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Berkshire Hathaway's Charlie Munger: Amazon Is 'Utter Phenomenon'
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February 17, 2019
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1:44Now PlayingJeff Bezos is "ferociously smart," says Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger.
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On the heels of Amazon canceling plans to build a New York City headquarters, Warren Buffett's right-hand man Charlie Munger shared his view of Amazon with CNBC.
"My attitude toward Amazon is it is an utter phenomenon of nature," Munger told CNBC's Becky Quick Thursday. "There has hardly ever been anything like it in the history of our country ... very talented driven people."
The vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, who is worth $1.7 billion, according to Forbes, says he has been surprised at Amazon's growth.
"I would not have predicted the success that happened and now that it has happened, I wouldn't want to predict that it was going to stop either. I think it may run a long way."
Munger has also called founder and CEO Jeff Bezos "ferociously smart."
Bezos quit a steady job in 1994 when the internet was new to found Amazon, which now has a market cap of more than $790 billion.
"I founded Amazon in my garage 24 years ago, and drove all the packages to the post office myself. Today, Amazon employs more than 600,000 people, just finished its most profitable year ever, even while investing heavily in new initiatives, and it's usually somewhere between the #1 and #5 most valuable company in the world," Bezos said in a recent Medium post. "I will let those results speak for themselves."
As for Amazon's long-term prospects, "My guess is he still has a long ways to go ... up," says Munger.
And Munger is not only a fan of Amazon, he also supports Bezos exposing The National Enquirer's for allegedly blackmailing the CEO with intimate pictures.
"I admire people who simply confront problems head on," Munger says of Bezos' public letter to Enquirer boss David Becker. "I have no quarrel with his confronting The National Enquirer, but I regard it as a little nothing place that the world would be, could well do without and so ... to the extent that they behave badly and he is objecting vigorously, I am all for it."
American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer tabloid, told CNBC in a previous statement that what Bezos called blackmail was "in good faith negotiations to resolve all matters with him," but "in light of the nature of the allegations published by Mr. Bezos, the Board has convened and determined that it should promptly and thoroughly investigate the claims."
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Warren Buffett's right-hand man Charlie Munger: Amazon is 'an utter phenomenon of nature' | CNBC Make It.
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