Advertisement
Crypto is a ‘venereal disease’ and US-China tensions are ‘massively stupid’, says Buffett business partner Munger
- Charlie Munger said he was proud to have avoided cryptocurrency, calling it ‘beneath contempt’ for enabling ‘extortions and kidnappings tax evasion’
- A long-time China bull, Munger said the US and China should not have allowed tensions to escalate
Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
12
Charlie Munger, the long-time business partner of Warren Buffett, on Wednesday said it is “massively stupid” for tensions to escalate between the United States and China, and separately said cryptocurrency should have been banned, calling it “beneath contempt”.
Advertisement
Munger, 98, spoke while fielding nearly two hours of questions at the annual meeting of Daily Journal Corp, the Los Angeles newspaper publisher and provider of software to courthouses that he chairs.
He is better known as vice-chairman of Buffett’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway Inc since 1978.
Munger is a long-time bull on China, spearheading Berkshire’s investment in electric car maker BYD Co and recently doubling Daily Journal’s stake in e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
But asked about political pressures from China, he said recent deterioration in US-China relations wasn’t justified by their different systems of government, or because one country does some things better than the other.
“We wish that China and the United States got along better,” he said. “Think about how massively stupid both China and the United States have been to allow the existing tensions to rise … They should like us and we should like them.”
Advertisement
He showed no such mercy for cryptocurrency, saying he wished it had been banned from the start.
Advertisement