46) Glen Tongue: next acquisition, what can shareholders do to help?

Our appetite is always there, we are not going to borrow a lot of
money, we are not going to issue shares, our cash balances will tend
to build. Lubrizol was $9B we are looking at a couple more that are
the same size, we cant do a really big elephant now, we wont stretch,
we have not taken extra risk because we dont need to

cm - very reluctant to issue shares, very different to other places,
friend sold to socialist country and country sold shares and said we
are getting this for nothing haha

wb - we hate issuing shares

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45) performance

No manager results should be shorter than 5 years,  in reference to Todd Combs

Do Swiss Re and Munich Re decrease reinsurance?

Less than $4b, so it would not change at all what we are willing to
do. We are way below capacity in regards to risk we are going to
tolerate.

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Blogger jammed - I have about 5 posts left

43) Youth unemployment, entrepreneurial market positive

I did it by living at the Omaha public library for 3 years, anything
you do to improve your own skills will make you better you just don't
know when. The only diploma I have in my office is my Dale Carnegie, I
paid $100. You should start with communication.  If I never worked on
it, my life would have been very different.You want to find something
your passionate about and work hard in it.

CM - econ is a tough subject, the experts disagree, i would not hurry
into a field where teh experts dont agree id master the easy stuff.

WB _ I would not aedvise taking lots of courses in economics, they
didn't help me in any significant way

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42) If NetJets was "almost" bankrupt why didnt you tell customers?

I meant if not owned by BRK it would have been going towards
bankruptcy, we put money in to protect it (1.9B).

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41) Will Charlie do a meeting?

Yea we do it, called Afternoon with Charlie its only with hardcore addicts

Wind power
WB - its terrific but only when it blows, which is 35% of the time in
Omaha, never will be base load, wind is cleanest but it cant be relied
on, economics only make sense with an incentive tax credit from govt
which they have been doing, on its own it will not return and adequate
return on capital, BRK has paid 2% of all the corporate taxes, so they
have tax capacity to build more wind projects

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40) $38B of cash where is it?

Not banks not money markets, the only thing I feel safe with is UST

CM - I have seen people struggle to earn 10 bps, I think it is stupid,
you don't want to fool around searching for yield with short term
money it is never worth it

WB - company was going to bankrupt, over the weekend, but FTC needed
time so they closed early but they had real cash and made amazing
deals, it can happen at any time, if ben bernanke runs off to south
america with paris hilton or something haha leave that off the
transcribed part, when someone comes to us and says we need a deal
right now

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WB - I own a lot of the securities I told you not to buy, UST, but its a good place to leave money and forget about it

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37) FMR: Do you estimate growth?

Some products travel way better than others, obvi if we see growth on
incremental capital we like it but we will buy companies with low to
no growth if the price is cheap relative to the value. we would love
them all to grow, lubrizol wont grow very much but we still like it.
In connection with Lubrizol, Sokol met with them and they had
projections out to 2013 and sokol had projections to 2015, i have
never seen projections not go up, i pay no attention to it, we are
doing projections in our head obviously, don't ask a barber if you
need a haircut

Cm - for the kids in school, here is my advice learn our way but while
you are in school pretend to learn their way

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36) reinstating charitable program

it was tax efficient way to give away money, to give three charities,
no one else copied it, CEO wanted to direct contributions which is
wrong, we always had a small backlash of where the money went, BRK
would have contributed to planned parenthood and we are not going to
buy Sees candy but it never amounted to anything, then we bought
pampered chef 50,000 independent contractors usually women and a
campaign developed because BRK was giving to pro life from A class
shareholders were going to boycott Pampered Chef and they were being
hurt in their livelihoods, it was hurting a whole lot of people,
reluctantly i ended it. When we started hurting our 50000 employees
it became apparent to me it was unfair and i reluctantly stopped it.

cm - we didn't want parent company debating social debates of the time

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35) Midamerica trying to build nuclear plant in Iowa? Bond like return is it worth mega catastrophe risk

I dont think there is anything like in the exposure you refered to, i
think nuclear power is very important in our future, 20% of
electricity in US is nuclear, OPPD has nuclear facility. I think
nuclear is important and I think it is safe, it is not going anywhere
in the US because of what happened in Tokyo but that doesn't change my
view that we should continue to develop nuclear around the world.

CM - We cant be so risk adverse that things taking a tiny dent in a
subsidiary, we have to have a reasonable amount of courage to run this
business.

wb - we have to carry toxic waste on RR, but I regard myself as a
Chief Risk Officer, we are not doing anything that pressing my
imagination that will not take one nights sleep

cm - you can believe iowa will have a far safer plant

wb - far more people lsot their lives in coal mines

cm - and if a tsunami gets to iowa that will be hell of tsunami

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34) Congress and the debt ceiling?

If they don't raise it, it would be the most asinine act they ever
performed. In Indiana they passed a bill to make pi an even 3 to make
it easier to learn that is the only thing that could compete with the
worst idea of not raising the debt ceiling, having a ceiling is
mistake. the debt capacity of 2011 is different then 2009, it doesn't
mean i dotn think it should grow larger as gdp but the amount of time
wasted, we have a lot do this is ridiculous waste, in the end there is
not chance they don't raise it, i wish they would eliminate they just
use it for posturing purposes, we wont have a problem as long we keep
isuing in our currencies, they difference between borrowing in your
own and somebody others is night and day! our only issues are the
printing press no working and inflation. we were trying to buying a
bank in in in (CM Chicago) only place we could find money in 1960s
were Kuwait in Dinars, but we didn't want to borrow in a foreign
currency

CM - i remember an era of bipartisan foreign policy (marshall plan)
now it seems to me both parties are competing to see who is the most
stupid and they keep topping each other

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33) Continuous learning, you read 5 papers a day and many reports?

I am not that fast

Cm - speed is over rated, I could do problems faster than my roomate
but he didn't make any mistakes, i wouldn't be disocuraged what the
hell difference does it make

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32) GS 10%, GE 10%, Dow 8.5%, Wrigley & Mars 11%, Swiss Re 12% - why the difference?

All done in different times except GS and GE, opportunity costs were
different in all of those, I could have done better in post panic, I
was early relative to 5 months later. They are not related to each
other, they go through everything available that day, past deals we
made dont matter. an error huge people make is to compare the best
deal they ever made (good advice) they are determined they are never
going to a deal like that again, the goal is not to make the best deal
ever but its the best deal at that time

CM - of course we are going to make different deals are different
times there is not other rational way

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31) how can we measure how well you allocate capital?

The real test is how much earnings are generated vs the earnings
retained, the job gets tougher every year

CM - we continue to beat the market avgs just not our past record

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30) Lubrizol did not shop the company, did they breach fiduciary duty

CM - Let me do this, they did not breach their duty because we were
not going to participate if they didn't do it our way

WB - we do not participate in auctions, they may get less money we
wont be there, if they want to do an auction we would have said good
luck

CM - any one else got an easy question?

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CM - water is not a problem and i would not worry about it

if you can figure out energy you can convert sea water into fresh
water, israel drinks 50% of sea water some times, people say drill
drill drill they are all nuts, we need to preserve hydra carbons

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31) Successor compensation

The next CEO will make a lot of money and they will deserve it, some
make well into 8 figures because they deserve it, for the excess
value.

CM- i hope it will be a long time in the future

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30) If you were to have a kid in 5 years how would you motivate them against other countries?

If you are very rich and you bring them up to thin they certain
privilege to think they got rom the right womb thats wrong, if you
raise them that others should do the work for them and fan themselves
you wont get a good result. I didn't want to give them an idea that
they were special because they were rich, dotn give them an incentive
to do better than the parent in what they have done well (thats not
fair), if your rich and urkids have no incentives its ur fault as a
parent

CM - I dont think you can raise kids affluent family an expect them to
dig fence poles, my advice is lose your fight as gracefully as you
can, its rare to have alit like intensity and passion, if your
proctologist you might not like your day

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