I would say the biggest single cause was we had an incredible residential real estate bubble.

To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework. You must supply the emotional discipline.

There's nothing inappropriate about having debt in America. It's what helped us grow over time. And it's when debt gets out of control that you worry.

As I have mentioned before, we cannot make the same sort of money out of permanent ownership of controlled businesses that can be made from buying and reselling such businesses, or from skilled investment in marketable securities. Nevertheless, they offer a pleasant long term form of activity (when conducted in conjunction with high grade, able people) at satisfactory rates of return.

We have a country where I don't know whether it's a million households a year or more, but good form.

We've got more productive capacity now than we ever have.

We're still in a recession. We're not gonna be out of it for a while, but we will get out.