Part - I

He's the most successful investor of all time. Warren Buffet. Home town Omaha, Nebraska. The $10,000 he invested in Berkshire Hathaway in the mid 1960s is worth roughly $50 million today. Buffet's estimated net worth, $35 billion. The only other person on the planet with more money is Bill Gates.

Warren Buffet reached celebrity status long ago. Incredibly loyal stockholders gather each year at his annual stockholders meeting. The now famous meetings serve as an open discussion on the direction and health of Berkshire Hathaway, whose stock has never split and sits at just under $75,000 a share. Rarely has Buffet been wrong with his 'Buy ' them and 'Hold' them strategy. But he has had some trouble.

The most striking example happened post September 11. Berkshire took a $2 billion hit with the country's biggest re-insurer that it owns, General RE. But while profits at Berkshire Hathaway did sink dramatically, by almost 75% last year, Buffet is bullish over the long term and has some bullish ideas about the wave of scandals in corporate America, the domestic terrorist threat, where the economy is going and what it's like having all that cash.

The Man

Q: Tell us a little bit about your life. You are in same house you bought in 1958. I believe that you paid $31,000 for it. And you live a fairly modest life?

A: I do everything in life I want to.

Q: But people believe that it's a simple kind of existence for a man with your net worth. Why do you choose to live that way?

A: I find that the standard of living does not go up in proportion with the cost of living. The trick in life is to do things that are fun all the time. I get to do that. I mean, I literally tap dance.

I get to work with people who're wonderful. Everything is convenient for me. I live five minutes away from office. I don't have to worry about a thing. I don't mow the lawn or shovel the snow, or do anything I don't want to do. I like to play bridge over the Internet, I like to watch sports. The things I enjoy doing don't take too much money. The only thing that does is flying. I spend a lot of money flying around. And that makes my life slightly different from somebody who isn't as rich. But I eat the same things they eat. I live in a place that's warm in winter, cool in summer. I watch the Super Bowl on a big screen colour TV, something they get to do too. At night I sleep on the same mattress they could buy from one of our furniture stores.

I do spend more on my clothes. But then they look cheap when I put them on. In the end, how different is my life from anybody else's? Except the fact that I have total freedom. I don't worry about anything. Not health expenses, not old age, or anything of that sort.

People in this country really live quite well. If they've got a halfway decent job, they can do most of the things I do. That's terrific. I think they should. I don't want 10 houses. I don't want all those kinds of things, they really turn out to be a pain. I don't want possessions to rule me. But then again, anything I want, I buy.

I was having a great time when I was 25. I was doing something I enjoyed, I had great friends, and my kids were growing up fine. I'm living the same way now. Actually, even if this job didn't pay much, even if I took home $75,000 a year, for doing exactly what I do, I'd still do what I do. And I would do it the same way.

Q: But do you have moment's when you think - I'm the second richest man in the world! Have you ever reflected on that?

A: Only when Bill Gates tells me I'm second! No actually, it does seem kind of ridiculous in a sense. I had $9,800 when I got out of school. And I just carried on doing what I enjoyed doing. It just so happens that I was in the right place at the right time. I really wouldn't have made a difference if I were born in Bangladesh. Or if I was born here in 1700. The odds of me being born here, in this time, were 1:50. And I just got lucky as hell. I won a lottery. Stick me some place other else and I could say I know how to allocate capital and value business. But they'd say, so what?

It's just that I landed up in a terrific capitalist system. One that pays people who allocate capital extraordinarily well. Intrinsically, I'm not worth as much as somebody who invents something that could improves people's life, or health or whatever.

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