About Capitalism and way of life : over the course of the last year, was there ever a time that you had doubts about capitalism and about our way of life?
W: If there had been, last September when we invested a lot of money, that was when the country was looking into the abyss.
The money was flowing out of money market funds. The commercial paper market died and everything. We put $8 billion to work in just a matter of a few days then. So I never lost confidence in the system. This country works, you know. We've got 200 years of proof. And it's going to continue to work.
The money was flowing out of money market funds. The commercial paper market died and everything. We put $8 billion to work in just a matter of a few days then. So I never lost confidence in the system. This country works, you know. We've got 200 years of proof. And it's going to continue to work.
B: Well, we have a complex financial system which we have proven that we can make mistakes. But more fundamental than that is the innovation, the fact that you can create new companies, that people are willing to take risk and invest, that there's great science going on. This country still has the best universities, the best science, and we're going to tune our system of capitalism, you know. The idea that you have a lot of short-term loans covering long-term needs, the amount of leverage that was there, there are definitely some lessons. But the fundamentals of the system, a marketplace-driven system where we invest in education and a great infrastructure for the long-term, that's continued. And, you know, I'll bet there are some inventions that took place in that fall in the darkest hour: People were working on new drugs, new chips, new robots and things to make life better for everyone in the decades ahead.
About Greed and Corruption : perspective on whether greed and immoral behavior, unethical behavior, were key causes of the recent financial crisis.
W: It certainly played a part. We have always had greed. That didn't get invented in the last few years. And greed, fear in the third quarter -- I mean, the American people were really panicked there for a while. And it affected their -- it started out on Wall Street but then spilled over into the general economy subsequently. But we're never going to get rid of greed. We're never going to get rid of fear. What we do have is a system, as Bill said, a market system where we have the quality of opportunity and the rule of law combined to unleash human potential in this country over the last couple of hundred years to the degree nobody would have believed possible a few centuries before that. There's nothing that's gone wrong with that system. Our economy was sputtering and still is sputtering some. But we've got the greatest engine ever devised. And it's just beginning. Greed will continue. Don't worry about that. Oliver Stone is putting out a second film here pretty soon. Probably get mentioned again in this one with Gordon Gekko making a return. But that is not what drives the American system. What drives the American system is the quality of opportunity in a market system and the knowledge that when you get out of here, you're going to enjoy the fruits of the knowledge you have gained. And it will keep working. I'd love to trade places with any of you.
B: Well, the best systems are ones where you have good short-term metrics, great accounting, looking at profits, looking at risk and willing to do things long-term. Investing in new research, letting people build new companies. I was a huge beneficiary of this country's unique willingness to take risk on a young person. And, you know, I got to hire people who were older. I got to sell to people who were older. And it was kind of a dream come true. And that kind of thing is -- other countries have seen it and they are trying to create that same dynamic. And that's good for the world. It's excellent that China and India will borrow our ideas about universities, about entrepreneurship, simplification of business. None of us want to borrow this extreme leverage that we got into. But in a sense, that's kind of a -- I don't want to say minor, but it doesn't speak to the heart of why things have worked so well.
About Investment : why you chose not to maybe invest in both, or what made you not decide to invest in Lehman Brothers.
W : I had more confidence in both the numbers and the management of Goldman Sachs than any other major firm in Wall Street at that time. Now, there could have been things happened that would have made Goldman Sachs be next in line. (Goldman CEO) Roy Blankfein had said I worked 30 seconds behind Morgan Stanley. This is covered very well in the book called "Too Big To Fail" by Andrew Ross Sorken. But I did not think the system was going to go under. I felt Washington in the end would do the right thing. I thought if they did the right thing, Goldman Sachs was -- I thought it was the best-run operation. I thought its figures were the most solid and I thought they would prosper the most in the future ahead. Plus I liked the terms, too
About government.: Given the severity of the economic downturn, which some attribute to systemic breakdown in risk allegation and underwriting standards, a fiercely partisan debate has ensued regarding the appropriate role of government. Can this role be positive and if so, how?
B : Well, there's clearly a role for the government in business cycles. And over time, that's been tuned, you know, mistakes have been made. Now, the question is -- and that's largely measured through inflation and interest rates. Now, there's a question of could there be a measure of risk that would cause them to step in and maybe tax transactions, make the bigger firms put more money aside. That is still really a question of whether you can recognize these situations and actually have government play a very positive role. Now, as things start to fall apart, we know there are ways that taking firms that are going down and handling those in a more expedited way -- there's a lot that can be done there. But the basic idea of, can you spot bubbles? Can the government spot bubbles? That's a great question. Some great economists have some ideas. But it is not a proven territory.
W: Last September, only the government could have saved things. The whole world wanted to deleverage. And they were deleveraging under conditions of extreme haste and with guns to their head in some cases. And the only entity that could possibly leverage up at the same time that everybody else wanted to deleverage was the Federal government. And when 200 billion flowed out of money market funds in a couple of days, when commercial paper stopped, only the Federal government could act then. And fortunately we had the people there who recognized that and acted promptly. The government has a huge role. And now going forward, it's a very tricky thing to figure out how to prevent excessive leverage and prevent off-balance sheet arrangements from getting in trouble or for just having people at the top of major institutions that run risks they shouldn't be running. But we're wrestling with that right now. There should be more down side to the head of any institution that has to go to the federal government to be saved for reasons of the greater society. And so far, we have been better at carrots and sticks in rewarding CEOs at the top. But I think some more sticks are called for.
About Business Education : To what extent do you guys think that business schools like Columbia were in some sense responsible for what transpired in the credit crisis?
B : Well, remember that capitalism has been massively successful, you know. Standard of life, medicine, all these great things have come out of it. And business schools play a role in training people to think about value, leadership. There's wonderful skills that are taught at great schools like this. And so the fact that, yes, we have had a crisis and we have dropped back, maybe we wasted two or three years net because of the things that were done wrong, that doesn't say that business schools aren't performing a great service, you know. The case studies of this crisis will be taught here for decades to come. And so at least we'll get that benefit out of the pain we went through. Leverage is a very dangerous thing. And perhaps, you know, Warren talked about derivatives as weapons of mass destruction. That wasn't much heeded. And yet at the end of the day, what happened here, particularly in the real estate sector, the notion of risk that price would drop down and what that meant systematically for those instruments, it wasn't well understood. And the mass destruction followed as predicted.
About Ethics : Can you teach ethics at a business school?
B : Well, I think the best place to learn ethics is in the home. I think most of us get our values from what we see around us before we get to business school. I think that it's important to emphasize them, but I think that if I had a choice of having great education and ethics fully on in the home or as a course in a school later on, I would choose the home. The wonderful thing about it is in this country, is you can succeed magnificently with ethics. It's not a hindrance. It's a help sometimes. It's a neutral sometimes. But it's not a hindrance at all. And to cut corners, you know, everybody here has a wonderful future. I mean, this is an economy you're going into that is so much -- If you look back on the 19th Century, we had seven great bank panics. If you look back at the 20th Century, we had the Great Depression and world wars and flu epidemics. This country doesn't avoid problems. It just solves them. And in the next 100 years, our machine will sputter again, you know. Maybe 15 years will be so-so years, but there will be 85 great years. And during the 20th Century the Dow went from 66 to 11,400, so this is fertile soil that you're working in and there's no reasons to cut corners.
About Industry : What industry do you think is going to produce the next Bill Gates?
B : Industries do have different paces of innovation. So the IT industry, driven by the magic of software, the magic of the optic fiber, magic of the chip which doubles in power every couple of years, it's been the industry that has not only been the most exciting, it's also changed the rules for many other industries. The idea of information being available, what the online world is like, that's incredible. I'll tell you, there are a few other industries that will compete for being exciting in the decades ahead. The energy business, some approach will provide cheaper energy that's environmentally friendly. And there's a lot of science, a lot of business. That's a global thing. There will be some great careers there. Medicine, you know. We haven't solved Parkinson's or Alzheimer's or about 20 diseases of these poor countries, and yet we can be sure that we're on track to do that. And so those three industries I think you would do great in. There's many others, but those are the ones that have the strongest appeal to me.
W : Find what turns you on. Find what you have a passion for. If somebody said to me when I was getting out of Columbia, you know, that Bill's business was going to be the one that would be exciting, you know, I don't think I'd have done so well. [LAUGHTER] But I knew what turned me on. I had a professor, Ben Graham, I offered to go to work for him for nothing. He said, "You're overpriced." Nonetheless, I went into the business. I will guarantee, you will do well at whatever turns you on. There's no question about that. Don't let anybody else tell you what to do. You figure out what you are doing.
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