It’s nice to see the world’s most successful investor kicking himself — even if it is only for not reining in the bankers.
The BBC is making the most of a recent interview with Warren Buffett, running articles, radio reports and a documentary on “The World’s Greatest Money Maker” on Sunday and Monday, featuring the Sage’s striking admission: “I was an abysmal failure…” At restraining bankers’ pay when he was interim chairman and chief executive of Salomon between 1991 and 1992, that is.
Bloomberg reports that Buffett, amid a global push to curb bankers’ pay, told Radio 4′s Today programme: “The idea that the people who move money around are some favoured class — and they are in this country even in terms of taxes — is getting pretty far away from where we should be.”
“There are some things in life you can’t change,” he told the BBC. “When you are dealing with human beings, they don’t behave perfectly.”
And just to top off the latest bit of feel-good philosophising, he added: “I was lucky at birth… I shouldn’t delude myself into thinking I am some superior individual. Most of the rich people in the United States and the UK, they wouldn’t have done quite as well if they were in Bangladesh or some place like that.”
Related link:
Warren Buffett: Crisis, what crisis? – BBC