QuestionerWhat do you see as the biggest challenge facing the United States economy relative to other countries? And what are the implications of that with regard to investing globally over the next decade?
WarrenBerkshire's attitude generally is to find things that seem sensible to us and to concentrate to some extent in those matters and then let the world economy and the world's currency fluctuations fluctuate as they will. I do think we'd prefer some countries to others, and the more responsible the countries seem, the more comfortable we are, wouldn't you agree with that?
CharlieNo, yeah. But beyond that, we can't help you very much because we really don't even, we don't have a global allocation system of Berkshire, and as Warren is keeping it secret from me. Not that one. The biggest threat we have is some kind of a massive nuclear chemical or biological attack of one sort or another. And, you know, if you say, what are the probabilities of that over a 50-year period? It's pretty high. Over a one-year period, it's very low. But if you talk about whether the qualities that have led to the last 220 years of incredible progress with a lot of hiccups, but incredible progress, you know. the in the status of mankind that we've experienced in these two centuries compared to any two centuries you want to pick out in history, this country is remarkable, and its system is remarkable. It does unleash human potential like has never been seen before. This crowd here is not smarter than a similar crowd 200 years ago, and they don't work harder. But boy, do they live differently. And they live differently because this system has enabled fairly ordinary people over a period of time do extraordinary things. And that game isn't over. I mean, there is nothing that says we have come close, in my view, to the limits of what humans can achieve. We would have plenty of opportunities. I'd rather have the whole world, obviously, in terms of opportunities. But there will be ample. in this country, I would not run from the United States.