July 15, 2026
WHEN: Today, Wednesday, July 15, 2026
WHERE: CNBC’s “Squawk Box”
Following are excerpts of the unofficial transcript of a CNBC exclusive interview with Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Wednesday, July 15. Following are links to video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/07/15/warren-buffett-ended-gates-donations-to-give-more-to-my-children-not-because-of-epstein-ties.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/07/15/warren-buffett-on-the-timeline-and-distribution-of-his-annual-stock-donations.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/07/15/warren-buffett-americas-been-a-wonderful-place-to-invest-money.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/07/15/warren-buffett-i-initiated-berkshire-hathaways-investment-in-alphabet.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/07/15/warren-buffett-speeds-up-pace-of-annual-donations-will-leave-it-to-his-kids-on-how-to-manage.html, and https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/07/15/warren-buffett-kevin-warsh-was-a-good-choice-to-lead-the-federal-reserve.html.
More of the interview will be available on CNBC.com and CNBC’s “Squawk Pod.”
MANDATORY CREDIT: “CNBC”
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
BUFFETT ON LEAVING OUT GATES FOUNDATION FROM ANNUAL STOCK DONATIONS
WARREN BUFFETT: That's correct. That's correct. But, in interpreting that, I would point out that I have read a great deal since January 1 in terms of what happened with Bill and Epstein. And I have read his remarks to Congress given under oath, and I read the cross-examination. And while it's distasteful, while he made mistakes, I made mistakes in hiring all kinds of people or choosing friends, and then finding out later that they – that one way or another they weren't what I thought they were. And so I found nothing in there that was beyond what I could see, I could picture myself doing. And he ended it. And I have had situations where I made mistakes about people, or people may have felt they made mistakes about me, but they – you know, life goes on. And no one bats a thousand in the business of choosing people.
BECKY QUICK: You're talking about hiring decisions, maybe who you're associating yourself with, and there were certainly some questionable decisions on that came up in the release of these files, but there was also other, you know, personal information that –
BUFFETT: Yeah. No, he had and – which he admitted to.
QUICK: Yeah.
BUFFETT: Yeah. No, and, there again, I would say that, you know, I would – I have known some pretty wonderful people, and I still know some wonderful people. I don't think they have made every decision correctly.
QUICK: So why – if that's your opinion on it, why are you no longer giving money to the Gates Foundation?
BUFFETT: Well, I reevaluated my whole situation, just like I have been doing since I was in my 20s. And we'd gotten married, Susie and I, and we didn't really have any money, but we did know that we intended to live fine, and we intended to have a family. And – but we did not have aspirations of having six houses or a 500-foot yacht or anything of the sort. So, even then, we talked about what we would do philanthropically. But my idea and conviction was that I would compound money at a better rate than society generally, and that Susie would give it away better than 99.9 percent of the people that were giving it away, and she would get involved personally with the gifts, whereas I like to do things wholesale and she liked to do things retail. So we had a plan, but we didn't have any money.
QUICK: Why did you change your plans?
BUFFETT: Well, we changed plans because of what I have said out here. The money be – the money began to pile up. But the second –
QUICK: No, but you changed your – you changed your plan now. In 2024, you said it was a lifetime pledge to the Gates Foundation. Now, in 2026, you are saying that's not the case. What happened?
BUFFETT: Well, what happened was that I gave the Gates Foundation a great deal of money.
QUICK: Maybe $47 billion in total in gifts over that time?
BUFFETT: Yeah. And I had no – and I thought that was a good decision. I think it was a decent decision. But I did not think my kids were in any way ready to give away vast sums of money. We'd started – Susie and I started with them. I think we gave them – we may have given them $100,000 each.
QUICK: This goes back 30 years at this point or longer?
BUFFETT: That's about right, yeah. But they were growing children. I mean, they should – they had children of their own by that time. But, still, they – I don't think they were ready for it.
QUICK: So then is it fair to say, 20 years ago, in 2006, when you made this decision, you trusted the Gates Foundation more than your children, and now you trust your children more than the Gates Foundation?
BUFFETT: No, the amounts were different. I didn't say that I trusted them differently, but I felt they were capable of handling it. And I was certainly not going to turn something over to my kids and then pull it back from them. I mean, and the Gates Foundation has turned out to earn far more money than they expected to do. They spend more money than anybody in the world that I can think of. And they –
QUICK: Yeah, they have an endowment of north of $90 billion, I think, at this point.
BUFFETT: It's around that figure. And Bill has very substantial resources outside, which he intends to give, and I believe it 100 percent, I believe that they will go there. And I have really done the same thing as Bill in a certain sense. I have – I'm – except I'm – when I put it in, I tell the three children that it is theirs and it's their responsibility to get it done well. And you may find this hard to believe, but it's true. I have never looked at their Form 990s, which they file. I'm not judging each action as it takes place, because you take actions where you think there's only a 10 percent or 20 percent probability of success. It's not like investments.
QUICK: Before we move on, does Bill Gates know about this? When we spoke with you in March, you said you had not spoken with him since any of these allegations started coming out. He said the same thing last month in June when he sat down with this congressional testimony, that he had not spoken with you since January. Have you spoken with him since? And does this come as a surprise to him?
BUFFETT: No. No, it does not come as a surprise. And me – he came by almost, I don't know, three weeks ago or – I kind of lose track on time, but certainly not three months, but three – since we talked. And we spent three hours talking together. And he's – he intends to call me. He's the one that initiates calls just generally. And as you can see, I'm available any time. But he's much more organized than I am, and – but he's already proposed another one.
QUICK: Another meeting.
BUFFETT: Yeah. And he is – we have had an enormous number of good times together since we met, whatever it was, well, 1991. And he's always done more than his share. Always more than his share. You don't see me doing the planning or the –
QUICK: In the friendship, you mean.
BUFFETT: Yeah, it's been a wonderful friendship. And Bill and I are interested in enough things that overlap that we find plenty to talk about, and then each of us has got his own specialty to some extent.
QUICK: But you told him three weeks ago or so when you met him that you would not be making any more donations to the Gates Foundation?
BUFFETT: Yeah, I may have even – may have been even – I can't tell you exactly when I told him. But at some point, I had read the – I had read what Congress came up with. I'd read everything. And all I can say is, he – you know, I have – I don't know whether I have done dumber things, but I have done things that – I have just done many dumb things in life. I mean, that is – all I have to do is look at our portfolio. I mean, four out of five of our – at least four out of five of the decisions I have made have not been anything out of the ordinary. But –
QUICK: But he was OK when you told him –
BUFFETT: Yeah.
QUICK: That this was – OK.
BUFFETT: Yeah.
BUFFETT ON TIMELINE AND DISTRIBUTION OF HIS ANNUAL STOCK DONATIONS
BUFFETT: Well, it certainly means that I had two purposes in all the philanthropy, and particularly with essentially 100 percent of my money in Berkshire. You know, that's my painting. And I like the painting. I like the people associated with it, and it's been refined over time. I have added an apple over here or something. And I don't think, I don't know of 10 people in the United States that I would trust to hand it over to.
QUICK: Your company. You're talking your company that you—
BUFFETT: The company.
QUICK: Right.
BUFFETT: I don't know of five people, and I know a lot of people. And, now, I have a very high standard in terms of what I'm looking for in that person. And, clearly, we have found him with Greg Abel. So, and that becomes more evident by the day. Even this year, there's been added things that—
QUICK: So you don't think you need to hold on to the shares or have your family have voting power over those shares for as long because you think Greg Abel is—
BUFFETT: He is the choice. The only question is, is, he's not immortal either.
QUICK: Right.
BUFFETT: I mean, you always have this mortality question, you know, and nobody gets away from it. I mean, it, people can be in marvelous health or seem like it, and they, who died the other day? Lindsey Graham, 71 or something.
QUICK: Lindsey Graham.
BUFFETT: And so there's an enormous variety and variation from being lucky to not being lucky. And I have, that's the bet I make with Greg. I do not have a list of 10. I mean, It isn't, I don't have 10 kids either. But even, I don't have a list of three.
QUICK: In terms of who you would trust the company to at this point.
BUFFETT: Yes, yes.
QUICK: Right.
BUFFETT: Now, I have got directors that I trust to be imbued with the, they like the concept of Berkshire Hathaway, and they would like to keep it going. So I have got the right group that's the intermediary in making that choice. But things don't always work out perfectly in the world.
QUICK: So your hope is that the shares will be disbursed by the end of 2034, just over eight years from now, 8.5 years from now. But I take it if you're not here and the kids are the one making the choices, you would leave it to their decision-making at that point?
BUFFETT: Yes. And eight years from now, my daughter will be 80, very close to 81, and another one will be 70. And it's not just a question of mortality. It's a question of keeping our marbles too, you know?
QUICK: Have they heard you say it like this?
BUFFETT: Well, I mean, I'm losing marbles at this point. I accumulated marbles for a longer time than I deserved. And that's just a matter of luck. I mean, I have seen so many managers of our companies that, well, I think I have mentioned it in a few annual reports, annual meetings. I mean, we had guys cutting out paper dolls, and there's a, and their assistants covering for them.
QUICK: OK, just to clarify at this point, you are saying this of your right mind while you're making these decisions, correct?
BUFFETT: I hope so.
BUFFETT: But, actually, I wrote the will a couple years ago, so that—
QUICK: Yes.
BUFFETT: And I will not knowingly, I mean, I will not change that will, except for extremely important decisions, because there's no question that I had my marbles when I wrote it.
QUICK: OK. So let's talk a little bit about what happens now, because you have talked about how this is really your children making the decisions, but in the announcement that you're putting out now, you increased each of your children's foundations, the amount you're giving them, by about 50 percent over what you gave them last year.
BUFFETT: Yes. Increase the Susan Thompson Foundation, yes.
QUICK: But it's the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation that really is seeing the outsized gains in what they're going to be giving away. They're, the amount of shares they receive this year is tenfold what it was last year. Basically, they're getting all the money that would have gone to the Gates Foundation. Why?
BUFFETT: Well, but they're getting all the money that would have gone to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation.
QUICK: And then some.
BUFFETT: Would have survived.
QUICK: Right, and then some.
BUFFETT: Yes.
QUICK: But, basically, the payout they're going to be getting this year in terms of what they can disburse is $4.5 billion. That's how much the Gates Foundation got last year. Why so much more to the STB Foundation than the other three foundations, relatively speaking? Everybody gets more, but why that outsized amount?
BUFFETT: Well, the STB Foundation is what, I would say totally, my wife would have, first wife would have created it. And I would have approved it. I mean, we were on the same page in all kinds of questions that aren't even questions anymore in terms of women's rights, I mean, civil rights. I mean, we were in sync. Now, she took an interest in listening to everybody's story. That would be the last thing of the world I would want to do. She saw every individual as an individual, but she also saw them as a group. I saw them as a group, and I had other things that fascinated me more.
QUICK: This money that goes through, is this what you will anticipate seeing from this point on? And in years past, at Thanksgiving, you have given additional disbursements to the three kids' foundations.
BUFFETT: Yes.
QUICK: Do you plan to do that again this year?
BUFFETT: Yes, I'm almost sure I will. But, regardless, the other goes on that. I mean, if I, I could, I'm more probable to die before Thanksgiving than any of my three children and probably the probability of all three combined. But I also enjoy explaining why I take actions, just like I do in the annual report on Berkshire. I have got a didactic streak, which my partner Charlie Munger had. And to us, the money wasn't, well, the money was important in terms of what it could actually do for other people. It wasn't important for what it could do for me. I have not denied myself anything in life.
QUICK: If something happens that you're not here to make these decisions, does it revert to what you talked about last year in your will, where there is a new foundation that is created?
BUFFETT: Yes, there's a new foundation.
QUICK: And the three kids are in charge?
BUFFETT: It has to be to be because it does have slight variations, one being unanimous consent among the three for anything they do.
QUICK: Does the STB Foundation or the kids' foundations, do they have to spend the money in this fiscal year, as was required of the Gates Foundation, or is this something where they can take their time and make their plans?
BUFFETT: They know my views on it, but they can, they can do what they want, but if they, if their wants get away from the basic principles far enough, you would look at it again. But that isn't going to happen.
QUICK: Warren, you have spent most of your adult life thinking about philanthropy. How have your views changed over time? What would you like to see happen with this? I think about The Giving Pledge and what you all did. What's your perspective at this point?
BUFFETT: Well, the perspective I have is that, out of eight billion people, I may be one of the 10 luckiest in the world. And so I have been lucky and healthy to get to 95. I have been lucky in that the field that intrigued me and where I had some natural ability happened to be one that paid off in a way that nothing paid off like it, if I had been a great violin player or anything else. It requires more talent than I have, but a different form of talent, and, fortunately, I got exposed, partly accidentally, to what I liked to do very early on, and that was just an accident. If my father had been a plumber, I would not have, I would not have had the same advantage I had. So I was incredibly lucky. And then, as life has gone along, I have seen how unbelievably unlucky some people have been. And it is luck. I mean, we had accidents with the kids when they were young, and all kinds of things can happen. And they just didn't happen to us.
BUFFETT ON GOOGLE INVESTMENT
QUICK: Welcome back, everybody. Berkshire Hathaway now holds a more than $31 billion stake in Alphabet. That's a position that the conglomerate started to build in the third quarter of 2025, but it really ramped up this year after Greg Abel took over as CEO of Berkshire. In fact, just last month, it added $10 billion as part of a private stock purchase of those Alphabet shares. Now, there's been a lot of speculation as to who decided to purchase those shares, with many pointing to the stake as a sign of how Greg Abel will be putting his mark on the Berkshire portfolio. I asked Buffett whose idea it was to buy the tech giant.
Interview clip begins –
BUFFETT: I initiated it. I mean, I normally wouldn't give you an answer on something like that, but I will, because it, but we, I am not doing anything that he doesn't approve of. He's not doing anything I don't approve of. We talk all the time. He's, well, every day, I mean, and, but he is the decider. And getting back to Alphabet, or Google, it's probably number five or six.
QUICK: Well, I thought it was number three, if you consider the $10 billion private placement that would go along with that, because that would put it north of $31 billion.
BUFFETT: Yes, but we have got the Burlington Northern Railroad, which is certainly worth far more money than that.
QUICK: OK. So, you're counting fully owned companies as well.
BUFFETT: Absolutely. I mean, we are always making the choice between whether we will buy marketable securities or the company. We look at them the same way. There's, there are some minor exceptions to that. We can't, we can't set dividend policy, for example, if we don't own it. But the chances of those being material, the important thing is to buy a good business and to buy it on the right terms and to get the right person to run it.
QUICK: OK, but you have quickly grown a north of $30 billion investment in Alphabet. That puts it in terms of those companies that you own pieces of behind only Apple and—
BUFFETT: American Express.
QUICK: And American Express. So, Coca-Cola would be smaller. Bank of America would be smaller.
BUFFETT: Well, it's not even close. But if you take Coca-Cola, which we have owned 45 years, whatever it may be, we don't have a thing to do with running that business. And, but it's a very good business. And I would, when I say a very good business, I mean, something that you can expect to own, earn high returns on capital over a long period of time. Now, the question is, when you get into Google or any of the A.I. companies, you're putting out huge amounts of money. And I can put huge amounts of money in the government bonds and get $20 billion or $30 billion or $40 billion a year in terms of payments from them. So a good business is one that earns a lot more than the, and has prospects of continuing to earn a lot more than the returns on essentially riskless investments, which you could define as Treasuries. But if you take something like American Express, there are, most of the banks earn 13, 14 percent on capital. If I asked everybody to guess what American Express would, they would come up with some figure similar, but it's so different that it earns 30 percent-plus on capital and does not incur more risk in doing so than the banks that earn 13 or 14 percent. And the trick in life is to find, I mean, in investing, is to find businesses that are going to earn high returns on capital for an extended period of time. And that's what happened with Berkshire for a long period of time. A long period of time gets to be very important, because it doubles later on the, of very big numbers. But Charlie, Charlie Munger, my partner for many, for decades, he just, he just pounded the idea that it wasn't a good business just because it was doing sexy things or whatever it might be, but if it wasn't earning real cash, that it would or be expected to do it in a very short period of time, and just be able to distribute it. If it wanted to do better, yes, if it could reemploy it in the business, it was even better than one that had had the ability to earn high returns, but you couldn't deploy the excess capital of those returns.
QUICK: OK, let me ask you, though. Forever, people have thought of you as somebody who doesn't invest in technology. And, by the way, you have described yourself as somebody who doesn't invest in technology. Obviously, the biggest position in the Berkshire portfolio is Apple, a position that you put on, but at the time you called that a consumer company. Google, you just called an A.I. company. So what happened?
BUFFETT: Google, the real question with Google and all of its competitors now, because they're all laying out hundreds of billions. And—
QUICK: They're big CapEx spenders, the biggest.
BUFFETT: Yes. And that's real money. I mean, it's, if our railroad were to lay out $300 million or billion or $200 billion, and that kind of money wasn't even put in the railroad business in terms of developing it. So, and they are, that's the game they're playing now. They weren't playing that game with computer software.
QUICK: No. So, when they were asset-light, you didn't like them, and the markets loved them.
BUFFETT: I made a mistake.
QUICK: Now that they are they are spending heavily on CapEx, a lot of shareholders don't like them as much, because they don't—
BUFFETT: I think they're more likely to be a winner based on the record than probably 90 percent or 95 percent of what gets merchandised through Wall Street, because Wall Street, it's just whether they can sell something. And I can't recall a report on Wall Street that really gets into the internal rates of return that a business is actually earning. What's more important than what a business is earning? But they ask all these questions about what will happen next quarter, or, it's just, it's ridiculous. But investing is coming up with, well, probably, close to the most successful long-term investor was Rockefeller. And, but look at what oil and gas has done over 150 or a couple of hundred years. So he kept compounding at a very good rate, not as good a rate as Geico would have achieved in its early years, because it's easier to do when you're small. Getting to do it when you're large is, you got the whole world looking at you trying to figure out, how come those guys are doing it, we're not doing it?
QUICK: Why do you like Alphabet above all others? And what made you initiate this position? What was the eureka moment?
BUFFETT: I would say that I don't like it as well as at least four or five other businesses that we own.
QUICK: Other than Apple, the railroad, American Express?
BUFFETT: Well, you're not going to get the whole report out of me.
BUFFETT: But—
QUICK: But you like it enough to make it a huge position.
BUFFETT: I like Berkshire that way.
QUICK: Yes.
BUFFETT: I mean, Berkshire earned high returns on capital without, I'm not talking about using the tricks of leveraging or that sort of thing. I'm talking about—
QUICK: But I'm talking about why Alphabet versus the other Magnificent Seven or the other hyperscalers who are doing the same thing, spending a lot of money—
BUFFETT: Yes.
QUICK: Amazon, Microsoft, whoever it may be, to try and win in this position of A.I.
BUFFETT: Yes, well, I don't want to sit around knocking the others. They don't have any choice, yes.
QUICK: Yes, to spend like this, you mean.
BUFFETT: Yes.
QUICK: Yes.
BUFFETT: They're now playing a game in many cases where they, or some cases where they're playing a game they don't want to play. IBM would have loved it if they just kept playing the game that IBM was playing in the '30s or the '40s or the '50s or the '60s, and then somebody came along with, and said, we will get a better result for you, achieving the objective of all the customers you have, because that's all you're going to have, is you either have happy customers or you don't have customers over time. And the customer's not dumb. Wall Street can be very dumb, and in terms of they can dream. But a guy with a grocery store can't dream. I mean, I worked in my grandfather's grocery store, and we saw, well, we had one store in 1869, and we have one store in 1969, and other people were earning high returns on capital, some on a national scale. A&P, which people don't associate with anymore, in the 1930s, I mean, they were, they were number one, enemy number one of trustbusters in Washington. And they had a very, very, very good hand, and that hand disappeared.
QUICK: So it's a different game. And you like this game. You understand this game more than you understood the game they were playing before? Is that what you're saying?
BUFFETT: Yes, well, there's all kinds of games I don't understand, sure.
QUICK: Yes. But this game—
BUFFETT: Why should I expect to make money in all kinds of things I don't understand? And—
QUICK: But that's what I'm getting at. What do you understand about this game at this point? Because most people would say he's never going to buy any technology stocks. And I think you have said the same thing yourself in the past.
BUFFETT: Yes, but I have done it. And, actually, one of the most successful companies I was associated with, going back to 1958, right, was we started a company called Data Documents.
QUICK: Right. Right. Right.
BUFFETT: We started Data Documents because a couple of pals of mine read in the paper that IBM had settled an antitrust suit by divesting, they had to divest 50 percent of the capacity of what was their best business. And everybody knew it was their best business. Now, it so happens it ran out after 10 or 15 years, and I knew some of the people that caused it to run out. But if you have a wonderful business, you are going to be subject to attacks. So it's not a question of whether it was wonderful yesterday. It's, the question is, how long is it going to be wonderful?
BUFFETT ON APPLE INVESTMENT
BUFFETT: Well, there was no move they could make that would replace Tim that I would have liked. I mean, if you got somebody with a Stradivarius play the violin for you, yes, I mean, don't spend the next 300 years looking for another one. I mean, you have got one already. And, of course, Wall Street thrives on the idea that, convincing you that, if you just listen to them, they have got something that nobody else has, well, which can't be true. I mean, it's ridiculous. But it works, because, well, in general it works, because the – America has been a wonderful place to invest money. And the Dow industrials, when I bought my first stock, it just crossed 100. 100, and now it's 52,000 or something, and you have got dividends in between and all kinds. Well, I mean, the village idiot could have made it from that point forward. And so I have been in the right game. If I'd been in wheat speculation, I mean, wheat has gone from, I don't know whether it's gone from $3 to $5 or something over 200 years. And it's a pretty, it's a very simple business, as long as you keep remembering that it's simple and that making it complicated can, well, it's just crazy. At that point, you're gambling.
QUICK: But do you still like Apple?
BUFFETT: And people's enthusiasm for gambling is enormous.
QUICK: You have talked about that over the last many years, probably since COVID.
BUFFETT: Yes.
QUICK: But you still like Apple, back to the point?
BUFFETT: Yes.
QUICK: Yes.
BUFFETT: Yes. And I know more about Apple than I knew many years ago. But, on the other hand, if you're Apple, you have got very, very smart people all over the world shooting and trying to figure out how to make sure that Apple's future, the future isn't as bright as it is in the past. And look at the car companies. I mean, Henry Ford owned the car business for 30 – for 20 or 25 years, and he did, he brutally integrated like you cannot believe it. He got, drove costs down. He got the cost of the Model T down, I think, to $285. And he always was decreasing prices while increasing wages.
QUICK: Right.
BUFFETT: So, he was, but he also was a little nuts in some ways, and that did him in finally when he converted over the Model A, and General Motors just came racing by. And my friend Charlie Munger thought that General Motors was the – was going to be the dominant company. Who could imagine attacking their dealer fleet and everything they had going for them? And you have always got somebody shooting at you.
QUICK: To that point, Apple brought a lawsuit against OpenAI just last Friday night, just last week, and basically accused OpenAI of trying to steal trade secrets.
BUFFETT: I would say most companies would love to try steal trade secrets. They wouldn't love getting caught. But if you really could dig deep into the hearts of managers, they’d like to steal secrets. Wouldn't you, I mean, if you had a business and you were struggling along, and the guy next door was making money? I had a half-interest in a Sinclair filling station at 30th and Redick in Omaha when I was in my early 20s, and I been to business school and knew all these things. The guy next door had the Phillips station, and he was pumping 30,000 barrels, 30,000 gallons a month, and we were pumping 15,000 gallons a month. So I said, we're going to wipe this guy off the face of the earth. And a couple years later, we were selling 15,000 and he was selling 30,000, and we gave up. And we closed up. And I think he's still operating. It's – people are playing for keeps in business.
BUFFETT ON SPEEDING UP THE PACE OF ANNUAL DONATIONS AND LEAVING IT TO HIS KIDS TO MANAGE
BUFFETT: If you take eight billion people in the world and feel that everybody should have an equal chance, I mean, you could spend $1,000 or $10,000 and – to solve everybody's problem, you're never going to solve everybody's problems. The idea of solving a societal problem, which is what I started out as with the nuclear weapon, I mean, everybody worked on the nuclear weapon regretted the fact that they had to put together something like that, the most brilliant people in the world. But they never figured out how to put the olive back in the bottle. And that is not something that society in the first couple hundred million years of existence – or a couple million –
QUICK: Do any of those plans though, like the Trump Accounts, appeal to you? Do you think they appeal to the kids? Do you – or do you just leave it to the kids and say, you figure it out?
BUFFETT: I leave it to the kids, but I do have this provision in my will, not in these gifts that I'm giving now, but in the – the bulk of my fortune is likely to be left upon my death, even though I'm stepping up the –
QUICK: Yeah, I will say right now it's $140 billion that you have left –
BUFFETT: Yeah.
QUICK: – based on yesterday's closing stock price in terms of the Class A shares you have left.
BUFFETT: Yeah.
QUICK: If – the money you gave out this year is $6 billion.
BUFFETT: Yeah. It'll have to go up.
QUICK: Right. It's $17.5 billion at least annually, and that's assuming that Berkshire doesn't go up from here.
BUFFETT: Yeah, which is –
QUICK: If you want this to be given out in eight years, as you’ve said.
BUFFETT: Which is a terrible assumption, incidentally. I mean, that is not a realistic assumption.
BUFFETT ON SUPPORTING GREG ABEL
BUFFETT: If we didn't have faith, well, part of the reason I'm around is because we didn't have the sufficient faith in anybody. And we knew all kinds of people. But, I mean, if you were talking about Tom Murphy, I mean, if I could have hired Tom Murphy, but the trouble was, they were all older. And all my friends were pretty much older. So, I didn't –
QUICK: But you feel that way with Greg?
BUFFETT: I feel 100 percent that way.
QUICK: Yes.
BUFFETT: Yes. I have seen him in a lot of situations, a lot of situations. I felt that way with Charlie. I felt that way with Tom Murphy. And, I mean – but nobody, you know, nobody expects you to pick out 25 husbands and have them all work out. Just finding one is pretty tough, I mean, that's the right sort.
QUICK: Yes.
BUFFETT: And then you make mistakes.
BUFFETT ON NEW FED CHAIR WARSH
BUFFETT: I don't know what he will do, but I would say that that job is so complicated. And I think the other day he was quoted as saying, you know, that they have 950 economists, when they could use about 10. I mean – I admire him for taking on the job. I think he will do the best he can at achieving the job he was assigned to do, which is 2 percent inflation and, while maintaining maximum employment. And I my guess is that, just like some of the others that have preceded him, not all of them, but he would read that every morning, you know –
QUICK: The dual mandate of the Fed.
BUFFETT: The dual mandate. And he doesn't – he knows he can't be perfect at it, and just like I know I couldn't be perfect at taking people's money and earning super returns on it. But my guess is that people were right in realizing that I cared about what happened to their money. And I would say that Warsh has – he cares about the country. And I think that's been true of a good many. It doesn't mean their decisions are always great. But, sometimes, the decisions are so tough. I mean, imagine Paul Volcker getting death threats all the time. And others just think they know more than they do.
QUICK: But you think Kevin knows a lot and is –
BUFFETT: I think he's a very – yeah, I think he was a good choice.
QUICK: OK.
BUFFETT: Which probably means the president will be mad – future presidents will be mad at him, because future presidents are looking at the next election. And he's not supposed to be looking at the next election.
BUFFETT ON THE MARKETS
BUFFETT: I think there are times when opportunities are just thrown at you so fast you can't, you know, it's unbelievable. And then there's other times when you're very, very lucky if you find one thing in a couple of years. And it should always be that the latter is what prevails. But since humans love to gamble so much, there's more money in actually cultivating gamblers than there are cultivating investors. If somebody bought Berkshire 40 years, 50 years ago, a guy would have made one commission. And he should spend the rest of his time telling the client, don't do anything with it. And that's just not the way, we can't expect that of humans. But every now and then, you do find people that, I mean, you find people behave far better than other people.
QUICK: Fair to say, though, it's tougher to find values or find cheap opportunities?
BUFFETT: It's always, it's tough to find values when everybody is preferring gambling.
QUICK: Yes.
BUFFETT: And from the standpoint of the state, we may have discussed this, but from the standpoint of the state, it's sort of disgusting, because the state needs money for all kinds of things, roads, schools, you name it. And they have found that they can clip people who are buying nothing but hope, selling them a payout, something with a payout ratio of 60 percent or something like that. And if they weren't doing that, they'd have to have the income tax higher.
QUICK: Right.
BUFFETT: It's a cynical sort of activity. And I think the less you get cynicism between the governing body and the people of government, you don't want to, you don't want people to be cynical about their system. But there's times when the systems says, just be as cynical as you want, because this is what I'm going to do, baby.
For more information contact:
Stephanie Hirlemann
CNBC
