Charlie Munger on Greece, idiot bankers, accountants and more... | Hacker News Reader

Charlie Munger on Greece, idiot bankers, accountants and more...

fool.co.uk

77 pointsdchs26 comments

He defends Goldman and says this about JPMorgan:

But the world would be better off if JPMorgan didn't run a gambling casino alongside a legitimate business. I take my hat off to Dimon, but I'd take away his derivative book in a second.

Why is it a casino in JPMorgan's case, but not Goldman's? Is there a difference between the two, other than that the speaker is invested in one and not the other?

I ask because Buffett and Munger have a mammoth interest in this subject (I was going to say "conflict of interest", but perhaps there's no conflict) and in the public statements I've seen neither has even mentioned that, let alone credibly addressed it. I find that disappointing. Like a lot of people, I've long looked to them as examples of business leaders who care about good beyond their personal profit and whose statements could therefore be trusted more than usual. But everything they've said (that I've seen) about the financial crisis is easily explained with reference to one principle, without Occam even breaking a sweat.

Equally they could have chosen to invest in GS ahead of JPM because of this view about one being a casino and the other not.

However, this doesn't answer your original point: what is it about JPM that makes it a casino that doesn't apply to GS?

I'd like to know the answer too. Good question.

I took his comments differently; it seems like he's talking more along the lines of Glass-Steagall. I suspect that Munger doesn't have a problem with the casino (trading firm) itself but the fact that it is running alongside a traditional bank. The problem is, many people see JPM as a bank, not a trading firm, and mistakenly treat is as a bank when, in fact, it's taking more risks than a bank traditionally would.

A small side note regarding the "gambling casino" comparison mentioned in the article, I think this is not comparable especially that casinos are much more controlled than a part of the financial activities.

In the article : "Capitalism should not resemble a vast gambling hall. It shouldn't look like a casino."

I don't think so. I would prefer to have clear rules like the one imposed to a casino than the never ending cycle of creating "model" in the financial activities that no one can't really understand :

http://www.gov.ns.ca/just/regulations/regs/gccasino.htm

In other words, comparing casino and some financial activities is not a valid comparison. I mean sometime is better to invest in a casino business than in a financial product....

Berkshire Hathaway has $9 billion or more in derivatives. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/business/30views.html

Would have been interesting to ask how to determine whether "gambling" is going on or not, given that Goldman, JP Morgan, and BH all have derivatives.

Interesting that he says: "Goldman has the best morality of any of the big banks".

Goldman have taken a lot of flak recently. Perhaps it because they were the survivor.

I think it's more than just surviving and coming out on top. They came out on top because they have an extremely short term focus: buy stuff, package it, flip it, move on. That's their business model and it allowed them to change direction when the crisis it. In contrast, companies with a focus on long term investments were crushed (e.g., WaMu).

This goes against the dogma that "those short sighted companies, aiming for profits in the next quarter, now look at them." Therefore, Goldman must have cheated.

But Munger and Buffett are all about the long term. Why would they then admire Goldman Sachs who you say are obsessed with short term?

Munger and Buffett are long-term investors. They have nothing against short-term positions, so long as those positions aren't confused with investments.

Yes. They just do long-term investments in relatively simple businesses, because that's what they do best.

I think Buffett and Munger mean what they say about valuing honesty, but are nonetheless human and therefore prone to rationalization.

His saying that Goldman was just playing with the rulebook Congress gave them is disingenuous. Goldman's lobbyists wrote the rulebook. The financial industry -- and Goldman in particular -- have been playing congress like a fiddle for decades now. They had the rules that led to the collapse because they wanted those rules, because that would make them the most short-term money.

> When Hitler was in his bunker before he shot himself, he said, "This isn't my fault. The German people just don't appreciate me enough."

Charlie Munger knows his history. I wouldn't have expected a knowledgeable quote about German history.

I was struck by the two chemistry references, too.

It sounds rather like folklore to me, and I can't find the quote after a few minutes of googling.

Aye, all reports indiciate the only one in the room with him before the suicide was Braun and she didn't walk out of there either.

He certainly felt that way, but I don't think I've ever seen any evidence to show that those were his final words. It's a great quote, though.

Oh, the story with the bunker is a bit of a metaphor. Hitler ordered scorched earth tactics at the end of the war, ostensibly because this should have made it harder for the allies. But in his ideological point of view, this was because he thought the Germans weren't worth it anymore.

See http://www.br-online.de/wissen-bildung/collegeradio/medien/g... and http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerobefehl and http://www.lwl.org/westfaelische-geschichte/portal/Internet/...

Sorry, all of the sources are in German. (But that's German history for you.)

Oh, I see, you meant knowledgeable about the general situation, not about what Hitler said as such. I think you got downvoted (not by me, fwiw) for appearing to take the quote literally.

As for the general situation, that's quite interesting. Shows how much Hitler cared about the German people.

There's also a direct quote somewhere from Hitler, where he says so outright. It was written at the end of the war and meant to be kept secret. (Something about how the `Slavic races have proved superior, and the Germans don't deserve it anymore.')

I found a source, it was apparently in a chat he had with Albert Speer:

Ein Volk, so Adolf Hitler in einem Gespräch mit Albert Speer, das nicht bereit sei, "sich für die Selbsterhaltung einzusetzen", müsse "verschwinden... Es sei nicht notwendig, auf die Grundlagen, die das Volk zum primitivsten Weiterleben braucht, Rücksicht zu nehmen. Im Gegenteil sei es besser, selbst diese Dinge zu zerstören. Denn das Volk hätte sich als das schwächere erweisen, und dem stärkeren Ostvolk gehöre dann ausschließlich die Zukunft. Was nach dem Kampf noch übrigbleibt, seien ohnehin die Minderwertigen, denn die Guten seien gefallen". (http://www.mahnung-gegen-rechts.de/pages/staedte/Heilbronn/p...)

earlier post about Munger this week on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1331591

just because someone can make money doesn't mean they know their history, are unbiased, or understand the nature and cause of economic calamity.

> We were on the edge of something that could have taken civilization as we know it to the edge of ruin.

Banks alone can't take civilization down because they don't produce wealth. As long as there are factories, services, knowledgeable, skilled people doing useful things, the civilization will stand OK with or without the rotten banking system.

Failing banks, on the other hand, might have taken down Berkshire Hathaway, I suppose, but that's not the entire civilization.

> Very high IQ people can be completely useless

... in the eyes of very low IQ people.

> I see no reason to think Goldman misbehaved in some horrible fashion. Everyone was doing it, and it's only natural to increase your moneymaking activities when you can do so legally.

Should I really comment on this nonsense? Goldman was doing what everyone was doing without much thinking about the consequences, and they didn't misbehave? Actually he responds to himself a bit later:

> You have to be able to keep your head on when everyone else is losing theirs.

> Very high IQ people can be completely useless

... in the eyes of very low IQ people.

I agree with you here. The problem was not the mathematical models that were developed, the problem was that people don't know what risk means. Traders have the "it won't happen to me" attitude, so they go for the big gains. When everyone in the industry goes for the big gains, all paid for with credit from big gains that "will eventually" materialize, the industry has a problem. (An example is credit default swaps. If the bank that wrote you the swap fails, you have taken on more risk than you were expecting. When a bunch of banks fail at once, then all the banks take on additional risk, and also fail.)

Anyway, this was all predicted, but the shareholders of financial institutions wanted the gains that necessitated heavy risk-taking. And they reaped what they sowed. You can't blame the quants for this one...

> Banks alone can't take civilization down because they don't produce wealth. As long as there are factories, services, knowledgeable, skilled people doing useful things, the civilization will stand OK with or without the rotten banking system.

While it is true, banks don't produce wealth, they are the lubrication that keeps the machinery working smoothly. Manufacturing has to buy raw materials, add value, and then sell their product. The time that lies between "buy" and "sell" is tough without banks.

What makes a bank a bank nowadays is money lending rather than deposits and transfers. Some say money lending itself creates value, but I don't agree. Oversimplified, it can be said that because money is nothing, then money lending is even more so.

But in any case I was talking about the "rotten" banking system with corrupt lending practices rather than about banking in general.

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