Quote

Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay were caricatures - they were easy to spot. They were almost psychopaths. But it's much harder to spot problems at companies like Royal Dutch [Shell].

Charlie Munger

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Almost
Shells
Company
Royal
Easy
Spot
Psychopaths
Problem
Spots
Psychopath
Much
Lays
Caricatures
Like
Companies
Bernie
Harder
Dutch
Problems
Shell

More quotes by Charlie Munger

Image
Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.
Charlie Munger
Image
It's been my experience in life if you just keep thinking and reading, you don't have to work.
Charlie Munger
Image
Being rational is a moral Imperative. You should never be stupider than you need to be.
Charlie Munger
Image
Our job is to find a few intelligent things to do, not to keep up with every damn thing in the world.
Charlie Munger
Image
Wesco had a market capitalization of $40 million when we bought it [in the early 1970s]. It's $2 billion now. It's been a long slog to a perfectly respectable outcome - not as good as Berkshire Hathaway or Microsoft, but there's always someone in life who's done better.
Charlie Munger
Image
Derivative trading with mark-to-market accounting degenerates into mark-to-model. Two firms make a big derivative trade and the accountants on both sides show a large profit from the same trade.
Charlie Munger
Image
If all you succeed in doing in life is getting rich by buying little pieces of paper, it's a failed life. Life is more than being shrewd in wealth accumulation.
Charlie Munger
Image
Here's one truth that perhaps your typical investment counselor would disagree with: if you're comfortably rich and someone else is getting richer faster than you by, for example, investing in risky stocks, so what?! Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy.
Charlie Munger
Image
We bought a doomed textile mill [Berkshire Hathaway] and a California S&L [Savings & Loan Wesco] just before a calamity. Both were bought at a discount to liquidation value.
Charlie Munger
Image
Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets - and can be lost in a heartbeat.
Charlie Munger
Image
The world is getting very much more competitive.
Charlie Munger
Image
Fancy computers are engaging in legalized front-running. The profits are clearly coming from the rest of us - our college endowments and our pensions. Why is this legal? What the hell is the government thinking? It's like letting rats into a restaurant.
Charlie Munger
Image
It's a finite and very competitive world. All large aggregations of capital eventually find it hell on earth to grow and thus find a lower rate of return.
Charlie Munger
Image
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
Image
In my life there are not that many questions I can't properly deal with using my $40 adding machine and dog-eared compound interest table.
Charlie Munger
Image
Berkshire has the lowest turnover of any major company in the U.S.The Walton family owns more of Wal-Mart than Buffett owns of Berkshire, so it isn't because of large holdings. It's because we have a really unusual shareholder body that thinks of itself as owners and not holders of little pieces of paper.
Charlie Munger
Image
Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.
Charlie Munger
Image
We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric.
Charlie Munger
Image
[With] closet indexing....you're paying a manager a fortune and he has 85% of his assets invested parallel to the indexes. If you have such a system, you're being played for a sucker.
Charlie Munger
Image
Warren spends 70 hours a week thinking about investing .
Charlie Munger