I Think Confidence Will Come Back.

[the U.s. Treasury] Can Borrow Basically Unlimited Amounts. They Can Stay There For Years And Years. These Assets Will Be Worth More Money Over Time. So When Merrill Lynch Sells A Bunch Of Mortgage-related Assets At 22 Cents On The Dollar Like They Did A Month Or So Ago, The Buyer Goes - Is Going To Make Money, And He's Going To Make A Lot More Money If It Happens To Be An Institution Like The U.s. Government Which Has Very, Very Cheap Borrowing Costs.

I Think That They Hoped The Private Sector Would Come In. And The Private Sector Tried To Come In Until They Saw The Size Of The Problem. I Mean, From Were People On That Weekend That Thought They'd Had A Solution. And Then The Hole Kept Getting Bigger And Bigger. And All Of A Sudden Became Apparent That 20 Billion Wouldn't Do It And 30 Billion Wouldn't Do It And 40 Billion Wouldn't Do It. So It Got Beyond Anybody's Ability To Certainly To Do It In A Short Period Of Time.

Much Success Can Be Attributed To Inactivity. Most Investors Cannot Resist The Temptation To Constantly Buy And Sell.

Wild Swings In Share Prices Have More To Do With The "lemming- Like" Behaviour Of Institutional Investors Than With The Aggregate Returns Of The Company They Own.

Lethargy Bordering On Sloth Remains The Cornerstone Of Our Investment Style. The Exception Was Wells Fargo, A Superbly-managed, High-return Banking Operation In Which We Increased Our Ownership To Just Under 10%, The Most We Can Own Without The Approval Of The Federal Reserve Board.