Warren Buffett Quotes

Basically, financial reporting is this sinking hole at the centre of journalism. You start by swimming around it until finally, reluctantly, you can't fight the pull anymore and you get sucked down the drain into the biz pages.

There are no accounting issues, no trading issues, no reserve issues, no previously unknown problem issues.

What happens to a private company that comes out with a quarterly report and an annual report? It gives transparency. It talks of basic issues of governance and transactions with related parties.

Accounting does not make corporate earnings or balance sheets more volatile. Accounting just increases the transparency of volatility in earnings.

The Federal Reserve ranks among the most transparent central banks. We publish a summary of our balance sheet every week. Our financial statements are audited annually by an outside auditor and made public. Every security we hold is listed on the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

I know that there was a public disclosure mechanism in my financial forms.

To us, the definition of philanthropy is what we spend. A P&L account means expenditure, lines of revenue. There is a surplus; it goes to the balance sheet. A transparent foundation should disclose this.

You learn a lot from financial disclosure. And you should go down and take a look at that.

Accounting is the language of business.

I call it the Rule of Three. If you read a company's financial statements three times, and you still can't figure out how they make their money, that's usually for a reason.

For business owners, there are many important documents to learn to read. One of the most important is the profit and loss statement, known as the P&L, and the balance sheet.

Opacity on extreme levels is not addressed anywhere, including Dodd-Frank.

No, I was pleased that it is possible for somebody who makes full disclosure as I've done, not only of the contributors, but also how the money is spent.

Every public company depends to some extent on the trust of its investors.

Some companies use off-balance-sheet partnerships to raise money or to buy assets without ever telling their shareholders in their financial statements.

If we're going to talk about our businesses, we're going to have to talk about them within the constraints of the disclosure rules, without giving guidance, because we're not going to give guidance, because we don't believe that it is a sensible game to play.

There's not a whole lot of advantage for a company to be public.

With a private company, you've got to get into who's investing and what's the balance sheet like. So going public is a positive thing from the perspective of the sales organization.

Quite frankly, the financial community has to improve its image. The financial community has to be much more transparent than it is.

A board of directors that cannot produce reliable audited financial statements for almost seven years simply should not remain in office.

Publicly traded United States companies report sales and profits to investors every quarter.

It's a special thing to be a public company.

One thing I detest most about the financial press is the lack of accountability. All sorts of nonsense is said without penalty.

The time is coming when all businesses will have to be done with glass pockets.

I hope we’re on the road to more truth-telling to investors.