For some reason, people take their cues from price action rather than from values. What doesn't work is when you start doing things that you don't understand or because they worked last week for somebody else. The dumbest reason in the world to buy a stock is because it's going up.
You can't help some increase from this point. I don't want any viewer to go away think a magic wand exists in Congress. So they're going to see some more bad news. But if we do this, we're doing the right thing.
It's going to be tough because the economy is going to be getting worse for a while. And it might fall off a cliff if this doesn't pass. But nobody will ever know that if it does.
I choose to work with every single person that I work with. That ends up being the most important factor. I don't interact with people I don't like or admire. That's the key. It's like marrying.
Too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance. That won't change, moreover, because the deck is stacked against investors when it comes to the CEO's pay.
Like most trends, at the beginning it's driven by fundamentals, at some point speculation takes over. What the wise man does in the beginning, the fool does in the end.
If you gave me the choice of being CEO of General Electric or IBM or General Motors, you name it, or delivering papers, I would deliver papers. I would. I enjoyed doing that. I can think about what I want to think. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do.
Our approach is very much profiting from lack of change rather than from change. With Wrigley chewing gum, it's the lack of change that appeals to me. I don't think it is going to be hurt by the Internet. That's the kind of business I like.
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.
Of one thing be certain: if a CEO is enthused about a particularly foolish acquisition, both his internal staff and his outside advisors will come up with whatever projections are needed to justify his stance. Only in fairy tales are emperors told that they are naked.
Nevertheless, as circumstances presently appear, I feel substantially greater size is more likely to harm future results than to help them. This might not be true for my own personal results, but it is likely to be true for your results.