David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…Which is, of course, competing with the fact that he wants people to like him. Not only does he want to be very wealthy, he wants the world's adoration. He throws himself a festival once a year for everyone to fly in and visit. Nowhere in Securities Law does it say that your shareholder meeting must be like. This is a Warren Buffett creation to bring this upon himself. He wants to be a beloved figure, and teacher, on top of being the wealthiest person on earth. You could see how those things could come ahead. You could accuse me of not being innovative in his investment philosophies. Never accuse him of not being innovative in finding ways to get what he wants. After Susie dies, the wheels start turning. He invites Bill Gates to join the Berkshire board. Up into this point, the board was basically 100% his family and close business associates that he actually worked with like Charlie, Tom Murphy, Ron Paulson from MTO, Dan Kiyo is on the board, and David [Gadisman] from New York back in the days. Even though Gates is a close friend, I think he's the first real outsider who Warren’s never done actual business with that joins the board. Something is afoot here. And then we all find out probably the reason why this is happening. In 2006, Warren made what was almost certainly the biggest decision and perhaps most impactful decision in philanthropic history and I totally remember when this happened. He calls a press conference and he announces that he is going to give away 85% of his Berkshire stock which is worth $37 billion at the time and 5/6 of it is going to go to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for them to manage. And the other 1/6 is going to go to his children's foundations and the Susan Buffett Foundation. This is crazy. There's no Warren Buffett Foundation, he's not going to give the money away. He’s not going to make any of these decisions. He off loads all of it to the Gates Foundation. Which really is remarkable. He's like, boy, it's really hard to give money away. I don't know the first thing about her. There's a lot of infrastructure required to do this. Actually, that guy's already built the infrastructure, and I very much trust him.…

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