Summary: For those of you who weren’t around for last week’s announcement, I just want to let you know that after 19 years of weekly shows I have decided to retire because, as the saying goes “I have the two essentials of retirement—much to live on and much to live for.”<br> Today’s program will be the second of the final three, with our last airing on May 24th. In the meantime, I will be keeping you up to date on the investment world during this crazy time as well as re-playing some of our favorite shows from over the years.<br> I will be keeping the website active with all the past episodes, so if you want to hear something again or get in touch, you can contact me there. Stevepomeranz.com<br> Before I get to today’s commentary, there are some people I want to thank.<br> First is Jerry Carr. Jerry was the station manager at WXEL until his retirement and absolutely the gatekeeper who enabled me to start airing way back in 2001. Without Jerry’s professionalism and foresight, I would not have had the great radio and investment career that I have had.<br> Assisting him were Wendy and Ross Cooper. The two of them were always encouraging me and always there to help smooth out any rough patches. By the way, after Wendy left WXEL, she worked as my assistant and radio show producer for a number of years, and she did a great job.<br> My wonderful program director at WXEL, Joanna-Marie Kaye, and my numerous engineers: Steve Cody, Caroline Breder-Watts, John Zuletta, Rochelle Frederick, and of course, Tissy, one of the sweetest most gracious persons I have ever met. Unfortunately, she passed away at way too young an age.<br> Needless to say, there were and are a lot of people to whom I owe a great debt.<br> Now to my commentary….<br> What’s Eating Warren Buffett: Part 2<br> Last week I pointed out the unusual behavior of our Oracle from Omaha, in as much as his public statements have been totally out of character. Normally, as I said last week, Buffett’s announcements are full of optimism and dedicated to the proposition that one should always be buying when others are fearful.<br> But this was not apparent during his hours spent delivering his talk at the <a href="https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-annual-meeting-transcript-2020">Berkshire annual meeting last week</a> nor was it on view during his interview with Andy Serwer from Yahoo Finance.<br> First and foremost, Buffett’s war chest, which was $125 billion at the end of the year, has not decreased at all. As a matter of fact, it has increased to $137 Billion.<br> Some of the increase we know about. He spoke at length about his sale of four major airlines and why he considered the purchases to be a mistake. He originally liked the idea that he could purchase about $7-8 billion dollars of airline stocks and earn $1 billion a year in return from earnings and dividends. All of that came to a screeching halt as travel disintegrated to zero, causing the companies to bleed billions of dollars and requiring them to borrow and issue new stock just to stay in the air.<br> He spent a lot of time talking about the economic history of our country, even to the tune of estimating what America was worth in the 1770s. He then moved on to the America that endured the devastations of the Civil War, the Great Depression, World Wars I & II, and up to the present.<br> He repeated the idea of the great American tailwind, in which American businesses benefit from our country’s work ethic, innovation, and expertise. This characteristically leads him to admonish us to <a href="https://www.inc.com/carmine-gallo/warren-buffetts-response-to-pandemic-summarized-in-4-words.html">Never Bet Against America.</a><br> But in my opinion, it’s what he didn’t say that was most important. He did not say that even though he believed in this country’s economic future that he was buying that future at today’s prices. Let me repeat that another way.
