlie before about this. a bit, so how about your opinion when you hear that the Federal Reserve probably won't raise interest rates anytime soon? How does that change your perspective on stocks or stocks versus Treasuries? Well, the interest rate is likegravity and all of these valuations are At the beginning of the year, people didn't think that the ten-year bond would be where it is today and that has provided a big boost, so it's a great first quarter for US stocks which, if we look ahead forward or at These valuation levels are very high, making it difficult to see the brand gaining much in the coming years.

I think people should have fairly modest expectations about what their portfolios will generate in the year ahead. You changed your position, so in your own portfolio, as a result of this, have you done anything important? No, it's a very equity-oriented portfolio and it's overweight in the US even though it has a lot of foreign exposure, you know it's a bullish portfolio and the US economy will eventually do well, you know, luckily, even if we have a few years here where the markets aren't doing so well, you know we've been Luckily we have a cushion, the foundation continues to spend lavishly, but I'm praying.

I'm surprised how high the ratings are if you look broadly, Charlie, do you think that? Well, sure, I think if you lower interest rates to zero and all the countries print money like crazy, that raised the vote on assets for everyone and I think it's really that they had nothing else to do in the Great Recession, so that they took the only weapon they had and you aggressively, I don't. I think we should discuss because that made people who were already rich richer and that was not done for a purpose or anything like that and I think that will correct or automatically do you think we should continue to use that weapon aggressively, that is?

What President Trump would like to happen is that he wants them to cut interest rates again. I think he said 1% and also push once again for quantitative easing, but I'm very afraid that a democracy will have the idea that you can just rent money to solve. all the problems and eventually I know that will fail Singapore which has a wonderful economy has zero debt if I were ruling the world I would like the United States to be in that position which is not the typical one that is nobody's position you already know all these politicians in Europe and the United States they have learned to print money and if we maintain these extraordinary measures for the Federal Reserve, I suppose not only the Federal Reserve here but the central banks around the world, yes, but who knows when the money for anyone runs out of control and, in the end, if you print too much you end up in something like Venezuela you are not suggesting that that happen no, I do not like ideas and both parties that you are a politician say that what we have learned is that we print everyone who wants, no We don't have to raise taxes, we just print Warren.

I share those concerns, yes, I probably couldn't have conceived of a world recently, ten years ago, I learned that I hadn't conceived of a world where there was full employment, a budget deficit of 5 % with the probability that they would increase from that level and at the same time. time, have the long bar, 3%. I would have said that couldn't happen and then people now know modern monetary theory, that there's no doubt that he's the Marlin of it. Any country should borrow money and its own currency. I am a father. Not that these are big discovery dollars, but yes, and that's the point.

I'm serious, it doesn't solve anything, just saying, well, it's much safer to buy your own currency, but the convergence of these factors would have seemed impossible to me and, in general, if I feel something is impossible, it's going to change with time, I don't know or how, but I don't think we can continue to have these variables in this relationship now, if we can, the stocks will be ridiculously cheap, the only thing I will do However, I say that this is a conversation that I feel that we've had for at least four or five years, right where you're looking and you continue to expect these interest rates, yields to go up, we're still sitting at two and a half percent on the ten-year bond, and we're sitting very , very little inflation with a Federal Reserve that set a 2% target not long ago and it seems that nirvan seems that we have found the promised land where essentially money costs nothing and you can put in a lot of money and have full employment and no inflation and I would have thought something would have happened before, now I don't know what would have happened, but I didn't.

I don't think you can have these things at these levels, the long-term rates, the inflation rates, the budget deficits and have a stable situation over a long period of time and I still believe that, but so far I'm not wrong, so that in the meantime you haven't really changed your way of thinking. I think the stock is ridiculously cheap by comparison if you think you're going to get 3% interest. 30 year bonds make sense, that's great if that's what gets us going. work interesting well these three so it's comfortable if everything goes down not by 90 percent so we're not a fair cross section Sorry Charlie what was that?

He says that this trio is comfortable if everyone if everything goes down by 90 percent Rozonda don I don't know the rest, yes, but we wouldn't like that kind of world to disappear. Everyone else, right? Can we talk a little bit about healthcare because you've all spent a lot of time focusing on healthcare in the United States and abroad. He is probably the leading authority on global healthcare. His foundation has spent billions and billions of dollars on it. I think over $13 billion from inception to 2017 in global healthcare initiatives. What is the progress you mentioned? Before that, more progress had been seen here than on the educational front in the United States.

It would show what is phenomenal: taking the new vaccines and getting them to more children and some other tools, like mosquito nets against malaria. We have gone from more than 10 million children dying every year to less than 5 million, now 5 million, that is still a lot, we need a few more tools, but actually the innovation process seems very good, so you know, this is a phenomenally positive story. that these doubts are fraught and that this will continue. What brings you the most hope or gives you the most hope about the progress you've made or the research you've found good?

One we were working on. to reduce malnutrition because a child is growing well their ability not only to prevent these diseases such as diarrhea from killing them but also the degree to which they will fully develop their mental and physical capabilities and therefore contribute with their own lives to the well-being of their country. A drastic reduction in malnutrition would be huge and we are now understanding that we believe that will be possible. It's been a long scientific Germany that has to do with gut inflammation and the microbiome, but now we see that we're going to do it. get more of those children on their path of growth and that's why I'm very excited about them, but malnutrition is not just that they don't have food to eat, even in cases where they do have food to eat, there is a problem, so es, what happens is that Because their diet does not contain much protein, their intestines become inflamed and that means that there is a set of bacteria there that does not allow them to absorb nutrients and that is a downward path.

And so you can see that even two twins, one will have that and not grow and the other will achieve normal growth, so an intervention that stops the inflammation changes the microbiome to a healthier combination that would eliminate malnutrition for that child. What's a really cheap intervention where you can see the problem and stop it with probiotics or something? Yeah, that's the kind of thing, although they tend to be broad spectrum. Here we're going to expand it and turn it into a cheap probably a pill will probably be a couple of vitamins and medications that translates into things that could be useful here in the United States and another day, well, the basic understanding that you have and finally it will lead us to understand not only malnutrition but about nutrition, why is it so difficult to control people's hunger?

Over time people have tried taking pills to control hunger. I would say that over the next decade that will finally be successful, so although that is not the fundamental aspect, we focus on malnutrition. Gut microbiome science has many companies working on things that will reduce the overnutrition that is used here in the United States. One of the big problems is trying to figure out how to pay for healthcare and partly stop the cost which is an issue that you've been focusing on at Berkshire along with JPMorgan and Amazon, what have you found? We haven't received any updates recently other than the name of this new organization, it will be Haven, where are you in that process? first step in what will surely be a very long journey.

I'm serious. I would say it's no harder than I expected, but I expected it to be tremendously difficult and you have an industry that is basically about the same size as the revenue of the US government and everyone always says that every dollar in the budget has a constituency and every dollar and in an industry spending has a constituency and we have the right person, we have the right partners, capital is not the key part, but we We have people who are willing to spend money, but we will spend the money that it will be necessary if we are making progress and it will be a long and difficult effort to make a major journey to make major changes and you know it is You have an old guarantee of success sir, but I believe that there is no one who is in a better position in terms of numbers of tactics and of people coming together to get along and all kinds of things to maybe come up with something that makes the system more efficient and you know we'll try, but nothing will happen faster, so there won't be any revolutionary movement or anything. like that and there will be a lot of opposition to any changes in

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ing people to run the place where we interview people. in all aspects of the medical profession and activity and everyone agreed 100%.

You know this system needs a change, but of course it's not my part, that's very understandable. We'll wait for that and find out what happens, but I know I'd rather have done it. the private sector comes up with a solution and throws it out to the entire government and if the private sector doesn't come up with some solutions of the incremental and cost qualities, you know, in many ways it's incredible just listening to Bill talk about the advances that can be made. do what costs 5% of the GDP and in my life or even in my adulthood up to 18% is the federal budget, the state is a constant around 17%, everyone thinks it is out of control and here they should say our federal revenues. and now this has gone from five to 18 and no one really thinks it's going to stop

charlie

, you've been, oh, go ahead, you've been a good samaritan, the president there for how many years, for 40 years, if you take the Senate war , which This tends to have a smart government and do things right, they spend about 20% of what we spend on health care and they are healthier and there are all kinds of abuse and counterproductivity that are not crazy if we do have it . and Warren is right, it is not going to cost us much to receive incidents and board direction because human beings are benefiting from the existing system, if you know, it may seem like an unnecessary operation to me, in fact it is, but does the helmet look like bye bye? job, where would he suggest after his years at Good Samaritan?

Where would you say to focus here first? I think this system is out of control the deductibles in regular corporate health insurance are ridiculous if you are a poor family you will get a bill for $5,000 for a Baby you don't have health insurance they just changed the system and then if you take the Completely unnecessary treatment, people find a way to take advantage of the government's money flows and do a lot of unnecessary work, like belonging, you know. inevitable death and all kinds of horrible things they do. I would say we have a pretty disgusting system.

On the other hand, it is the best in the world in terms of its maximum scientific capacity, but all the unnecessary operations and all the unnecessary procedures are taken. and all the scandals and that thing about Singapore being pretty good, take it out, it's discouraging when I look at Singapore, I look at the United States and how the hell do we get from where we are to there and if you ask me what's going to happen I think we won't make it to a smart system and that happy note, we're almost out of time. If I may ask, gentlemen, we have about a minute left.

If I can ask you what you are reading. because that's something we often hear from our viewers. What are you reading right now? I just finished reading very recently and I read it in one sitting and I was very captivated by it, whether it's a book by Melinda Gates that just came out very recently. and the best seller them the moment of losing it is fantastic it's a story but you learn a lot about the world that you should know and I would say that most people don't know, I mean this is a story of their experiences.

As an experience, it is absolutely sensational.Yes, Warren took all your time. I guess it's not you.