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A lot of our respected financial institutions are just casinos in drag.

Charlie Munger

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Charlie Munger
Age: 100
Born: 1924
Born: January 1
Business Person
Financier
Investor
Lawyer
Omaha
Nebraska
Charlie Thomas Munger
Charles T. Munger
Charles Thomas Munger
Respected
Drag
Financial
Institutions
Casinos

More quotes by Charlie Munger

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The investment game is getting more and more competitive.
Charlie Munger
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We both (Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett) insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think.
Charlie Munger
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The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.
Charlie Munger
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The beauty of a financial institution is that there are a lot of ways to go to hell in a bucket. You can push credit too far, do a dumb acquisition, leverage yourself excessively - it's not just derivatives [that can bring about your downfall].
Charlie Munger
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I would argue that a majority of the horrors we face would not have happened if the accounting profession developed and enforced better accounting.
Charlie Munger
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We may well have a competitive advantage buying decent businesses at decent prices. But they won't be fabulous businesses and fabulous prices. There's too much competition and money out there, with many buyout specialists.
Charlie Munger
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The world of derivatives is full of holes that very few people are really aware of. It's like hydrogen and oxygen sitting on the corner waiting for a little flame.
Charlie Munger
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Understanding how to be a good investor makes you a better business manager and vice versa.
Charlie Munger
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Well in the history of the See's Candy Company they always say, I never did it before, and I'm never going to do it again. And we cashier them. It would be evil not to, because terrible behavior spreads.
Charlie Munger
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One of the smartest things a person can do is dampen investment expectations, especially with Berkshire. That would be mature and responsible. I like our model and we should do nicely
Charlie Munger
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One of the first big bubbles, of course, was the huge and horrible South Sea Bubble in England. And the aftermath was interesting. Many of you probably don't remember what happened after the South Sea Bubble, which caused an enormous financial contraction, and a lot of pain. They banned publicly traded stock in England for decades.
Charlie Munger
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Intense interest in any subject is indispensable if you're really going to excel in it.
Charlie Munger
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Creative accounting is an absolute curse to a civilization. One could argue that double-entry bookkeeping was one of history's great advances. Using accounting for fraud and folly is a disgrace. In a democracy, it often takes a scandal to trigger reform. Enron was the most obvious example of a business culture gone wrong in a long, long time.
Charlie Munger
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there are all kinds of wonderful new inventions that give you nothing as owners except the opportunity to spend a lot more money in a business that's still going to be lousy. The money still won't come to you. All of the advantages from great improvements are going to flow through to the customers.
Charlie Munger
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I feel that by getting rich in the way I did, I think my own example has hurt my own country.
Charlie Munger
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Expect hogs to eat a lot more in the presence of a lot of hog wash.
Charlie Munger
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It would be nice if this [finding really cheap stocks] happened all the time. Unfortunately, it doesn't.
Charlie Munger
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Since those don’t hit financial reports, the opportunities you had but didn’t accept, most people don’t bother thinking about them very much. At least that is a mistake we don’t make. We rub our own noses in our mistakes in blowing opportunities, as we just did.
Charlie Munger
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Ben Franklin and Samuel Johnson, he credits their wisdom for his success. They were both utterly brilliant men. And powerful communicators. Both have helped me all the way through life. Their lessons are easy to assimilate.
Charlie Munger
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In investment management today, everybody wants not only to win, but to have a yearly outcome path that never diverges very much from a standard path except on the upside. Well, that is a very artificial, crazy construct. That's the equivalent in investment management to the custom of binding the feet of Chinese women
Charlie Munger