If you want more Tax Cuts and War, vote for Bush in 2004!!!


And it's very important not to let little corruptions start because they become big corruptions --
and then you have vested interests that fight to perpetuate them.
-- Charlie Munger.

Damn Right biographs Charlie Munger the polymath, lawyer, and professional investor. As a lawyer, he saw plenty of investment opportunities as he came in contact with companies, enough that he could pick and choose. A good local legal paper will suffice to reveal bankruptcy, foreclosures, and other similar opportunities. The bad thing about law is that one is always in contact with people who are in trouble with the law (at least the flavor of law practiced by Munger). He moved on and became a professional investor, his first million came from developing land in LA during the early 60's. When he had 10 times his personal expenditure rate, he completed his transformation into a professional investor. He had met Buffett by then, who had similar brains, judgment, and trust. This three-way compatibility made for a stable investment partnership, which continues to this day.

Reading list from Munger

  1. The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
  2. The Warren Buffett Portfolio, Robert Hagstrom
  3. Influence, Robert Cialdini
  4. Value Line Charts
  5. Negotiation, Roger Fisher
  6. Fortune, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal

Munger's main drive is to understand. The book has a great speech by him on multidisciplinary education (pg 257), in which he lays out his framework of understanding. Create a core theoretical base which explains something, and build on it as you learn. If experience varies with what is predicted by your theories, you should spend a good amount of time and effort to explain the variance; either the experience is broken, or your theory needs work. As you experience more, your theoretical base will get stronger and you will understand more of what goes on.