American jobs. Kathleen breaking news on south koreas labor market, we have the Unemployment Rate now at 3. 6 over last year, it was bute point six in december, that is what we are getting so far on this number. Number on thetant context of the korean economy, it is an area where that has been strength, and exports very strong. This closelytching to see how this affects the bank of korea in the next meeting. Holdingemployment rate steady at 3. 6 . And life pictures, lets take a listen. It is great to be here, it was eight years ago i just turned 80. I never really talked to any graduation groups or anything of the sort it was not on bucket list particularly. And then i got invited to go to and i met a truly , whether it was male, female, hispanic, africanamerican, whether it might be, these people have one thing in common. They knew they had it within themselves, they knew they could be something beyond they were. They were willing to put their time and energies to better when i saw at the graduation on december 22, they had parents crying as they received their children spouses,their degrees, siblings, who is a great response of my life, and at that moment, i was hooked. I met the most Remarkable Group of people, and if he told me that 22 or 2300 out of those people would be here eight years later, having proven yourself what you really could do with more skills it is remarkable. I would like to tell you a couple of short stories, and maybe well learn a couple of lessons from them. As i came in, Mike Bloomberg was talking and he talked about immigrants, and i echo his remarks. I would like to tell you of two each sold the business to Berkshire Hathaway to me, or many millions of dollars. 2500, them started with and by coincidence it was the same amount, it was everything they had in the world. One of them was a woman who 1917, couldattle in speak the word of english, had a tag around her neck, the tag fort dodge, iowa, the red cross got her to fort dodge where she was reunited with her husband who was in the country years earlier, and she lived in fort dodge for two years, and then she felt like a dummy. She couldnt pick up the language and can learn a word, so she decided, she and her husband decided to move to omaha. 1919ey came to omaha in and there she found a small colony of russian jews and she felt that home. As her oldest daughter went to home, she would come this daughter, frances, and she would teach her mother the words she would learn at school that day. Years savingent 20 money, bringing her siblings she, her mother and father, sold used clothing to do it. During four children this time, and by 1937, after 20 years, she said 2500. She went to chicago and she store. A furniture would never go to school with 2500, but with the same spirit of the people of the room had, of having a dream and working to a college that dream, she built a business, which she 1983 for 60 million approximately, which did a billion and a half dollars worth of business last year. [applause] the fourth generation is working in that business, and this woman she worked for me until she was 103, and then she retired and died the next year, which is a lesson to all of berkshire managers. [laughter] warren premature retirement, you know what is going to happen. One further fact about her, she could not read or write, and she went into a furniture business and she didnt think anything unique and furniture, and she brought a determination to succeed. She knew she could outwork anyone else. She knew that she could care about her customers. She worked low margins, but she felt an incredible business, and i saw one other woman who did a similar thing with 2500, and i paid her hundreds of millions of dollars for her business, so i decided to go to the source and get these people before. [laughter] i dont what you guys coming to me so i followed this group. , today i would like to tell you about one other Small Businessperson. To buy his i want business from him, and he turned me down, which is very wise. This was a fellow board eight years before i was. In 1922. Rn we will call him jack, lived in the midwest. He was a pretty good athlete, didnt like school much, and i will tell you one thing early in the story and maybe you can figure out who the guy was. The company he built hires more College Graduates each year than any other company in the United States. Was destined for this but did not know it, jack, went to college for a year, and then dropped out. He wasnt interested in school. 1941,e dropped out was when the United States became under attack, he went down to the Army Air Force according station and volunteered. They turned him down because he had hayfever. Ande went over to the navy, again volunteered and they took him. They put him on an aircraft flew small fighter planes during world war ii and got two distinguished crosses from the navy. And then he came back to the midwest, so now we have got a young guy, probably at this time he would be 23 or 24 years old. The interesting thing is, he got back to the midwest and he actually went from one job to another for a short period of time, and he finally became a used car salesman at the cadillac dealership in st. Louis, missouri. And at 35, having moved up in hisorganization, he said to boss, can i go into car leasing business with you . The boss that it would cut your we can become partners in the car leasing company. Started atd jack, age 35 and the car leasing business. And yet seven cars. It was pretty slow. One of the things he did was whenever the phone rang, he let it ring three or four times so people would think he was very busy answering other phones. [laughter] warren so his First Venture was ok, but it wasnt going to go anyplace, and theres a lesson us. All of at age 40, he decided with 17 vehicles, he was us. Going to go into competition and the rent a car business. So now he was taking on hurts hurtz,is and national avis, and national. He has 17 cars and his cars are not different, and its used by them from General Motors or chrysler, and he cant get the locations, those companies have them all sold up, but he is determined that he would basically offer the customer a different car, but he frilly or service that they have seen, so he started the company. Battleship after the that he had flown from in the pacific, which was the uss enterprise. He died a year and a half ago, but when he died, his rent a car company, starting with those 17 hertz,as worth more than avis, and all the rest of the other rental Car Companies put together. [applause] the mans name was jack taylor, and his son andy taylor is a great friend of mine. A grandchild is in the business and there will be a fourth generation in line, so this man, in the United States, he didnt invent artificial intelligence. Justt do anything furniture, selling he lived by the creed of basically the lighting his delighting his customers and establishing relationships with them so in they would like to customer, and he learned how to and his attitude towards his fellow man and his desire to make a friend out of every customer. He managed to take ordinary cars and turn them into this extraordinary business from virtually nothing. It illustrates several points. One is, you dont necessarily get it right the first time. The car leasing business basically you are competing on the cost of money to finance cars. It is very hard to delight a customer when you give them the send us a monthly check for five years and you will be back at the time. His towns were being wasted in that business, but at the age of 40, with all that experience behind him, he found the golden key, and he took a very ordinary business and turned it into an absolutely extraordinary operation. B, roasted with did with rose furniture. He didnt worry about the Federal Reserve. He didnt worry about the stock market. He didnt worry about the things he couldnt change. On the one thing he could change and that was the customers experience. The one that got away, enterprise. I went to florida and try to talk him to sell to berkshire, and he was smart enough not to do it. The value of the company has quadrupled since i made that visit, but he was smart enough to see that he would find that business. Failed twice before starting to fort company in 1903. The test is it whether you get the greatest business idea in the world the first time out, the test is whether you keep learning as you go along. What your struts are and what you can do for your customers. What you can ring to the party. Need the that, you education that i know you have received through 10,000 Small Businesses. Desire, theynuine end day out day in and day customer. Light the i have never seen one that likes the customer we want is the customer the next day, do i want to rent a car, or by furniture, what goes through their mind. It is whether they had a great experience. I dont know what i paid for this time, probably someone give it to me for the purposes of the speech. [laughter] idea or theno shirt, but i will remember how i was treated when i bought it. You long forget about the price, you never forget whether you had a good experience or a poor experience with the purchasing experience. [applause] you will have a hard time finding a person wes had a wonderful experience in the light of experience in purchasing anything that is it going to come back. If the memory is of rudeness, indifference, what ever it might be, they are never going to come back. As a Small Business owner, as can not onlyt project the interest in peoples wellbeing and delight them yourself, but you have to do it through other people. You want be able to do it through people who themselves do not feel they are being fairly areted, that their views appropriately considered. You really do need to learn to multiply yourself through other people. Advise the young people the certainly, in terms of your personal life, the most important decision you may make is the spouse that most of you will likely have, and it is important to surround yourself with people who are better than you are. You are going to move in the direction of the people you associate with. [applause] i have been enormously lucky in that respect. I have teachers and friends and a spouse that really is a better person than i was, and had enough sense to learn from these people that life went better if you behave better yourself. It took a while. [laughter] outen i advise you to seek as your partner in business, your partner in life, whatever it may be, look for people who actually are examples to you, our than somebody you think you need to straighten out yourself. Simple rules like that, delighting customers associating with people that will cause you to move in a better path than you might otherwise have, will take you so far in life, it is hard to believe. Totook rose without having be able to speak a word of english, couldnt read or write, and it took her to a billion and a half dollar business. [applause] i think if you look at enterprise, my guess is that very little Equity Capital has been added to enterprise over the years. The business built on itself. I want to tell you that i admire this group enormously. Class eighthis years ago, i was thrilled. Doingre people that are what you have done. You are working hard at your job, and at the same time, he a lot ofdded hard work to further your skills 99 graduate. That is a mind blowing statistic. [applause] i am looking at 2200 people here i admire, amateur and for you, and i can tell you, the best is yet to come. Thank you. [applause] yvonne there you have it, Berkshire HathawayCeo Warren Buffett speaking to the 10,000 Small Business summit in washington. Simple wisdom we heard from buffett on how to really cater to the customer. How to actually grow and with someourself smart people in your life and do it to the people certainly nice words here as we look ahead to the markets today. Theleen if you ever read car from enterprise, at the say, it is true, they have excellent customer service. Consumer, we and go with so many businesses and all we see is that point of contact and will know the whole history and story and it was charming the way Warren Buffett brought that out. When you think about how you invest, elects to know companies and you get a sense of the attention to the Human Element as well. Yvonne and he likes to keep it small even with his own likes to keep it small even with his own headquarters. A lot of sound advice from wordperfect, also talk about buffet. Ce warren off we are looking at a mix in asia dollarow, the kiwi headed back to the doldrums, and trading in australia is a couple of minutes now, and in sydney where seeing shares up a fifth of 1 . We are seeing bob catching up ahead of that cpi data as the u. S. 10 year yield ticks lower. Japan, quickly the focus, volatility in for force. At sevenhe nikkei tents of 1 , and the yen the strongest in more than a year all ahead of that fourthquarter gdp report. Kathleen u. S. Stocks is where we are headed now. Treasuries rose as investors look ahead to wednesdays inflation report, which has taken on heightened importance. Jack, it is the third day of gains for u. S. Stocks and is the biggest string since midjanuary, and it is only february 13 heading to 14, and we had a lot of down, but, you have been watching these markets for many years. How does it feel . Is this it . It is hard to say, kathleen. I will say of the different types of downturns that i have experienced, this one is probably the most mild. I called a technical downturn. I would call it a correction. What i mean is that it is a realignment of valuations of the stock market to the fundamentals like earnings and dividends. When of the things i took comfort in as we were whirling around a thousand points here and there credit conditions, the availability of credit and the willingness of lenders to extend credit to lower quality borrowers was under wavered. Was under wavered. Nothing in fundamentals changed her, it was simply evaluation correction. To that point, have taken a market that is 15 to 18 overvalued and knocked down 25 overvalued, so with a little squinting, we cant say were at neutral now. Yvonne in terms of the bond market, are we going to get to 3 on the 10year note . If you look at historical relationships, the 10 year treasury tends to attract nominal gdp, and right now nominal gdp is at 4 . Get to 4 real soon, i dont know. A lot of it depends on central bank policies. There has been this tugofwar between stocks and bonds, is 6009, and i still think at ait is still somewhat disadvantage with all the bond buying going on at European Central bank, active japan, and some reinvestment scored on at the fed. It all depends on how fed policy plays out. If they were to stop by tomorrow, i would say the 10 year goes to 4 . Yvonne we ignore the inflation data that comes out on wednesday . What happens if cpi does it deliver . I think were going to see a rally if cpi doesnt deliver. Everyone is set up for pessimism on the inflation front and i will say that we have grown our economy now to the last two or three quarters above potential gdp. Ae fact is when you throw trillion and a half dollars on stimulus on top of unprecedented Monetary Policy, your economy is going to grow faster than a potential gdp, so we have essentially, in my view, taken a 2 and beat it to a 3 racehorse. I dont think that is sustainable, and if we keep doing that, who will run out of capacity and we are going to ce their wages go up or prices of other goods go up as we run out of the city there. A lot of it depends on how the fed offsets. Remarkably we havent heard ap at of chairman powell, and as a wildcard to. Yvonne he is keeping his mouth pretty shut right now. Correlations in the last year, we saw this collapse in correlation, stocks and bonds going up in price, and what we are now seeing is oldfashioned risk off trades that arent materializing right now. Now we see the correction and shock, do you think things reset or is this a sign of a change in time . I think there is a shift going on. We have enjoyed, throughout my career, we have enjoyed this normal hell went of lower Interest Rates yeartoyear. A number starting as a bond and it was at four and a half percent for goodness sakes. Glad than one trait and how that for 10 years, i would have been better off, but, that said, i do think that there will be a reversal. Ive expect there will be runaway inflation. I think it is a Central Banks year late on40 inflation, so im not worried on that, a lot depends on ongoing other economic development. People are saying the cpi number tomorrow, which is at the most important number for the fed, can come on the light side and there was a story on bloomberg about a small trade that really caught the bond markets eye, kathleen if bombs rally, could stocks get another leg up . Absolutely. The lower bond yields are below fair value, the bigger the equities can command. For the last several years, equities are the only child of the family. Ofy children get a lot attention, spoiled, and they get the premium back. I would draw the line at 4 . The closer we go to 4 on the the less equities will command. If bonds go the other way, the premium could come back. Yvonne always appreciate the time. President. A big band and so when it comes to the data front as well. Japan posting its preliminary gdp data of the Fourth Quarter. That will be happening in 20 minutes time from here. Gdp up is the singapore which comes out at 8 00 p. M. At the top of the hour. 12 00 p. M. , malaysia releasing its growth figures. The bank of thailand announced its Rate Decision at 1. 5 . A pretty jampacked day when it comes to the eager data just a day before the great migration for chinese new year. That is what we are looking ahead to. First word news with jessica summers in new york. Jessica thanks. President trump has been challenged by republican lawmakers over potential tariffs on imports. During a meeting at the white house, they said such a move would raise prices and probably cost u. S. Jobs in related industries such as car manufacturing. Reporters were allowed to watch for nearly one hour during which several republicans openly