Monday, September 20, 2010

Charlie Munger: Bailouts Are Only for Oligarchs

I used to think that Charlie Munger was the better half of the Warren Buffett-Charlie Munger tag team.

He appeared to me to have much more respect for free markets than Buffett. It turns out he is not against all bailouts. He seems to be against bailouts for 'the little people', but all for bailouts of the banking elite.

“You should thank God” for bank bailouts, Munger said in a discussion at the University of Michigan on Sept. 14, according to a video posted on the Internet, reports Bloomberg. “Now, if you talk about bailouts for everybody else, there comes a place where if you just start bailing out all the individuals instead of telling them to adapt, the culture dies.”

 When a questioner asked Munger whether the government should have bailed out homeowners instead of Wall Street, Munger said: “You’ve got it exactly wrong.”

“There’s danger in just shoveling out money to people who say, ‘My life is a little harder than it used to be,’” Munger said at the event, which was moderated by CNBC’s Becky Quick, Bloomberg continued,. “At a certain place you’ve got to say to the people, ‘Suck it in and cope, buddy. Suck it in and cope.’"

(htTaylorConant)

5 comments:

  1. At a certain place the people say to the bankers "Suck it in and cope", as they stick the barrel of a 12 gauge in their mouths.

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  2. "Suck it in and cope" coming from someone who is already wealthy and works in the industry that received the bailouts. Berkshire is a major investor in Goldman Sachs so this guy gets paid enormous amounts of money to protect his investment by claiming poor and middle class Americans are whiners looking for handouts- like he got. Should have stated, "We got the money you fools GFY you hard-working, average, unconnected little people". Americans need to gather together their firearms and begin using them on anyone with a net worth of more than 10 million.

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  3. I believe that Munger meant that he was happy that he was bailed out and doesn't have to endure any pain since he has a lot farther to fall than most of us. So if I am 'little people' with small money than I don't have far to fall so I don't notice the difference, but the billionaires might have to move out of their 50,000 sq. ft. houses into more modest 25,000 sq. ft. houses and so would feel more pain since they had given up 25000 sq. ft. instead of 2500. Well, I'll say one thing about this recession/depression, it has caused me to lose all respect for Buffet/Munger. They're just garden variety oligarchs like the rest of the moneyed set.

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  4. Yeah Charlie, let them eat cake. You get 100% of your paper losses covered while some poor suckers in overpriced houses with no jobs have to sweat it out. What a great country!

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  5. i live in Omaha along with munger and buffet. as a fundraiser for local charities, i have personally given more to local omaha charities than buffet, and munger have over the last 20 years. all it took was a dollar. they give not one sh!t about the town they live in. but when the NYC jews at goldmine sachs needed to look good, WB doled out 50 million. wow. now maybe if peoiple in omaha started begging for money for guns and bombs, he would give us some money too.

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