Warren Buffett Full Interview with Becky Quick: 2026 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting

Finanzapedia Team

May 5, 2026

Warren Buffett Post-Meeting Interview — Full Transcript

BECKY QUICK:

"We are sitting down right now with Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, who for the first time in 60 years has been watching all of this from the audience instead of being on stage. And you know, last year at this time, Warren, you surprised everyone with the announcement that you were stepping down as CEO. Fast forward a year and here we are. What do you think?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, I think it's all working. It's all working. It isn't our ideal surrounding area — or environment, I should say — in terms of deploying cash for Berkshire. But in terms of how we got the right management, we got the right arrangement and, you know, we can pick our spots and nobody can tell us what to do exactly and so sometimes we're doing nothing. But other times we get quite active. I mean, you know, Ajit spent some time on the stage today talking about how one of his keys is to do nothing when it comes to insurance, when it comes to writing insurance — which is the same thing that you have always talked about with whether to invest or not."

BECKY QUICK:

"Yeah. The world is full of people that are offering you things to do and then the question is to find one that you know makes sense. And there may be 20 out there that make sense that you don't understand and you just leave them alone."

BECKY QUICK:

"You said that the world or the surrounding environment is not ideal. And I guess that points to the idea that there's almost $400 billion in cash on hand. Although Greg took some pains to show it's really more like $380 billion in cash on hand. But that there's a lot of cash on hand. And you're still active in managing the portfolio too and looking at stocks. You're looking around and you don't see a lot that you want to invest in."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, then we don't do anything. I mean, we've been — in the 60 years I've been in the business, there have probably been five of them that were really juicy, you know. And I think it was Tom Watson senior of IBM that — they asked him the reason why IBM had been so successful or something like that. And he said, 'I'm smart in spots and I stay around those spots.' And that's the whole thing. And IBM was in three different businesses including time clocks and a couple — and two of the three turned out to be no good. But they just focused on the one."

BECKY QUICK:

"What is it when you look around that it's just prices are too high at this point? I would imagine — and Greg said this from the stage too — there are businesses that you like."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"I would say I understand fewer of the businesses as a percentage of the whole than I did 10 years ago. I have not learned new industries for some years, you know, and so I don't kid myself on that. I'm not going to learn. I'm not going to have an edge on, you know, a whole bunch of younger people that have actually grown up with it, used the product, seen things. But as I mentioned, you know, you don't have to understand too many of them — like Apple."

BECKY QUICK:

"But looking around — let's just get some macro thoughts on this because I don't know that this is something that Greg is going to comment on per se. Just looking at the macro stock market environment, what does this feel like to you? Does it feel expensive? Does it feel like there are opportunities in some—"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, it feels like, you know, I've compared the markets to a church with a casino attached and people can move between the church and the casino. And I always said there are more people in the church and more people in the casino. But the casino's gotten very attractive to people. You know, if you're buying one-day options or selling them — I mean, that is not investing. It's not speculating. It's gambling, you know, just totally. There's nobody that can explain why they're buying an option for one day — unless maybe the fellow that made the $400-and-some-thousand dollars from knowing when we were going into Venezuela could do it. But I mean that's pretty — and the quantity of those things is just incredible. So we've never had people in a more gambling mood than now. But that doesn't mean that investing is terrible."

"It does mean that prices for an awful lot of things will look very silly. I mean, they had a squeeze and in Avis of all things — well, has been around for 50 years, but just this past week — and we have lots more regulation and everything now, but people spend their time figuring out how to get around the rules rather than follow the rules. That's just a challenge."

BECKY QUICK:

"The type of investor you are though — you laid it out yourself. In the 60 years you've been doing this in the business, you've had maybe five juicy years. I guess that means you're always looking for the next juicy year. What do you think it would take to make a juicy year or a juicy opportunity for you?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"It's a phone call in many cases. You know, we bought a business last year. It wasn't big enough to be meaningful. We got a letter."

BECKY QUICK:

"Bell Labs."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Yeah. Bell Labs. And no. And you know, sometimes there's more zeros attached to them than others. And we're big enough to handle anything and we can make decisions faster than anybody. And our word is good. There's an awful lot of people that — when they're in the business of reselling something — you know, it's a lot better if you're a good salesperson. There's no reason to be selling vacuum cleaners — you'll sell stock and you'll make way more money. It's where the money is."

"And there's more money around than ever. And the best opportunities have probably come when the macro environment — the most likely time to buy things is when nobody else will answer their phones. You know, everybody else talks about their wonderful trading departments and everything. Just try them out sometime when markets are collapsing — they don't answer the phones."

"And if they do, the bids are subject and the offers are subject and the spread is wide, and then they'll use the information they get from you about what you want to do to go out and kill you some other way. I mean, it's really like going to a slaughterhouse. I mean, you don't feel like eating hot dogs for a while."

BECKY QUICK:

"I guess what I'm trying to get at is do you see the circumstances building up anywhere that could lead to a time like that again? Any sort of panic in the market? Where do you see them?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, if you saw them, they wouldn't happen. Okay. I mean, you don't worry about what people are talking about can happen. It's something that comes out of the blue."

BECKY QUICK:

"But something will come out of the blue."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Yeah. I mean, a nuclear bomb could come out of the blue, you know."

BECKY QUICK:

"Well, let's knock on wood on that."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, it doesn't do any good to knock on wood. That's the point. You know, was the archduke getting shot in 1914 or something like that for World War One. And it's just — take everything in life and if it's something people are talking about and thinking about, it's not going to happen."

"But there are things that can happen out of the blue. And actually that's particularly true to use that phraseology now because the things that can come out of the sky — you know, we don't know what can happen tomorrow. I don't like to talk that way to people, whether it's you or anybody else. I mean, whether it does you a lot of good to worry about that — I don't think it does any good to worry about it. I think it's good to be cognizant of it but the worrying about it is terrible. I don't like to even cause that belief with people. I don't like to go around telling them the end is coming. Or something like that."

BECKY QUICK:

"A friend told me yesterday he's recently started using the phrase, I don't fret, I don't worry. And that's probably a good way to go about life. But let's talk about some of the issues that are out there right now. Inflation is up. That's an issue. So how does Berkshire handle that with its businesses?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, we can't handle runaway inflation except not to be in the way of it. And if you look at the number of countries that have had runaway inflation since World War II, in my lifetime, it's very large. And once you create that, it becomes a different world. Germany obviously experienced it after World War I. But there are dozens and dozens of countries that have experienced it. And of course, you have countries that have gone bankrupt like six or seven times. It's just amazing what people do."

BECKY QUICK:

"But what about the inflation that we're dealing with right now, which is, you know, not excessive — was north of 3% at this point, but we're not even back at the levels we were during COVID, 8 to 9%. So what about just higher energy prices? How that works through the line and how you handle it?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, it came close before Volcker. I mean it was just — cash is trash, you know — and people were losing faith in the currency and they felt they could borrow at 12% to earn 6% on farming or something like that. And they had huge farmers in this state, Nebraska, collapse because they bought beyond the earning power or paid interest rates beyond the earning power, just because they felt that the dollar was going to disappear and the land wouldn't disappear. And it's tragic for many people."

"And if you're the best doctor in town or the best lawyer in town, you'll always make money under any situation. The best TV personality — I mean, it's — but what not having faith in the money does to a country, it turns it into something else."

"And I've always hoped that, you know, the US never does it, but we are not immune from it happening. We have a lot of control over whether rates may go up a half a point or down a half a point, but we may have less control over whether they go up 50 points."

BECKY QUICK:

"You've long been a supporter of Jay Powell's. He had his last FOMC meeting as chairman just this last week. He did say that he's going to be sticking around, staying on the Fed, staying in that position for the foreseeable future in part because of the threats that he's faced."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"I'll feel better when he's there than when he's not. I mean, you know, I just felt better when Volcker was there. But economists aren't the best at this sort of thing. Read any old economics book from 1950, 1970 — that was Paul Samuelson, who was a terrific guy and smart as hell. He had the standard textbook for 25 years and if you looked up zero interest rates, year after year after year, it was a 900-page book and it wasn't an entry for it. You know, I mean, it was the most important economic development in terms of the impact it would have during the lifetime of the students reading it. But it's what you don't think of that does all the damage."

BECKY QUICK:

"Let's talk a little bit about CEOs in some of the Berkshire holdings. You mentioned Apple's Tim Cook and just the phenomenal job you think he's done. He's not the only one of your major holding CEOs who stepped down. James Quincy recently stepped down from Coca-Cola too. And we just spoke with Vicky Halib who announced that she is retiring and stepping down from that position at Occidental. Part of what Greg's talked about is how stable that portfolio is and these holdings are companies that he knows and managers that he knows. There's going to be some new managers in some of those major holdings coming in. Is that a problem?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, it was certainly a problem at Coca-Cola there for a good many years when I was around the company. I mean sure. It's — you have the most problems with a really good company because it'll continue. I mean, if you're selling some product that people are buying every day, you can make the wrong decision for a long time."

"Tim Cook — I felt was very, very good from the start. And most of our managers are very good at the smaller problems. They can't anticipate the overwhelming problems. That's my job. Or now Greg's job."

BECKY QUICK:

"Do you feel good about those holdings still? Have you met any of the new managers of those businesses?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"I haven't met the old managers — of the new CEOs that are coming in. Tim's replacement — Enrique — at Coca-Cola. I certainly met the people at Bell Labs that we — yeah. And obviously I met Vicki. We made the deal and so I enjoy meeting the people. But you can make mistakes with people. I mean, look at the divorce rate — that's more important than whether you got the right CEO or anything else. And now you've got years of trial. I mean, back when I was young, you had to make the decision — or you didn't have to make a decision. A good many people made the decision when they were 20 or 21, to get married. They got married. And now they've spent five years and they still make the same mistakes."

BECKY QUICK:

"So you think we're getting worse at our judgment?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, I don't know. Maybe people behave differently before the marriage than after. Who knows exactly? I would say that almost everybody feels either their marriage is better or worse than they anticipated a month after they were married. But I don't know which."

BECKY QUICK:

"Warren, let's talk a little bit about deep fakes because the deep fake Warren that popped up early in this session was pretty good. They had somebody standing up — you know, Greg was joking about it — but the first question went to a guy from Warren up in the rafters who lives in Omaha. You've been concerned about some of these AI deep fakes and what that means for the world."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Yeah. I would be concerned if everybody was — well, actually the worst thing would be to have a really good imitator of any president that came along. I mean, just imagine. Well, yeah, we had that famous thing way back in New Jersey where they — the Martians coming and everything like that. War of the Worlds with Orson Welles. What you can do — well, if you convince — but people lend you money for it, they shouldn't — you shouldn't be borrowing it. I mean, it's scary."

"And it's particularly scary when you have nine countries or so with nuclear weapons and people working on something even more. We haven't dealt with this. We don't know what's going to happen."

BECKY QUICK:

"Let's circle back to Berkshire and Berkshire today. I think I was speaking with you yesterday or the day before and we were talking a little bit about Greg Abel and what a nice guy he is and he said he's a terrific guy. You said something interesting to me though about how you picked him and it wasn't because he was a nice guy. Why did you pick him?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, he's very, very, very smart about businesses. Incidentally, he's getting his Canadian — I mean, he's getting his American citizenship here very soon, and he was going over with me all the things he had to learn about. And I've actually spent a little time in the past with groups of individuals. Of course, my wife did it too — became an American citizen — and the things they have to learn about the Constitution and all these, and they're usually so proud when they become American citizens. And I think I detected that with Greg. I mean, you know, as successful as he's been and everything else, it means something to him to become an American citizen."

"And he sits there with this young son, you know, and the son knows more about some of the answers to the questions he may get asked about becoming a citizen. It's really interesting. And where else does that happen in the world? I mean, what people — you know — and America is special and it's a miracle what America's accomplished. I mean, it's just an absolute miracle. And yet the miracle — the division of the output and everything — is about as inequitable as it can come up with, while at the same time it's got these great attractions."

"There is some secret sauce. I've never been able to define it precisely. But when you run a country for 200 and some years and people want to come here every year — I mean, there's really something about it. And when Greg Abel is, you know, looking forward to becoming an American citizen, that means something to him. And you can't buy that at any place or package it — it won't work for a Madison Avenue approach, you know, 'be an American' or something like that. But that feeling just — in my 95 years, I've seen it, you know, time after time. So I felt good when Greg just volunteered that in the last day or two to me that he was up there for his final exams, here pretty soon, becoming a citizen."

BECKY QUICK:

"I didn't realize he wasn't a dual citizen already. I knew he was Canadian, but I thought he had dual citizenship."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"He doesn't have the full — whatever the complete citizenship requirement is. And you can say, why does he care? I mean, he's gotten along fine without it here and everything. He still wants to be a citizen."

BECKY QUICK:

"250 years — we're celebrating our 250th anniversary. You pointed out that you've been around for 95 of them. You think we have the special sauce that will continue in this country? Or what do we need to do to preserve that and make sure that it does continue?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"We've got a special sauce there. That's a secret sauce. It's such a good secret that I don't know exactly what it is. But I do know this — that anybody that has a choice would choose to be born in America. I mean, you know, you can pick some very small little country — they're very happy — but is there any other country that for a couple hundred years everybody has wanted to immigrate to? And it attracted some terrible people too. But it worked. And they had the mafias from the different groups — not just the Italian mafia, but all — I mean, it wasn't that they had some system for picking out the wonderful people from some other countries. But it has worked."

"But it's worked to extremes that don't seem to belong to that kind of a society. I mean, if you were drawing up dreams for the ideal society and you would have this kind of GDP per capita and everything — you wouldn't design the inheritance laws. You just do all kinds of things differently. But somehow it's worked. But that doesn't mean we can't do better."

BECKY QUICK:

"Warren, there are thousands of people — shareholders and partners of yours for decades in some cases — who are sitting out in this arena right now, and I just wonder if there's a message you'd like to give to them, those who've been following you for years and who've been partners of yours for years."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"The number one rule I give them is just to give them the golden rule — to do unto others. I'm not a religious guy, but nobody said it any better in a couple thousand years than that, which may be why it's lasted a certain degree too. I mean, more people are reading a 2,000-year-old book about how to behave than anything that anybody's coming up with lately. Now it's got — particularly the Old Testament's got different kinds of stories to some extent — but if the whole world lived by the golden rule, it would be such a more wonderful society. Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you."

"And that's true for everything — from parenthood to being a boss to being — I mean, just everything in life. And it doesn't cost you anything. In fact, it's reflected in better behavior toward you. So it's a very selfish sort of thing in one sense, but I've never seen anybody that's unhappy that behaves that way. And I've seen a lot of people in a lot of different kinds of situations."

BECKY QUICK:

"Warren, I want to thank you for taking this time to sit down with us today. Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Greg Abel is going to be taking the stage in just a moment and you will see more from him in just a moment."

End of interview transcript.

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Warren Buffett Full Interview with Becky Quick: 2026 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting

Finanzapedia Team

May 5, 2026

Warren Buffett Post-Meeting Interview — Full Transcript

BECKY QUICK:

"We are sitting down right now with Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, who for the first time in 60 years has been watching all of this from the audience instead of being on stage. And you know, last year at this time, Warren, you surprised everyone with the announcement that you were stepping down as CEO. Fast forward a year and here we are. What do you think?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, I think it's all working. It's all working. It isn't our ideal surrounding area — or environment, I should say — in terms of deploying cash for Berkshire. But in terms of how we got the right management, we got the right arrangement and, you know, we can pick our spots and nobody can tell us what to do exactly and so sometimes we're doing nothing. But other times we get quite active. I mean, you know, Ajit spent some time on the stage today talking about how one of his keys is to do nothing when it comes to insurance, when it comes to writing insurance — which is the same thing that you have always talked about with whether to invest or not."

BECKY QUICK:

"Yeah. The world is full of people that are offering you things to do and then the question is to find one that you know makes sense. And there may be 20 out there that make sense that you don't understand and you just leave them alone."

BECKY QUICK:

"You said that the world or the surrounding environment is not ideal. And I guess that points to the idea that there's almost $400 billion in cash on hand. Although Greg took some pains to show it's really more like $380 billion in cash on hand. But that there's a lot of cash on hand. And you're still active in managing the portfolio too and looking at stocks. You're looking around and you don't see a lot that you want to invest in."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, then we don't do anything. I mean, we've been — in the 60 years I've been in the business, there have probably been five of them that were really juicy, you know. And I think it was Tom Watson senior of IBM that — they asked him the reason why IBM had been so successful or something like that. And he said, 'I'm smart in spots and I stay around those spots.' And that's the whole thing. And IBM was in three different businesses including time clocks and a couple — and two of the three turned out to be no good. But they just focused on the one."

BECKY QUICK:

"What is it when you look around that it's just prices are too high at this point? I would imagine — and Greg said this from the stage too — there are businesses that you like."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"I would say I understand fewer of the businesses as a percentage of the whole than I did 10 years ago. I have not learned new industries for some years, you know, and so I don't kid myself on that. I'm not going to learn. I'm not going to have an edge on, you know, a whole bunch of younger people that have actually grown up with it, used the product, seen things. But as I mentioned, you know, you don't have to understand too many of them — like Apple."

BECKY QUICK:

"But looking around — let's just get some macro thoughts on this because I don't know that this is something that Greg is going to comment on per se. Just looking at the macro stock market environment, what does this feel like to you? Does it feel expensive? Does it feel like there are opportunities in some—"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, it feels like, you know, I've compared the markets to a church with a casino attached and people can move between the church and the casino. And I always said there are more people in the church and more people in the casino. But the casino's gotten very attractive to people. You know, if you're buying one-day options or selling them — I mean, that is not investing. It's not speculating. It's gambling, you know, just totally. There's nobody that can explain why they're buying an option for one day — unless maybe the fellow that made the $400-and-some-thousand dollars from knowing when we were going into Venezuela could do it. But I mean that's pretty — and the quantity of those things is just incredible. So we've never had people in a more gambling mood than now. But that doesn't mean that investing is terrible."

"It does mean that prices for an awful lot of things will look very silly. I mean, they had a squeeze and in Avis of all things — well, has been around for 50 years, but just this past week — and we have lots more regulation and everything now, but people spend their time figuring out how to get around the rules rather than follow the rules. That's just a challenge."

BECKY QUICK:

"The type of investor you are though — you laid it out yourself. In the 60 years you've been doing this in the business, you've had maybe five juicy years. I guess that means you're always looking for the next juicy year. What do you think it would take to make a juicy year or a juicy opportunity for you?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"It's a phone call in many cases. You know, we bought a business last year. It wasn't big enough to be meaningful. We got a letter."

BECKY QUICK:

"Bell Labs."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Yeah. Bell Labs. And no. And you know, sometimes there's more zeros attached to them than others. And we're big enough to handle anything and we can make decisions faster than anybody. And our word is good. There's an awful lot of people that — when they're in the business of reselling something — you know, it's a lot better if you're a good salesperson. There's no reason to be selling vacuum cleaners — you'll sell stock and you'll make way more money. It's where the money is."

"And there's more money around than ever. And the best opportunities have probably come when the macro environment — the most likely time to buy things is when nobody else will answer their phones. You know, everybody else talks about their wonderful trading departments and everything. Just try them out sometime when markets are collapsing — they don't answer the phones."

"And if they do, the bids are subject and the offers are subject and the spread is wide, and then they'll use the information they get from you about what you want to do to go out and kill you some other way. I mean, it's really like going to a slaughterhouse. I mean, you don't feel like eating hot dogs for a while."

BECKY QUICK:

"I guess what I'm trying to get at is do you see the circumstances building up anywhere that could lead to a time like that again? Any sort of panic in the market? Where do you see them?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, if you saw them, they wouldn't happen. Okay. I mean, you don't worry about what people are talking about can happen. It's something that comes out of the blue."

BECKY QUICK:

"But something will come out of the blue."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Yeah. I mean, a nuclear bomb could come out of the blue, you know."

BECKY QUICK:

"Well, let's knock on wood on that."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, it doesn't do any good to knock on wood. That's the point. You know, was the archduke getting shot in 1914 or something like that for World War One. And it's just — take everything in life and if it's something people are talking about and thinking about, it's not going to happen."

"But there are things that can happen out of the blue. And actually that's particularly true to use that phraseology now because the things that can come out of the sky — you know, we don't know what can happen tomorrow. I don't like to talk that way to people, whether it's you or anybody else. I mean, whether it does you a lot of good to worry about that — I don't think it does any good to worry about it. I think it's good to be cognizant of it but the worrying about it is terrible. I don't like to even cause that belief with people. I don't like to go around telling them the end is coming. Or something like that."

BECKY QUICK:

"A friend told me yesterday he's recently started using the phrase, I don't fret, I don't worry. And that's probably a good way to go about life. But let's talk about some of the issues that are out there right now. Inflation is up. That's an issue. So how does Berkshire handle that with its businesses?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, we can't handle runaway inflation except not to be in the way of it. And if you look at the number of countries that have had runaway inflation since World War II, in my lifetime, it's very large. And once you create that, it becomes a different world. Germany obviously experienced it after World War I. But there are dozens and dozens of countries that have experienced it. And of course, you have countries that have gone bankrupt like six or seven times. It's just amazing what people do."

BECKY QUICK:

"But what about the inflation that we're dealing with right now, which is, you know, not excessive — was north of 3% at this point, but we're not even back at the levels we were during COVID, 8 to 9%. So what about just higher energy prices? How that works through the line and how you handle it?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, it came close before Volcker. I mean it was just — cash is trash, you know — and people were losing faith in the currency and they felt they could borrow at 12% to earn 6% on farming or something like that. And they had huge farmers in this state, Nebraska, collapse because they bought beyond the earning power or paid interest rates beyond the earning power, just because they felt that the dollar was going to disappear and the land wouldn't disappear. And it's tragic for many people."

"And if you're the best doctor in town or the best lawyer in town, you'll always make money under any situation. The best TV personality — I mean, it's — but what not having faith in the money does to a country, it turns it into something else."

"And I've always hoped that, you know, the US never does it, but we are not immune from it happening. We have a lot of control over whether rates may go up a half a point or down a half a point, but we may have less control over whether they go up 50 points."

BECKY QUICK:

"You've long been a supporter of Jay Powell's. He had his last FOMC meeting as chairman just this last week. He did say that he's going to be sticking around, staying on the Fed, staying in that position for the foreseeable future in part because of the threats that he's faced."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"I'll feel better when he's there than when he's not. I mean, you know, I just felt better when Volcker was there. But economists aren't the best at this sort of thing. Read any old economics book from 1950, 1970 — that was Paul Samuelson, who was a terrific guy and smart as hell. He had the standard textbook for 25 years and if you looked up zero interest rates, year after year after year, it was a 900-page book and it wasn't an entry for it. You know, I mean, it was the most important economic development in terms of the impact it would have during the lifetime of the students reading it. But it's what you don't think of that does all the damage."

BECKY QUICK:

"Let's talk a little bit about CEOs in some of the Berkshire holdings. You mentioned Apple's Tim Cook and just the phenomenal job you think he's done. He's not the only one of your major holding CEOs who stepped down. James Quincy recently stepped down from Coca-Cola too. And we just spoke with Vicky Halib who announced that she is retiring and stepping down from that position at Occidental. Part of what Greg's talked about is how stable that portfolio is and these holdings are companies that he knows and managers that he knows. There's going to be some new managers in some of those major holdings coming in. Is that a problem?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, it was certainly a problem at Coca-Cola there for a good many years when I was around the company. I mean sure. It's — you have the most problems with a really good company because it'll continue. I mean, if you're selling some product that people are buying every day, you can make the wrong decision for a long time."

"Tim Cook — I felt was very, very good from the start. And most of our managers are very good at the smaller problems. They can't anticipate the overwhelming problems. That's my job. Or now Greg's job."

BECKY QUICK:

"Do you feel good about those holdings still? Have you met any of the new managers of those businesses?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"I haven't met the old managers — of the new CEOs that are coming in. Tim's replacement — Enrique — at Coca-Cola. I certainly met the people at Bell Labs that we — yeah. And obviously I met Vicki. We made the deal and so I enjoy meeting the people. But you can make mistakes with people. I mean, look at the divorce rate — that's more important than whether you got the right CEO or anything else. And now you've got years of trial. I mean, back when I was young, you had to make the decision — or you didn't have to make a decision. A good many people made the decision when they were 20 or 21, to get married. They got married. And now they've spent five years and they still make the same mistakes."

BECKY QUICK:

"So you think we're getting worse at our judgment?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, I don't know. Maybe people behave differently before the marriage than after. Who knows exactly? I would say that almost everybody feels either their marriage is better or worse than they anticipated a month after they were married. But I don't know which."

BECKY QUICK:

"Warren, let's talk a little bit about deep fakes because the deep fake Warren that popped up early in this session was pretty good. They had somebody standing up — you know, Greg was joking about it — but the first question went to a guy from Warren up in the rafters who lives in Omaha. You've been concerned about some of these AI deep fakes and what that means for the world."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Yeah. I would be concerned if everybody was — well, actually the worst thing would be to have a really good imitator of any president that came along. I mean, just imagine. Well, yeah, we had that famous thing way back in New Jersey where they — the Martians coming and everything like that. War of the Worlds with Orson Welles. What you can do — well, if you convince — but people lend you money for it, they shouldn't — you shouldn't be borrowing it. I mean, it's scary."

"And it's particularly scary when you have nine countries or so with nuclear weapons and people working on something even more. We haven't dealt with this. We don't know what's going to happen."

BECKY QUICK:

"Let's circle back to Berkshire and Berkshire today. I think I was speaking with you yesterday or the day before and we were talking a little bit about Greg Abel and what a nice guy he is and he said he's a terrific guy. You said something interesting to me though about how you picked him and it wasn't because he was a nice guy. Why did you pick him?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"Well, he's very, very, very smart about businesses. Incidentally, he's getting his Canadian — I mean, he's getting his American citizenship here very soon, and he was going over with me all the things he had to learn about. And I've actually spent a little time in the past with groups of individuals. Of course, my wife did it too — became an American citizen — and the things they have to learn about the Constitution and all these, and they're usually so proud when they become American citizens. And I think I detected that with Greg. I mean, you know, as successful as he's been and everything else, it means something to him to become an American citizen."

"And he sits there with this young son, you know, and the son knows more about some of the answers to the questions he may get asked about becoming a citizen. It's really interesting. And where else does that happen in the world? I mean, what people — you know — and America is special and it's a miracle what America's accomplished. I mean, it's just an absolute miracle. And yet the miracle — the division of the output and everything — is about as inequitable as it can come up with, while at the same time it's got these great attractions."

"There is some secret sauce. I've never been able to define it precisely. But when you run a country for 200 and some years and people want to come here every year — I mean, there's really something about it. And when Greg Abel is, you know, looking forward to becoming an American citizen, that means something to him. And you can't buy that at any place or package it — it won't work for a Madison Avenue approach, you know, 'be an American' or something like that. But that feeling just — in my 95 years, I've seen it, you know, time after time. So I felt good when Greg just volunteered that in the last day or two to me that he was up there for his final exams, here pretty soon, becoming a citizen."

BECKY QUICK:

"I didn't realize he wasn't a dual citizen already. I knew he was Canadian, but I thought he had dual citizenship."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"He doesn't have the full — whatever the complete citizenship requirement is. And you can say, why does he care? I mean, he's gotten along fine without it here and everything. He still wants to be a citizen."

BECKY QUICK:

"250 years — we're celebrating our 250th anniversary. You pointed out that you've been around for 95 of them. You think we have the special sauce that will continue in this country? Or what do we need to do to preserve that and make sure that it does continue?"

WARREN BUFFETT:

"We've got a special sauce there. That's a secret sauce. It's such a good secret that I don't know exactly what it is. But I do know this — that anybody that has a choice would choose to be born in America. I mean, you know, you can pick some very small little country — they're very happy — but is there any other country that for a couple hundred years everybody has wanted to immigrate to? And it attracted some terrible people too. But it worked. And they had the mafias from the different groups — not just the Italian mafia, but all — I mean, it wasn't that they had some system for picking out the wonderful people from some other countries. But it has worked."

"But it's worked to extremes that don't seem to belong to that kind of a society. I mean, if you were drawing up dreams for the ideal society and you would have this kind of GDP per capita and everything — you wouldn't design the inheritance laws. You just do all kinds of things differently. But somehow it's worked. But that doesn't mean we can't do better."

BECKY QUICK:

"Warren, there are thousands of people — shareholders and partners of yours for decades in some cases — who are sitting out in this arena right now, and I just wonder if there's a message you'd like to give to them, those who've been following you for years and who've been partners of yours for years."

WARREN BUFFETT:

"The number one rule I give them is just to give them the golden rule — to do unto others. I'm not a religious guy, but nobody said it any better in a couple thousand years than that, which may be why it's lasted a certain degree too. I mean, more people are reading a 2,000-year-old book about how to behave than anything that anybody's coming up with lately. Now it's got — particularly the Old Testament's got different kinds of stories to some extent — but if the whole world lived by the golden rule, it would be such a more wonderful society. Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you."

"And that's true for everything — from parenthood to being a boss to being — I mean, just everything in life. And it doesn't cost you anything. In fact, it's reflected in better behavior toward you. So it's a very selfish sort of thing in one sense, but I've never seen anybody that's unhappy that behaves that way. And I've seen a lot of people in a lot of different kinds of situations."

BECKY QUICK:

"Warren, I want to thank you for taking this time to sit down with us today. Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Greg Abel is going to be taking the stage in just a moment and you will see more from him in just a moment."

End of interview transcript.

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