This is my version of a transcript of Charlie Munger discussing current economic events with Matt Egan of CNN on 3 November 2021. The full talk can be found at CNN “Billionaire Charlie Munger praises China for being smarter than America at handling economic booms” which I listened to on 7 November 2021.

Here’s the transcript, any errors are likely due to my poor hearing and typing.

Matt Egan > What do you think of the framework for Build Back Better?  This 1.75 trillion-dollar spending bill that the Democrats have put out calls for taxing share buybacks, putting a 1% surcharge on share buybacks. Is that a good idea?

Charlie Munger > I think it’s insane. Literally insane. 

Matt Egan > Why? 

Charlie Munger > I think it’s so irrational and I think it sort of destroys the whole system once you start tinkering from Washington. I don’t think the dividend policies of American corporations should be determined from Washington. 

Matt Egan > Do you think that the criticism that buy backs have some cases  got out of hand;  is that criticism fair?

 Charlie Munger > No.

Matt Egan > I’ve got to ask you about some of the comments you made recently to CNBC about China praising the regulators there in China, their financial regulators.I’m just wondering whether or not you regret any  of those comments regarding China?

Charlie Munger > Regret it? I would regret not making them. China, recognizing the horrible troubles that come with letting booms get too big;  steps on a boom in the middle of it instead of waiting until the very end and the big bust. Of course, I admire that.  In that one respect, they are wiser than we are. 

It amuses me that communist China is being smarter about handling booms than capitalist America. But I know a lot of people that are smarter than I am. Should we not have a nation sometimes that’s smarter than ours in some respects?

Matt Egan > Aren’t there also problems when it comes to China with respect to human rights and just the undemocratic system that they have there?

Charlie Munger > Well, it’s true that I prefer my own system. But considering the problem that China had I would argue that their system has worked out better for them than our system has for us.

They had a horrible overpopulation problem and they had dire poverty. They had a problem we didn’t have. They have needed tougher methods than we could use in our own Constitution and I would argue that they were lucky the government system they had at the time they had their overpopulation problem. I don’t think we should assume that every other nation in the world no matter what the problems are, should have our type of government. I think that is sort of pompous and self-centered.

Ours is right for us but maybe there’s is right for them you know it’s one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of the human race what the Chinese have accomplished in the last 30 years.

Opinion:

I was primarily interested in Munger’s remarks regarding China. I have to agree with Charlie Munger, the transformation of China into the second largest economy in the world is quite remarkable. I have included a table of all the countries in the world with a 2021 GP that’s estimated to be greater than one trillion US dollars along with a map. It makes me wonder, why the List of Nobel Memorial Prize laureates in Economics has no Chinese economists?

Additional Sources

GDP Image Getsnoopy, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

GDP table was based on data from Wikipedia List of countries by GDP (nominal) accessed 7 November 2021 My expertise using tables and images in Word Press is poor. In particular, I was unable to include the color coded captions from the Wikipedia image of GDP by country and so I included an additional table.

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