The Q&A Session

Monday February 18, 2008: The Omaha Field Club

All you wanted to know about what Mr. Buffett said......and a little more.

Below are the questions asked by the UCD MBA group and an approximation of the answers given by Mr. Buffett. If something is in quotation marks, then I felt confident that I transcribed Mr. Buffett’s words within the realm of reality.

Unless there are direct quotes, my words are an attempt to paraphrase Mr. Buffett’s remarks; any misinterpretations are entirely accidental and are mine. Parentheses surround my own observations or comments. This is a lot of material. We had a lot to absorb. Enjoy! (Photo credits- Thanks Zack)

Q: What are MBA schools lacking and how, as a student or a school, can we raise the bar?

“Get very comfortable with the language of accounting”

“Learn how to communicate both verbally and in writing very well”
(Buffett did a Carnegie course in public speaking to overcome his ‘knees knocking’ when he got up in front of a group. I think the courses worked- he’s a consummate public speaker and appears to enjoy communicating with a crowd.)

Verbal and written communication subjects aren’t as esoteric and specialized for someone with a PHD to teach, but these subjects will be incredibly important for you in life.

“A well-written letter can change your life.” (Mr. Buffett has sometimes invested in or acquired companies based on what he considered well-written, succinct and sometimes moving letters.)


Q: You said a recession could be an opportunity. Assuming we are in a recession, do you see any difference in the opportunities presented by this recession and past recessions?

Look to the long term and don’t fixate on the day to day market gyrations. The U.S. economy will be fine. We’ve gone through major depressions, major world wars, including one where we thought we were losing for a while, and certainly there is a little correction happening right now, but if you look at the overall strength of the US economy, the GDP and the base we have to keep growing from, the long term is still looking very good.

For example, “Sees Candy (owned by Berkshire Hathaway) actually loses money 8 months out of the year, but then, Christmas always comes around eventually- we make $70 million of our $80 million annual revenue in the three weeks before Christmas. We say that the company song is, ‘What a friend we have in Jesus.’ And we continue to raise the price every year, and people still pay it. It’s not like you want to come home to your wife or sweetheart-hopefully they’re the same person-and say, honey, I went mid-market with a box of Russell Stover. You might get slapped.”

“People will continue to pay the higher price to get the box of Sees Candy. The important thing is to have a double comparative advantage (like the strong brand identity of See’s and a lack of acceptable substitutes) and don’t look at the month to month changes.”

“The current market challenges are financially caused. A lot of stupid things happened” in the financial markets.

“Over time the economy’s going to be fine.” Keep your eyes on life-timer term investments.

Q: Let’s pretend it’s Nov 5, 2008 and the new president-elect calls you the morning after the election. He or she asks you to recommend policies for their new administration. What do you recommend to the president-elect?

“I was asked something similar by Charlie Rose during the John Kerry campaign years. He asked me what if you got asked to be the Fed Chairman. I said, ‘Well, A, it’s not likely to happen and B, I’d say ‘No, you’d better call Jimmy Buffett.’”

“Unfortunately, whether it’s Republicans or Democrats, things won’t change very much.”

(Mr. Buffett then proceeded to tell us the story of a little salary and taxation survey he did in the 15-person Berkshire Hathaway office. Salaries ranged from $50,000 to multiple millions. The average % tax paid by his colleagues was 30%. Mr. Buffett, the highest-paid individual in the office, paid a little more than half that, at 17%. He thought that was illogical, unfair and an indictment of our society, government and tax system. He went on to describe the incredible (and growing) income and tax rate gap between the top 1% of American society and the bottom 20% and the middle 40%. He also pointed out that it’s unfortunate that so many of the people that are negatively affected by this disparity a) don’t know about it and b) wouldn’t know what to do about it and c) didn’t have the money to hire lobbyists to advocate for them even if they did know about it. On the other hand, those that enjoy these tax breaks are clued in, do know what to do about it and have plenty of money (ironically) to hire lobbyists to keep it that way. Below are some of his feelings on the topic.)

“For my $46 million income, my tax rate was 17%. No one had a lower tax rate than me, and my tax rate was slightly half of the average of the whole office! My cleaning lady is taxed more for cleaning the bathroom than I am for being in the boardroom.”

“Our tax system is way out of whack- and it’s been increasingly skewed towards the super-rich.”

“The super-rich are being favored- it’s what I would tell that person if they call me on November 5th- which is why they won’t call me.”

Q: Many have proposed plans for universal health care, whether through a single-payer system or expanded private coverage subsidized by employers and government. Can you tell us which if any plan you prefer and why?

“With a GDP of $45,000 per person (in the United States), if someone can’t get basic health care, it’s an indictment of society.”

(Mr. Buffett then went on to tell us a little story about what he calls the “ovarian lottery”)

Look at health are in this framework, it’s logical and reasonable. Imagine it’s 24 hours before you’re born and a genie visits you and says that you get to design what you think would be the perfect society, the laws, the policies and the regulations that you would most want to live with. Then the Genie tells you the catch- because all genie stories have a catch- and that before you are born you first have to pick your lottery ticket out of a barrel.

And you don’t know if that lottery ticket will say Male or Female, Black or White, or US or Bangladesh. Because you don’t know what you’re going to pick when you reach your hand into that barrel, you’ll probably really think about it when you create that perfect society..and you’ll want to have one that’ll create a lot of prosperity- a meritocracy- and one that is also full of the right kinds of opportunities for everyone so that you get the right people into the right jobs. You want the right people to fall into the best, the right, the most efficient places. Like you want Jack Welch running GE and you want Mike Tyson fighting in the heavyweight ring. Switch those two around and it doesn’t really work. Then once you have that figured out and working well, then you need a society, a just society, that helps out the people who didn’t necessarily draw the best tickets.

“You want a prosperous and then a just society. Part of a just society is that you want freedom from fear.” People are fearful of losing their job, not having enough to eat, not being able to make rent. “Freedom from fear also means health care- a lot of people are afraid of getting a horrible disease that cleans them out. “

“Think about healthcare in that framework.”



Q: Lee Iacocca says that he believes US business and political leaders are failing because, “Instead of looking for real solutions [to America’s problems of national security, entitlements, health care, energy, etc.] they seem to be looking out for number one.” Do you share Iacocca’s views and if so what can be done to re-align these leaders’ incentives to the national interest?

“What really makes board members behave is publicity.”
“CEO’s are behaving better now than they were 10 years ago” and they are more worried about bad deeds getting exposed in the constant media circus that we currently have. However, “You shouldn’t expect their behavior to change much in the future- it’ll be like it has been in the past.” People in power often are tempted to abuse it and I won’t just single out CEO’s. Politicians and many others fall into this trap as well.

Q: You did not support President Bush’s proposal for personal retirement investment accounts. By most accounts, Social Security will not be able to meet its obligations in the coming decades. What do you think is the best solution to this issue?

“Social security will meet its obligations.” The number of workers is increasing and the GDP per person is growing. “The percent of GDP is 0.75 percentage points greater than what is now needed and the pie is constantly expanding. You can increase a percentage of the pie that goes to the elderly while you have more still going to other people. I think you should change the age level though. I mean, I still happily cash my Social Security checks but the age should be lowered.”

“Medicare is a much bigger problem; we do need some level of nationalized health care.”

Q: In line with your previous advice to pick people on whom you go long or go short, which leaders today would you identify for going long or shorting?

“Barak Obama has clearly created a movement. He has the ability to lead like Franklin D. Roosevelt. But I support both Barak and Hillary; I told both of them I’d support them if they ran…..and so I became a political bigamist.”

“People like that (FDR) come along and can take the lead and take people somewhere that the people don’t know where they’re going.” That quality in business you see often too.

“You want to believe. You want to vote for someone that you can believe in, something that’s bigger than yourself.”

Q: What dream have you not accomplished?

“Do you happen to know Sophia Loren?” (We all laughed for a good minute here)


“You do want your dream to be out there a ways but you don’t want it to be too out there.”

“Someone once said, ‘Success isn’t getting what you want, it's wanting what you get.’ There’s something to that. An example of a real test of “what you want” and to focus your goals and time is something an 80-year old neighbor told me. She’s a Polish Jew and lives in Omaha and was sent to one of the worst concentration camps during World War II. She was probably a young lady, in her early teens. Her family and friends were split up and formed into lines- some were killed, some survived. She survived that experience. Now, in her 80’s she says that she’s very slow to make friends and as a test, she advises to ask yourself of any potential friend, “Would they hide you?” That is her test of loyalty and she only makes friends with people who pass the test.

“The point is to engineer backwards from where you want to be and do what you must to get there. It’s like a country song, you should sing it backwards so you get your home back, your car back, your dog back……….”

Q: Aside from winning the “ovarian lottery” as you’ve called it, what was the most important year in your life and why?

“When I proposed to my wife.” It also happens that that year was when I was taking the Carnegie public speaking course. They would give pencils every week to the
person who had improved the most and the week that I proposed, they asked me, ‘Did she say yes?” And that was the week I got the pencil.

Miscellaneous Questions and some other thoughts and asides from Mr. Buffett:

Municipal insurance:

“Municipal insurance might be more risky in the future than it’s been in the past.” If municipal bonds get insured, then often cities will default more frequently just because they are insured. “Be very careful using historical information in business”, like looking at historical default rates on municipal bonds. The default rate is very different, for a reason, during a period when a project or a city is insured vs. when it’s not.

Estate Tax:

“You’d have to go to a funeral a month for 17 years before you encountered someone who was affected by the estate tax- that’s only about 12,000 people in the entire United States.”

“If you believe in equal opportunity you can’t believe in dynastic wealth.”

“Unfortunately, the folks who want to abolish the estate tax have the lobbyists. My cleaning lady doesn’t have lobbyists.”

Derivatives:
“Derivatives are dangerous because they can be so mispriced. You have interconnectedness in financial markets like you’ve never had before. Trillions are held by people which, if they get a trigger, they’d all behave the same way.” It’s a crowded trade with out people knowing it’s crowded.
“It’s like the portfolio insurance doomsday machine on October 19, 1987- failure should’ve been predicted. It was less than 1% of the market but took 23% off the market and the market was almost closed. It’s now the electronic herd all over the world, waiting to act on a stimulus and it’s accentuated by derivatives.”

Additionally, total return swaps “are financial weapons of mass destruction” because they create chaos in the markets. “It’s amazing the trouble people can get into with leverage.”

The Gift to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:
“It was an absolute no brainer for me. They’ll keep running it decades after I’m dead.” “There are plenty of people who want to put their name on a building for $10 million and that’s great but it doesn’t do anything for me.”

Give your philanthropic dollars to people that will focus on big projects that wouldn’t normally be accomplished without funding of that size. Work on the big, creative and innovate projects that aren’t being addressed adequately by the government, by the scientific community or by society in general. Try not to sprinkle your donation around to a lot of little projects- it’ll sometimes just feel like it disappears without making an impact and, little piecemeal dollars are usually easier to get.

“I think they’ll do a great job.”

Picking Winning Investments:

“I value a stock or business before I know what its price is.” It takes away an anchoring bias. “I also do it with horse racing- I study the horse first and figure out who the winners are likely to be and then I look at the odds.”

“If you read enough you’ll find things.” Read annual reports and anything you can get your hands on to find values. “You have to find them yourself- no one’s going to show you. You have to keep reading.”

Keep your focus small. The larger your portfolio, the more like the market you’ll look- you won’t pick winners, you’ll mimic the S&P. “Markets are generally efficient- I don’t have to have an opinion on 4,000 companies, I only have to find one that’s mispriced.”

China:
(Mr. Buffett has made some profitable buys and sells of Chinese petroleum companies that were government owned and it seems is keeping a close eye on the undervalued companies there as well as watching for obvious lemons, of which there seem to be many.) He says that China is the classic sleeping giant, with a wealth of resources but a potential wealth and a population that have been extremely underleveraged. He says, “China is now unleashing the potential of the people and it’s extraordinary and it’ll keep going. Once you’ve tasted it, huge things will happen in China. I was there 3 months ago and it was astounding. All that potential came out. But not that I think Chinese A shares are a good buy, they sell at very fancy prices.”



Misc.

Dealing with challenging problems:
“I have three boxes on my desk: ‘In’, ‘Out’ and ‘Too Hard.’ It’s the “Too Hard” ones I try to get help on.”

At the Foot of the Master

Monday, February 18, 2006: Omaha Field Club, West Omaha

So, what is Warren Buffett like? That’s a question that’s both tough and easy to answer at the same time. As he strolled into the Field Club meeting room we gave him a thundering standing ovation. He didn’t react like a politician, finger pointing “hey you over there” to the crowd or flashing thumbs-up signs with black-light bright smile. Nor did he act like a crusty Wall-Street financier, hardened with decades of sitting behind an immense desk or smarmy with easy smiles and self-congratulation.

Instead (not like we really expected anything else, after all we’ve heard about him), he greeted the room warmly and acted like he had nothing better to do on a Monday than to spend the next four hours with 140 UC Davis and NYU black-suit-and-tied MBA students.

Within the first few minutes he launched off with a joke about a Wall Street fund manager who didn’t get his bonus this year and was forced to cut back on expenses. The punch line blurred the lines enough, so to speak, that I’m not quite sure I can actually post it on a University-sponsored blog. The bottom line was that he wanted us to feel comfortable and to make sure we understood that “anything goes”- we could ask him questions about finance and the markets but he was not opposed to answering personal or particularly sticky questions either.

Our crack team of UCD question-askers (chosen in the previous months as we prepared for the trip) proceeded to ask away, alternating one for each of our two with the smaller group of NYU students that also had been invited that day. I will post the Q&A once I get off the plane in Phoenix and get an internet connection again but we spent a rapt few hours basking in the glow, laughing and having a great time with the second richest man in the world.

After our four hours were up and we had had a simple but satisfying lunch of sandwiches and Coke products (“I don’t care if you drink it, I just care if you open the bottles”, said Mr. Buffett, the Coke shareholder), we left feeling like our lives had each been touched not just by the genius of the most successful investor in history, but by a generous, sincere and singular man whose impact and legacy are already a part of this country’s (and the world’s) history.

So what’s he like? I don’t know about everyone else, but after we had a raucous and thoughtful Q&A session, lunch and then photo op time that lasted for over an hour, we felt that he was something like a cross between your favorite professor and a dangerously savvy businessman. I think were all just very grateful that he took the precious time out of his busy schedule to spend the afternoon with us.

Challenging our Expectations

Monday, February 18, around Dodge St. Area, Omaha

"We're off to see the Wizard...."

I wonder if Mr. Buffett feels sometimes like a circus attraction (undoubtedly with the Greatest Show on Earth) or like a dashboard bobble-head caricature, except for the fact that I don't think his face is well-known enough to support your average Asian plastic toy manufacturer. Today I'm trying to keep an open mind and try not to get caught up in his celebrity but just to listen and learn.

The busses are warming up in the Marriott driveway, we're grabbing last minute coffee, commenting about the -1 windchill and then we're off- some of us perhaps with expectations that we will come away from this meeting with a somehow magical nugget of knowledge that will create our first billion. I also suspect all of us are eager to meet the man which so many have called "the most down to earth businessman you'll ever meet."

So what will we learn? We shall see...........

Give More Than You Receive

Sunday February 17, 2006: The Omaha Boys and Girls Club



This morning most of us slept in, did homework, wrote on our blogs, got a workout or walked to the Old Market area for lunch. Whatever the morning held for us, a big group of us who signed up to do volunteer work in Omaha met downstairs in the Courtyard Marriott's lobby at 12:30 to divide ourselves into our volunteer task groups.



Forty or so of us went to Girls Inc, and another forty of us piled into cabs and rental cars for the short journey out to the Girls and Boys Club of The Midlands, Omaha club (http://www.bgcomaha.org/) while a smaller team headed out for the United Way.



We were driving over to help the Boys and Girls Club with some physical tasks like organizing equipment and cleaning storage space but also some mental and creative work like helping them with their annual report and developing a curriculum for a financial literacy outreach program. We have been very impressed by Mr. Buffett's record of giving and community involvement here in Omaha and elsewhere- who hasn't heard of his enormous gift of $31 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? Though a small contribution, we hoped that volunteering in Mr. Buffett's community would help show our appreciation for his generous invitation to our group and would make a difference at the Boys and Girls Club, the United Way and Girls Inc.



Following are some of Warren Buffets' thoughts (but not mandates) about how he felt his late wife's Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and those of other family members should be run:



-Focus on relatively few activities that can make an important difference.

-Concentrate on the needs that would not be met without your assistance.

-Consider working with your siblings on important projects.

-Pay attention to your home community, but favor a broader view.

-Expect to make mistakes. Nothing will be accomplished if you always walk the safe path



(source: Warren Buffett Speaks- Wit and Wisdom From the World's Greatest Investor by Janet Lowe, 2007)



Today at the Boys and Girls Club we learned so much about the valuable work that organization does, by providing a safe, warm and nurturing space where kids can be kids and where children and teens can come after school to get help on homework, get a hot meal, do an art project, play sports or even strive for a number of college scholarships. Boys and Girls Clubs are typically located in neighborhoods of need, where both parents (if the home still has both parents) work all day and kids are especially vuluerable between the time school gets out and the time parents get home from work.

The Club in Omaha, for many kids, is like a home away from home where they can always relax, study hard, make friends or just find enough space in their own heads to have a little breathing room. The Boys and Girls Club, from President/CEO Fred Schott through to operations director Tom Kunkel and his staff, is an organization with a mission to directly help the local community and to make sure that their neighborhood kids stay safe (there evidently is difficulty with two rival gangs in the area), stay out of drugs, and are able to live up to the expectations for personal excellence communicated by the Boys and Girls Club environment.



Oh, and we cleaned out some closets and developed some annual reports too.



But, clearly, aside from burning a few calories cleaning out the dust bunnies, we all were impressed by how professionally run, how well-organized and how very dedicated the Boys and Girls Club of the Midlands is to "their kids." CEO Fred Schott is not only a top executive in the organization- he is a Boys and Girls Club alum who "grew up" at a Boys and Girls Club and who credits that early support system, which eventually lead to a full-ride college scholarship, with where he is today. We gained new perspective into the mind of a non-profit CEO who challenged us all to do what we do not for your potential salary, but for your passion.



Thanks Boys and Girls Club of The Midlands- the few hours we spent working with you are very small when compared to the inspiration you showed us.



(Many thanks go to Gretchen Bernheim for organizing the volunteer trip to the B&G Club.)

Everyone Has a Buffett Story

Saturday February 16th: In and around Omaha's Old Market District

I flew in to Omaha earlier than the rest of our group in order to conduct a little business while I happened to be out here. I’m a winemaker based in Napa and I make a small amount of Pinot Noir for a wonderful chain of wine shops called WineStyles (www.winestyles.net) two stores of which are located here in Omaha. While I poured samples of my Nottingham Pinot Noir for WineStyles customers and chatted about our vineyards and how I made the wine, the tasters always asked how I happened to be in Omaha of all places; I guess they don’t get too many winemakers in these parts. When I mentioned that I was with a group of UC Davis MBA students that were invited to meet with Warren Buffett on Monday, everyone came forth with their own story about Mr. Buffett.

“One time, when I was having lunch out of the office just at a little cheap place you know, I walk in and who do I see getting up to leave? It was so funny, here’s the second wealthiest man in the world and he’s eating lunch at this little place around the corner.”

“It’s not like you would really recognize him, I mean he just looks like a regular guy, he doesn’t dress all fancy or have an entourage- he blends in around here. And I think if people do recognize him they give him his privacy- that’s just common courtesy.”

-The above was from a couple who were WineStyles Wine Club members and were regulars at the store.

“I’ve never met him myself, but I did dance with his wife once. Except I didn’t know it was her. I was just like, hey , who was that blonde that can cut a rug so good? And my buddy says, hey man, that was Warren Buffett’s wife!”

“Have you ever been to Borsheim’s? (the famous jewelry store owned by Berkshire Hathaway) One time I was trying to finish this project and I ran out of ¼ carat diamonds at my store so I ran over to Borsheim’s, Figured I would just buy one over there and get the ring done. So I go over there and here’s this guy, I think he was Buffett’s son or son-in-law, who literally gives me this handful of diamonds and sits me down at a jeweler’s table and tells me to pick out the ones I want. Then he walks away. Talk about trust!”
-These from a well-traveled gentleman who owns a jewelry store (www.goldsmithsilversmith.com) in Omaha’s historic old market district (www.oldmarket.com). He also regaled me of tales of living in San Francisco in the 1960’s.

And other random bits of conversation:

“Do you want me to draw a map to his house for you? He lives just around the corner.” (He does, I somewhat sheepishly drove quickly by, but won’t post the address or directions here. It's two story, shingled and small compared to California's millionaire mansions.)

“Are you a shareholder? You know you can buy Baby Shares at about $4600 now, cause I think the full shares are somewhere around $140,000.”
(I’m not and I won’t- though many people here regret not having invested earlier)

“Yeah, he hangs out at Gorat’s- he’s given that restaurant a pretty good reputation.”

“I think people really respect him because he’s a regular guy and if you want to get into that business stuff, he seems to be real practical and down to earth about that too. I mean, everyone can understand why stock in Coke is a good idea. He doesn’t just throw his money at anything weird or fancy or something that’s trendy.”

I’m grateful for the chance to spend some extra time in Omaha, getting to know about Buffett from many different angles, not just through the questions we will ask him tomorrow, but through actually spending time in Omaha, the city where he grew up and where he still lives. I think what makes Buffett a hero to so many is not the uber-celebrity status of being the second richest man in the world but because he is such a “regular guy” as so many of the WineStyles customers put it. His personal behavior as well as his business choices and philosophies are something that appeal to and can be grasped by everyone. His measured, moderate and long term approach to investing, and his modest and respectful way of living, have filtered down into the collective psyche of the city of Omaha.

After having driven around town, out to the western suburbs where the Old Market area expanded away from the banks of the Missouri, I understand why they call this part of the country the “Midwest.” Though no longer the Wild West that it used to be (Omaha is quite civilized now thank you very much) the flavor and the sensibility are still there. You can see it in the bull riding bars, the huge cuts of steak, the cobblestone streets and false fronts of the Old Market and in the wail of the train leaving the stockyards. And you can see it in the contrarian though rational, independent but completely deliberate entrepreneurial force that is Mr. Buffett.


The Buffettism of the Day:
“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”
-The Essays of Warren Buffett


Suggested Reading:
Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein (1995)
-A detailed biographical “good read” that gives a lot of personal background on Buffett’s earlier as well as later years.

The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel by Benjamin Graham (1985)
-This is an investing classic and was written by Buffett’s own “guru”, if he could be said to have had one. Graham had a large hand in Buffett’s education at the Columbia Graduate Business School and Buffett applied (and still applies) many of Graham’s key ideas and philosophies.

Suggested Viewing:
“Vintage Buffett: Warren Buffett Shares His Wealth,” a dvd produced by the University of Tennessee College of Business Administration (2003).
-This dvd is a recording of an on-campus visit that Warren Buffett made to the University of Tennessee, during which the students were able to ask him questions and soak in the wit and wisdom of his answers. Though we haven’t yet met him and haven’t had the chance to ask him our questions yet, I anticipate our interaction with him will be similar to that on this dvd.

Into The West

Friday February 15th, US Airways Flight 510

Omaha used to the The West. Covered wagons, immigrant groups and groups of the Plains tribes all moved through, clashed, gave way, settled or moved on. Omaha, on the banks of the Missouri River, just west of Iowa, once was a major supply stop for migrants heading west, a place to stock up, rest the animals and then gather up courage as well as belongings for the journey ahead. We Americans have a legacy of going west, a vestigial curiosity bug, a desire to see what’s over the next hill or the next mountain range. Today I’m flying east- into what we used to called The West. Over there. Out there in wild country, uncharted territory and the great beyond. Funny how with time definitions change, ideas shift and frontiers re-position themselves.

There’s nothing like a plane ride to give you perspective. My dad (an engineer, maybe that explains it) always flies with a map, so he can trace the journey and anticipate landmarks. Myself, I just like to look out the window and let the view from 35,000 feet tell its own story.

Taking off from Sacramento, we overtake Lake Tahoe and the snowy Sierra Nevada, later on, the Grand Canyon, badlands, black canyons, the Mogollon Rim, and when you’re out of the Four Corners everything goes flat. A patchwork quilt of smooth farmland begins, alternating shades of grey and terracotta. Shadows of a grey cloud bank skulk to the north. We are now east of the un-farmable deserts and the parcels of private property begin, units of ownership, circles within squares within rectangles of straight roads, the rotary irrigation systems carving out pie charts on the landscape of America.

Interesting that most of this hardscape didn’t exist 100 years ago. There was a time when Omaha was the western edge of all that US society then called familiar. Now, even business leaders like Warren Buffett are looking east- and west- over great distances, as the world changes and as the frontiers, of countries and of ideas, start to redefine themselves.

Low of -2, High of 24

And California in February (low of 39, high of 68) will seem like a long way away.

At least we aren't in for any snow in Omaha this week!

Itinerary:
Saturday Feb 16: I arrive in town early to pour some of my wine, Nottingham Central Coast Pinot Noir at WineStyles on 72nd and Pacific in Omaha

Sunday Feb 17: Groups of us will be volunteering locally at Girls, Inc., the Girls and Boys Club and United Way. We have a group dinner at our hotel that evening- a chance to mix with the two other UC Davis MBA programs (San Ramon and Davis Daytime).

Monday Feb 18th: We meet the Sage of Omaha himself, get to ask him some questions and absorb the answers. It's a full day with tours of the Omaha Furniture Mart and Borsheim's jewelry store as well.

Tuesday Feb 19th: Travel day- back to Sacramento airport!