1. The speakers appeared as individuals who happened to belong to different groups rather than “representatives” of their races and faiths. All went well, except once, says Doris Buffett, when a Protestant panelist started telling the Catholic and the Jew that they were going to hell.
2. The black workers were squeezed out of jobs as Omaha’s packinghouse industry shrank. Marginalized into a ghetto north of downtown called the Near North Side, they lived in dilapidated, aging tenements for which unscrupulous landlords charged high rents. In 1957, the Omaha Plan, a communitywide study, proposed redevelopment of the Near North Side, but bond issues were defeated. A budding civil-rights movement led by college students at Creighton University, the Urban League, and other civic groups had worked to improve black employment and end segregation of teachers in the public schools since 1959.
3. Interview with Susie Buffett Jr., who wondered what good the police whistle was going to do.
4. Interview with Peter Buffett.
5. Interview with Doris Buffett. Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press, 1962.
6. Interview with Howie Buffett.
7. Howie and Susie Jr. describe themselves and their relationship this way in interviews.
8. This composite picture of the Buffett household is based on interviews with Susie Buffett Jr., Howie Buffett, and Peter Buffett.
9. Interview with Meg Mueller. “My mom has commented on that several times over the years,” she says.
10. Interview with Bill Ruane.
11. Interview with Dick Espenshade. One of the founding lawyers, Jamie Wood, joined from another firm.
12. Interview with Ed Anderson.
13. The example has been simplified for ease of understanding the concept of leverage. Obviously the exact return on capital depends on how long it took to make the profit, and on the funding rate.
14. Interview with Rick Guerin in Janet Lowe, Damn Right!: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000.
15. This description is from Ed Anderson.
16. Interview with Ed Anderson.
17. Interviews with Rick Guerin, Ed Anderson.
18. Anderson takes the blame for being too obtuse to read Munger’s mind, rather than blaming Munger for not explaining things to him.
19. Interview with Ed Anderson.
20. Along with Munger, Ed Anderson recalls this extraordinary trade. Munger says the story is true in substance. Buffett also recalled the reasoning.
21. Interview with Ed Anderson, who suggested the word “pretender” because, as he put it, “Charlie would never feel like he was an ‘apprentice.’ ”
22. Ira Marshall relates Munger’s confusion with names in Damn Right!
23. Interview with Ed Anderson. This term was commonly used among Buffett’s friends. He referred to “coattail riding” in his partnership letter of January 18, 1963.
24. Charles T. Munger letter to Katharine Graham, December 9, 1974.
25. Ibid.
26. In 1953, Buffett sold copies of this report for $5.
27. Buffett had also let Brandt in on one lucrative private investment, the Mid-Continental Tab Card Company. While Buffett gave up his override on Brandt’s money, the deal was a win/win.
28. “There’s got to be a warehouse full of these somewhere,” said Bill Ruane in an interview, but the author never saw it.
29. Bill Ruane introduced Buffett to Fisher’s ideas. Philip A. Fisher, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits. New York, Evanston, and London: Harper & Row, 1958. (“Scuttlebutt” is a nautical term for a barrel with a hole in it used to hold the sailors’ drinking water.)
30. The market for soybean oil was not large, a key element in the scheme. It would be impossible for a single individual to amass enough capital to corner the market for, say, oil or treasury bills.
31. Most accounts published about the scandal incorrectly refer to oil floating on top of water in the tanks.
32. Mark I. Weinstein, “Don’t Leave Home Without It: Limited Liability and American Express,” Working paper, American Law & Economics Association Annual Meetings, Paper 17, Berkeley Electronic Press, 2005, p. 14–15, is the source that American Express was certifying more warehouse receipts than the Department of Agriculture said existed in salad oil.
33. The Stock Exchange had closed mid-session on August 4, 1933, due to a tear-gas prank. Some consider the Kennedy assassination closing to be the first “real” closing of the market.
34. H. J. Maidenberg, “Big Board Ends Ban on Williston, Walston and Merrill Lynch Are Instrumental in the Broker’s Reinstatement, Haupt Remains Shut, Effect of Move Is Swept Aside by Assassination of President Kennedy,” November 24, 1963. The soybean-oil drama, including the American Express role, peaked during a period of about a week following the assassination.
35. American Express at the time was the only major U.S. public company to be capitalized as a joint stock company rather than a limited liability corporation. This meant its shareholders could be assessed for deficiencies in capital. “So every trust department in the United States panicked,” recalls Buffett. “I remember the Continental Bank held over 5 percent of the company, and all of a sudden not only do they see that the trust accounts were going to have stock worth zero, but they could get assessed. The stock just poured out, of course, and the market got slightly inefficient for a short period of time.”
36. The Travelers Cheque was American Express’s main product. The company introduced the card defensively when banks developed credit cards as a countermeasure to the Travelers Cheque.
37. Warren Buffett letter to Howard L. Clark, American Express Company, June 16, 1964. Brandt sent Buffett a foot-high stack of material, according to Jim Robinson, former CEO of American Express, who saw it. “I remember seeing Henry’s stuff on American Express, just reams of it,” said Bill Ruane in an interview.
38. At the end of it all, De Angelis pleaded guilty to four federal counts of fraud and conspiracy, and was sentenced to ten years in prison. “The Man Who Fooled Everybody,” Time, June 4, 1965.
39. Howard Buffett, August 6, 1953, last will and testament.
40. Interviews with Patricia Dunn, Susie Buffett Jr., Warren Buffett.
41. In Grand Old Party (New York: Random House, 2003), Lewis L. Gould describes the way being a Republican became identified with racism in the minds of many people who changed parties during the civil-rights era.
42. Buffett cannot recall whether he initially registered as an independent or a Democrat. His preference would have been to register as an independent, but that would have precluded him from voting in primaries. Either immediately or within a few years, he did register as a Democrat.
43. Interview with Susie Buffett Jr.
44. Susan Goodwillie Stedman, recalling personal interview with Susan T. Buffett conducted November 2001, courtesy of Susan Goodwillie Stedman and Elizabeth Wheeler.
45. Dan Monen as quoted in Roger Lowenstein, Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist. New York: Doubleday, 1996. Monen is now deceased.
46. Warren’s inability to deal with Howard’s death is the incident most widely cited by family members as indicative of his inner state during this period.