QuestionerWhat would be your best estimate of the returns on acquisitions earned by an aggregate of all American industry, adjusted, of course, to exclude the impact of accounting right-offs and equalizing for leverage? That sounds too tough for me, but go ahead, Charlie, and I'll be thinking.
CharlieWell, let me summarize. I think the sum total of all acquisitions done by American industry will be lousy. It's in the nature of corporations that are prosperous to be talked into dumb deals. And bureaucracy tends to feed on itself and create unnecessary costs. So I think the history of acquisitions is that it's not an enormous way to wealth. Now, it has been for us, but we're very peculiar. And luckily, a lot of people don't want to be peculiar in our way.
WarrenWhen we read that a company we don't control is going to make an acquisition, I'm much more inclined to cry than to smile. I mean, but on that way, we love making acquisitions ourselves. So it's a little hard to get too harsh just because we don't like the other guys' acquisitions. It's human nature, in some degree, to, you know, keep wanting. I mean, normally the people who get to be CEOs are not shrinking violence, you know. And they, they have animal sparras, as Keynes talked about, and they like to do things. And the supporting staff certainly senses that they like to like. to do things. I mean, they often have people in charge of strategy or acquisitions or all of that things. What do you think those people are going to do to sit around and suck their thumbs? No, they're going to keep coming in with deals. And the investment bankers will be, you know, calling on them daily. So there are all these forces that push toward deals. And if you try to push toward deals, you're going to get a lot of dumb deals. But we try very hard, Charlie and I, not to get eager to do a deal. We're just eager to do a deal. a deal that makes sense.