The Corporate Finance panel at the symposium for The Essays of Warren Buffett , October 1996 . Left to right : Professor William A . Klein ( UCLA ), Professor Lynn A . Stout ( Cornell ), Professor Lawrence A . Cunningham ( GW ), Charlie Munger , Professor Robert W . Hamilton ( Texas ) and Professor William W . Bratton ( Rutgers ).
Courtesy of Lawrence A . Cunningham just short of abdication .” At the 2009 meeting , Munger said Berkshire was built upon “ a seamless web of deserved trust ,” another turn of phrase well-known to Munger ’ s followers . He explained the culture and its value :
We have a very extreme version of federalism . We leave people alone . We don ’ t have big staffs , lots of meetings or reports , budgets , consultants or strategic plans . We just have a lot of trust . And that ’ s what we want . And if you have that , you have a huge competitive advantage .
A Voracious Reader Seeking “ A Latticework of Mental Models ”
Munger ’ s influence on Buffett ’ s investment philosophy and Berkshire ’ s culture is recognized by a wide and diverse audience , including an insightful 2017 book by Tren Griffin , Charlie Munger : The Complete Investor . In my 350-page collection of Buffett ’ s famous shareholder letters , The Essays of Warren Buffett , he mentions Munger on average once every third page .
In her delightful 2003 biography of Munger , Damn Right !, Janet Lowe captured the essence of the man behind the grumpy exterior , revealing Munger as a modern Benjamin Franklin . Like Franklin , Munger was a polymath who embraced interdisciplinary learning and excelled in various fields .
Franklin was not only a founding father and diplomat , but also a writer , publisher , translator , scientist and a civic innovator , who helped create the first public library and fire insurance company in America and founded the University of Pennsylvania . Munger — besides being Buffett ’ s partner and vice chairman of Berkshire , a successful lawyer , investor and business leader — was also accomplished in architecture and a generous philanthropist .
Like Franklin , Munger believed that what he called “ elementary worldly wisdom ” required grasping the “ fundamental four-discipline combination ” of chemistry , engineering , math and physics — along with accounting , biology , economics , history , philosophy , psychology and statistics . He urged collecting from these disciplines diverse “ mental models ” which together would form a “ latticework ” of practical knowledge . According to Munger :
You must know the big ideas in the big disciplines and use them routinely — all of them , not just a few . Most people are trained in one model — economics , for example — and try to solve all problems in one
14 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Winter 2024 | www . MoAF . org