Warren Buffett's business partner admits Bernie & Elizabeth Warren are right about finance
Charlie Munger is 92 years old and has been Warren Buffett's business partner at Berkshire Hathaway for over 40 years. Munger is a Republican who is worth billions but has spoken out over the years on what he sees as unconscionable behavior by politicians, business executives and others. Being a Republican, he is not a fan overall of either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, but he admitted earlier this year that they are right on their views about the finance industry:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffetts-hand-man-gave-133200819.html
<It is true that these crazy false values and this crazy excess is bad morals and it's bad policy. It's bad for the nation. It’s just bad, bad, bad. And there’s a lot of it. Now of course a lot of it is in American finance.
The truth of the matter is that . . . Elizabeth Warren doesn’t agree with me on many subjects, and I wouldn’t agree with her on many subjects, but she is basically right when she says that American finance is out of control and that it isn’t good for the rest of us. Both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are not two of my favorite people on earth, but they are absolutely right [about finance].
You all see what goes on in finance: the craziness, the promotions, the fuzzy accounting, the crazy trading cultures…. It’s very bad for all of us that we have this huge overdevelopment of finance. And yet it’s very hard to do anything about it.>
<So we have a vast gambling culture, and people have made it respectable. Instead of betting on horses or prizefights, we can bet on the price of securities or the price of derivatives relating to securities, and we can bet on athletic contests. We have a huge amount of legalized gambling. And of course the public market, which operates every day with transactions, is an ideal casino. And there are a whole bunch of people who want to own a casino and make a lot of money without losing money on inventories or credit . . . and many other irritating parts of business. Just to sit there every night and go higher and higher. Who doesn’t want to be croupier in a casino? And very respectable people get drawn into it. They see other people getting rich.
There’s way, way too much of that in America. And too much of the new wealth has gone to people who either own a casino or are playing in a casino. And I don’t think the exaltation of that group has been good for life generally, and I am to some extent a member of that group.>
