that are long the stock, so we put him in had a
difficult situation and, you know, I think he — it wouldn’t be easy for him. But we invited him, he was an invited guest
CLAMAN:
Will you have another short seller next year?
BUFFETT: I think so. We’ll wait and see what playback we get. We always get a lot of reaction from shareholders and they tell us what they’d like changed and we’ll see what we do next.
CLAMAN: Will it be Doug Kass?
BUFFETT: I don’t know.
CLAMAN: OK, well, the fact
that you didn’t say yes is interesting to me, certainly.
We talk to you every year and every year there is some major story — the Greek flash-crash, the financial crisis, whether it’s something like the housing implosion. This year it feels like there were more things than ever all at once: the sequester, the Boston Marathon bombings; you have the hacking that some people believe is going on from the Chinese. North Korea making all kinds of threats. And then of course you have the Dow and the S&P hitting all time records. Washington, D.C., is in a bit of disarray. How do we get gridlock to be eliminated in D.C.?
BUFFETT: Well, I don’t know the answer on that, but eventually we will– right now, we have this situation where people were focused on primaries, overwhelmingly, and that drives them further to the right and left and makes them more intractable. But in the end, 535
people cannot thwart the desires of 315 million. We’ll get past this, Liz. I can’t tell you exactly how it will happen, but we’ve had worse things happen in this country
CLAMAN: This is not our nation’s worst hour?
BUFFETT: No, not by a long shot. This is a country that’s had a civil war
CLAMAN: Nobody asked you during the meeting, or after that from what I heard, about the sequester. The sequester was an attempt to at least get Washington on board cutting spending. Two minutes in, everyone’s screaming about reverse it — the FAA, the flight situation. What did you make of the sequester debacle?
BUFFETT: Well, it was put in motion a year and a half ago and essentially Congress said we’re going to do something — we’re going to put the prospect of doing something in that’s so dumb that we can’t possibly let it happen. And then of course, then they let it happen.
I mean, they designed an intentionally dumb way of attacking a budget on the theory that it was unthinkable and then they did the unthinkable. So now they’re reaping the rewards of that. You know, it’s crazy, the way that —
CLAMAN: Well, if they can’t cut that small percentage, what does that say for the future of us figuring out a way to cut spending?
BUFFETT: Oh, they can cut some spending, but this was done with a meat ax and everything done almost intentionally in a stupid way because they thought if we make it stupid enough, we won’t do it. But then you saw what happened.
CLAMAN: Let’s get to a bunch of records falling for the stock market. We have a very strong investor audience here. Is it realistic to think that the stock market will continue to go higher and higher?
BUFFETT: Well, the stock market over time will go higher and higher, I can say that for sure. I don’t know what it will do next week or next month or next year, but I certainly know that over time it will go higher.
CLAMAN: Do the P.E. ratios still entice you at these levels or are they getting a little too rich?
BUFFETT: Well, they’re rich in some cases, but overall we find things to buy.
CLAMAN: You have to look a little bit harder in a way, don’t you?
BUFFETT: Well, sure, the higher — you know, the stock market was far more attractive obviously three or four years ago.
CLAMAN: Do you still read hard
