No. of Recommendations: 7
Great, thanks! I looked back as far as 2019 and gave up, but it was 2017.
And we shouldn’t use your money that way for a long period of time. And, then, the question is, you know, are we going to be able to deploy it?
And I would say that history is on our side, but it’d be more fun if the phone would ring instead of just relying on history books.
And, you know, I am sure that sometime in the next 10 years--and it could be next week or it could be nine years from now--there will be markets in which we can do intelligent things on a big scale.
But it would be no fun if that happens to be nine years off. And I don’t think it will be, but just based on how humans behave and how governments behave and how the world behaves.
But like I say, at a point, the burden of proof really shifts to us, big-time. And there’s no way I can come back here three years from now and tell you that we hold 150 billion or so in cash or more, and we think we’re doing something brilliant by doing it.
To be fair, the original question was whether the 1.2x BV buyback criterion shouldn't be softened, and they did. And Buffett could legitimately say he didn't promise to do anything with the cash, just that he couldn't say that holding the cash was 'something brilliant'. But with 4x as much cash on the books now, 9 years later, and essentially no buybacks in the last couple of years, they really should find something more useful to do than collect less than 1% after inflation on all that cash. I suppose Buffett having announced the passing of the baton in 6 months means that this is his successor's problem, but it is a quandary.
dtb
