Interview Quotes

Reflections on Warren Buffett's Legacy and Financial Genius

"Warren Buffett is retiring as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at the end of 2025. He is 94 years old."

— Speaker 00 • 00:00:01

"Most consider him the greatest investor of our time. Some say the greatest investor of all time."

— Speaker 00 • 00:00:07

"He built Berkshire Hathaway into a trillion-dollar company, and his net worth is over $160 billion."

— Speaker 00 • 00:00:12

"He feels a profound obligation to his stockholders, whom he has also made very rich."

— Speaker 00 • 00:00:30

"His gift is his intelligence, but also his common sense, his sense of history, and his wit."

— Speaker 00 • 00:00:41

"We shall not see his like again."

— Speaker 00 • 00:00:49

"Warren, I consider it one of the great blessings of my life, that Warren and I became friends, and I cherish his support and what I've learned from him about life."

— Speaker 00 • 00:00:53

Navigating the Financial Crisis of 2008

"You want to be greedy when others are fearful and you want to be fearful when others are greedy."

— Warren Buffett • 00:02:19

"In fact, in my adult lifetime, I don't think I've ever seen people as fearful economically as they are right now."

— Warren Buffett • 00:02:31

"This isn't, this really is an economic Pearl Harbor."

— Warren Buffett • 00:05:34

"I mean, this economy doesn't work well without the lubrication of credit and trust. And that's been lost. And it's a huge problem."

— Warren Buffett • 00:07:41

"What you have is you have the major institutions of the world all wanting to deleverage. They want to take down their assets and liabilities."

— Warren Buffett • 00:08:01

"Yeah, I think that basically the right things have been done, but no one saw the tsunami coming, you know, fully."

— Warren Buffett • 00:09:22

"Well, the patient that's on the floor with a cardiac arrest is not Wall Street. It's the American economy."

— Warren Buffett • 00:11:24

"I mean, if you were at Bear Stearns and you were a shareholder, you know, you lost 90 to 95 percent of your money. Good many lost their jobs."

— Warren Buffett • 00:12:46

"I mean, the job, it's Pearl Harbor. And you better not spend weeks and weeks and weeks trying to assign blame or deciding on a complete plan for fighting the whole war, you know, and letting a committee decide where the battleship should go and all of that. You better spring into action with the best people you have."

— Warren Buffett • 00:14:31

"Yeah, it's a possibility. Yeah, we have about 6.1% unemployment now."

— Warren Buffett • 00:15:14

"And if the paralysis we have in the credit markets, if every company continues to feel all we want to do is get our balance sheet down, sell assets, you know, it's just the start of what can happen."

— Warren Buffett • 00:16:34

"Well, I think you've got, I don't think you could have a better secretary of the treasury than Hank Paulson."

— Warren Buffett • 00:18:37

"Most, most of the viewers have never heard of Sheila Bear. Sheila Bear in the last two weeks has taken 8% of the deposits in the United States and seamlessly moved those over to sound institutions."

— Warren Buffett • 00:19:37

"I have said, Charlie, that the $700 billion, if they buy mortgage related securities or mortgages themselves at current market prices, they're going to make money over time."

— Warren Buffett • 00:21:18

"I would bet on it."

— Warren Buffett • 00:24:28

"I mean, this country, we've got $46,000 or $7,000 of GDP per capita. Now, we've done pretty darn well."

— Warren Buffett • 00:34:44

"I'm not worried about the country. I'm just worried about anything that gums up the potential of the country. And right now it's pretty gummed up."

— Warren Buffett • 00:35:18

"I mean, once you get it off the ground. Once credit flows... Now, the recession is going to get worse. I mean, I don't want to hold out false hopes that by some magic bullet that things will turn around in a couple of months."

— Warren Buffett • 00:36:30

"If we don't do the things we should do, it could be five years."

— Warren Buffett • 00:38:15

"I would say it's more important who the Treasury Secretary is than who the Vice President is."

— Warren Buffett • 00:41:59

"They hate this term in Washington, obviously. But I would hand something pretty close to a blank check to a fellow like Hank Paulson."

— Warren Buffett • 00:44:04

"No, I think the oversight... I think oversight is great. And I think that oversight ought to be devoted almost entirely to the question, is this being done at market?"

— Warren Buffett • 00:45:40

"Markets aren't perfect. People do, as long as you have markets, you'll have excesses."

— Warren Buffett • 00:48:14

"I believe in mark-to-market."

— Warren Buffett • 00:51:31

"The human animal really doesn't get a lot smarter."

— Warren Buffett • 00:50:45

"That's great. You know, I want our pie to grow all the time. But if some other guy's pie is growing a little faster, that's terrific."

— Warren Buffett • 00:53:10

"Beware of geeks, you know, bearing formulas."

— Warren Buffett • 00:55:45

"I think it's terrible over time. But our country's productive capacity grows enough so we actually can do that and we'll still be better off. We just won't be as well off as if we hadn't done it."

— Warren Buffett • 01:01:46

"I mean, we are consuming about $2 billion a day of goods and services beyond what we're producing."

— Warren Buffett • 01:02:31

"I think the biggest thing we need now is to unclog the credit markets."

— Warren Buffett • 01:04:22

"I am paying the lowest tax rate that I've ever paid in my life. Now, that's crazy."

— Warren Buffett • 01:05:19

"I mean, you've got to get it from somebody. And, you know, everybody's against paying taxes themselves."

— Warren Buffett • 01:08:15

"And the payroll tax is over a third of the receipts of the federal government. And they don't take that from me on capital gains."

— Warren Buffett • 01:10:02

"It's going to be tough because the economy is going to be getting worse for a while."

— Warren Buffett • 01:12:35

"When the president of the United States goes out at, you know, eight o'clock in the morning and then his own party votes against him two to one in the house, you know that somehow a message isn't getting out."

— Warren Buffett • 01:14:39

"But we put in things like the FDIC. I think the FDIC was one of the great inventions of the American government."

— Warren Buffett • 01:15:55

"But I was when I when I watched the House vote the other day, I wasn't afraid because I I still felt something would pass."

— Warren Buffett • 01:17:09

"Everybody would have been exposed, Charlie. Everybody."

— Warren Buffett • 01:18:17

"I mean, if I thought five or 10 billion would have bought me a good deal and I could have done it, I'd have done it."

— Warren Buffett • 01:22:05

"And an ounce, you know, a pound of cure that's delayed, another six months that need a ton of cure later on. I mean, it would be crazy not to do this."

— Warren Buffett • 01:24:07

"But the difference, Charlie, if we, if we bottom this thing out at 7% unemployed versus 9%, that's 3 million people."

— Warren Buffett • 01:25:40

"Once we get the athlete back, we can tell him to change his diet a little, you know, or exercise a little more."

— Warren Buffett • 01:27:33

"Maybe we'll end up with a little bit better system at the end. We had a pretty good system over time."

— Warren Buffett • 01:28:48

"And, you know, if I got a good ideas on that, or I think they're good ideas, I'll be glad to contribute them."

— Warren Buffett • 01:27:57