I think you'll have plenty of scrutiny as how the money's invested. I mean, just like the RFC. When the RFC operated, people knew which institutions they were buying preferred stock in. And it worked very well.

Knowing what to leave out is just as important as knowing what to focus on.

I mean, Hank Paulson is in there [ Treasury] at the wrong time, probably shouldn't have taken the job. He's a friend of mine. But he knows markets, he knows corporations' work, he knows money, and he's got the interests of the country at heart.

Buy into a company because you want to own it, not because you want the stock to go up.

No formula in finance tells you that the moat is 28 feet wide and 16 feet deep. That's what drives the academics crazy. They can compute standard deviations and betas, but they can't understand moats.

As an investor with small capital, one should prefer businesses that have high returns on capital and that require little incremental investment to grow.

We all make mistakes. If you can't make mistakes, you can't make decisions. I've made a lot bigger mistakes myself.