Ethics

And then the purchases of stock immediately prior to recommending Lubrizol to Berkshire, I think I — for reasons that are laid out in the audit committee report, which I urge you to read and which is on our website — I don’t think there’s any question about the inexcusable part that Dave violated, and that the code of ethics, he violated our insider trading rules, and he violated the principles I laid out — I lay out — every two years in a direct personal letter to all of our managers and which I’ve been doing for a long time. So I — you can read the audit committee report about that. The inexplicable part is somewhat — well, it’s inexplicable, but I’d like to talk about it a little bit because I will tell you what goes through my mind in respect to it. Certainly — well, one interesting point is that Dave, to my knowledge, at least, made no attempt to disguise the fact that he was buying the stock. BECKY QUICK: I’d like to ask a question that comes from Ron Taracant (PH) from Sugar Land, Texas. He says, “Good morning, Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger. You have always put great emphasis on hiring and retaining managers that not only have exceptional talent but also adhere to the higher standards of corporate ethics and behavior. “Recent events surrounding Mr. Sokol’s actions have demonstrated that we were not very far from a situation where someone running Berkshire Hathaway had great talent, but lacked the other quality that has made Berkshire the envy of the business world. In some ways, we are relieved these events happened when you were still at the helm. But coming back to the succession plan that you have in place, how can you ensure that there are no more Sokols in the lineup of successional managers that you have.