WarrenWe get all these suggestions from index funds, a letter saying the chairman and the president of the chief executive officer are the same person and that they have some professor somewhere that thinks that American business would work better at a separate, if Warren could split him in two and have each half work. And to me, it's the most ridiculous criticism I've ever heard. It would like, Oedestus would come back from winning the battle in Troy and so forth, and some guy was saying, I don't like the way you were holding your spear when you won that battle. It's some guy that's never run any business and doesn't know anything. I don't think too much of this, I don't know. Let's see. Somewhere in here, I may find it at some point. Oh, here it is. We wrote in the annual report. In the third paragraph of a nine-page report, we said, we're going to treat everybody the same. Maybe a crazy concept we have, but we really feel that somebody that gave us their savings in 1960 or 1970 or 1980 and just left them with us and trusted us, we feel that they're entitled to the same sort of respect and attention that somebody that was accumulating like crazy assets under management gets paid based on assets under management that knows that they just need to have policies that essentially are popular in Washington. The only problem, the only threat they have really is that Washington sometimes says that you're getting too damn big and we're going to do something about you. So they try to be very sure that they're doing things that people will share. So anyway, I say, well, we're going to treat you all we've got three million people or shareholders out there we're going to treat you all alike and uh on march 25th uh about a month after i wrote that letter send the third paragraph i would you'd think that they would get that far that they they they had 101 million b shares now somebody ought to read to the third paragraph but anyway we got a letter and says we would like to meet with you in advance of berkshire hathaway's 2022 annual meeting of shareholders to discuss Berkshire Hathaway's perspective on governance and sustainability. Well, I have written probably more on that that's been honestly written from by the guy who runs the company, but why in hell would they think that we should meet with them and not you people all individually that come here. I grew up in a very, very, very
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WarrenRepublican household, but I feel like a, you know, some raving populist or something, but I, I just can't imagine, uh, well, anyway, you've heard it. And, you know, I, somebody, somebody gets paid to, uh, well, there's not a lot of people, I'm sure, in public relations, and they hire advisors and, because it looks better if they have advisors to tell them whether the chairman and the CEO should be the same person or not and those people get paid for it and then they discuss it at their board meeting and then you know in the end believe me if if 90% of Congress for some reason felt it was better to have the chairman of the CEO be the same person the index funds would not be writing those letters because all I have to worry about is whether for some reason people start wondering why some some some institution should have 10% of the votes and in every major corporation in the country and I like the idea of index funds but it is interesting to watch where incentives and bureaucracy and whatever it may be lead people the guy that wrote me the letter's probably a very nice guy I haven't but that's his job and well anyway they didn't get a special meeting and you people are here and I we appreciate the fact you're here Thank you.