KONTAN.CO.ID – JAKARTA. Legendary investor Warren Buffett says the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is disproportionately affecting small businesses. Moreover, the uncertainty of Covid-19 is far from over.
“The economic impact is a very unequal one where … hundreds of thousands or millions of small businesses have been harmed in dire ways, but most large companies have done very well,” Berkshire Hathaway CEO said at a news conference.
Warren Buffett says this pandemic is not over yet. “I mean, in terms of uncertainty… it’s very unpredictable, but it worked out better than people anticipated for most people and most businesses. And that just, through no fault of their own, it just shattered all kinds of people and their hopes.” , “he said.
Berkshire Deputy CEO Charlie Munger said for some businesses such as car dealerships, the pandemic could even bring unexpected profits. “It doesn’t just bring it back to normal; it created a tremendous success they didn’t anticipate,” Munger said.
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“Car dealers are making money they wouldn’t have made had the pandemic not happened.”
Due to factory shutdowns and a global shortage of semiconductors, automakers’ demand has surged.
Berkshire Hathaway Automotive is one of the largest dealer groups in America, with more than 78 independently operated dealers. The conglomerate also owns BNSF Railway and NetJets, a private business jet leasing and aircraft management company.
“All of our dealers have partners in each dealer, they sincerely feel that they are going to have a big problem in March and April,” Buffett said.
“Some may want to come in to get help from the government, but we don’t allow them, because they have rich parents … we don’t know what will happen with NetJets in terms of demand,” he continued.
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Biggest lesson
Buffett said the biggest lesson he’s learned from the unprecedented pandemic is how unprepared the world is for the emergencies that are bound to happen.
“I learned that people don’t know as much as they think they do. But the biggest thing you learn is that a pandemic is bound to happen, and it’s not at all the worst imaginable,” Buffett said.
More than 600,000 people have died from Covid in the US, and countries are grappling with new variants amid vaccine rollouts. The delta variant, now in at least 92 countries, including the United States, is expected to become the dominant type of disease worldwide. In the US the prevalence of this variant doubles every two weeks.
“There will be another pandemic, we know that. We know there are nuclear, chemical, biological and now cyber threats. Each of them has dire possibilities,” Buffett said.
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“And we did a few things about it, but … it’s not something that society seems very capable of understanding.”
The steady increase in cyberattacks this year is directly impacting Americans and hampering logistics and services in the United States. In May, a ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline forced US companies to close about 5,500 miles of pipeline.
“Charlie and I are very lucky in many ways. But the luckiest thing is actually around this time and place,” Buffett said.
“How do we actually do this so that humanity, 50 and 100 and 200 years from now, can enjoy an amazingly better life that can be enjoyed without messing it up?”
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