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QuestionerWhat was your most memorable failure, and how did you deal with it?
WarrenWell, we've discussed Dexter many times in the annual report, where I, back in the mid-1990s, I looked at a shoe business in Dexter, Maine, and decided to pay $400 or so million for something that was destined to go to zero in a few years. And I didn't figure that out. And then on top of that, I gave the purchase price in stock, and I guess that stock would be worth me, I don't know, maybe $6 or $7 billion now. It makes me feel better when the stock goes down because the stupidity gets reduced. Nobody misled me on that in any way. I just looked at it and came up with the wrong answer. But I would say almost any time we've issued shares, It's been a mistake. Wouldn't you say that, Charlie?
CharlieOf course.
WarrenYeah. We don't do it much anymore.
CharlieNo. We probably got to push harder, particularly in the earlier years. We've always been, well, we've had all of our own net worth in the company. We've had all our family's net worth, and we've had all these friends that came out of our partnership, many of whom put half or more of their net worth with us. And so we have, we've been very, very, very cautious in what we've done. And there probably were times when we could have stretched a little and pulled off something quite large that we made a mistake looking back. But I wouldn't want to take a 1% chance, you know, of wiping out my aunt Katie's net worth or something. It's just not something in life that I could live with. I would rather be, you know, a hundred times too cautious than 1% too incautious. And that will continue as long as I'm around. But people looking at our past would say that we missed some big opportunities that we understood and could have swung if we'd want to go out and borrow more money. If we had used the leverage that a lot of successful operators did, Berkshire would be a lot bigger. A lot bigger. A lot bigger. And, but we would have been sweating at night. It's crazy to sweat at night. Over financial things. Over financial things.