- Warren Buffett predicted more banks will fail and compared bitcoin fans to gamblers.
- He warned inflation and recession are major risks, praised Apple, and questioned ChatGPT's benefits.
Warren Buffett has predicted more banks will fail, warned inflation and recession can be extremely dangerous, and dismissed bitcoin buyers as gamblers.
The famed investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO also touted the enormous value of Apple products, championed his planned successor, and questioned whether ChatGPT and other AI tools are good for society.
Buffett made the comments to CNBC in a rare televised interview on Wednesday.
Here are Buffett's 14 best quotes, lightly edited for length and clarity:
1. "Inflation is a constant threat to a country. There comes a point when it gets out of control, and it screws everything up. It's not good for society."
2. "Either one can cause a lot of trouble. Recessions can turn into depressions. We've got a great, great country, and it gets messed up by depressions. You can disrupt an economy a lot easier than you can put it back together again." (Buffett was comparing inflation and recession.)
3. "We're not through with bank failures. But nobody is going to lose money on a deposit in a US bank. You don't need to turn a dumb decision by managers into panicking the whole citizenry of the United States about something they don't need to be panicked about."
4. "I don't like it when people get too focused on the earnings number, and forget basic banking principles. I did think that banking could get in a lot of trouble because of the things they did. I didn't like the banking business as well as I did before." (Buffett was explaining why he's sold a bunch of bank stocks in recent years.)
5. "When the tide goes out, you learn who's been swimming naked. We actually ran into a nudist colony here, in terms of banks all over doing that sort of thing."
6. "I don't have any problem with people losing money if they if they do dumb things."
7. "It's a tougher world out there in a great many businesses. I think most of our management would say that they are surprised at where they are now, compared to how they thought they were going to feel six months ago at this point."
8. "People love the idea of getting rich quick. I don't blame them. But I've always wanted to get rich slow, and I have a lot of fun along the way."
9. "I've seen people do stupid things all my life. People like to play the lottery. Something like bitcoin, it's a gambling token. It doesn't have any intrinsic value, but that doesn't stop people from wanting to play a roulette wheel. It eats up your money if you spend the rest of your life spinning around the roulette wheel."
10. "He does all the work, and I take the bows. He understands each of our businesses, but the difference is that he likes to work and I like to sit around. He's a big improvement on me, but don't tell anybody." (Buffett was praising Berkshire's head of non-insurance operations and his planned successor, Greg Abel.)
11. "If you're an Apple user, somebody offers you $10,000, and the only proviso is they'll take away your iPhone and you'll never be able to buy another, you're not going to take it. It's an incredibly valuable utility. We'll never own a business that makes so many people happier and is so useful for them."
12. "When I look at my iPhone, I don't know whether it's some little guy inside that's doing anything. I don't know the technical aspects at all. But I know that at the Nebraska Furniture Mart, if we don't have the Apple product, people leave the store and go someplace else."
13. "The amount of time it can save you doing all kinds of things is unbelievable. It's an incredible technological advance in terms of showing what we can do. But I don't want to change the world too many times without having some idea of the consequences of it. I think this is extraordinary, but I don't know whether it's beneficial."
14. "If somebody told me I would live an extra year if I ate nothing but broccoli and a few of the other things all my life, instead of eating what I like to eat, I would say, 'Take that year off the end of my life and let me eat what I like to eat.' Happiness makes an enormous amount of difference in terms of longevity. And I'm happier when I'm eating hot dogs and hot fudge sundaes or drinking Coke."