Charlie Munger – the billionaire investor and Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman – insisted the “Communists did the right thing” while talking about the Chinese regime’s oppression of it citizens and businessmen in China.
Following criticism of the Chinese Communist Party’s financial and regulatory system, Ma disappeared for months from the public eye. Many suspected he had been arrested or even killed by the Chinese Communist Party.
While Ma has since been seen in public, Chinese authorities have summoned him for questioning and quashed his forthcoming Ant Group initial public offering (IPO).
To Munger, however, the “Communists did the right thing.”
The establishment Republican billionaire, who claimed Donald Trump wasn’t “morally qualified” to be President, made the claim on a CNBC feature with Becky Quick focused on his relationship with his longtime business partner Warren Buffet.
Speaking about financial regulation in the U.S., Munger asserted that “the communist Chinese behave the way I am talking in favor of, and our own wonderful free enterprise economy is letting all these crazy people go to this gross excess.”
“People who are avoiding it are the communist Chinese. They step in preemptively to stop speculation,” he added.
When the interview interjects to bring up what the Chinese Communists has “done to Jack Ma,” Munger replies, “that amuses me, you know?”
The interview, in full, continues:
QUICK: What about what they’ve done to Jack Ma? He’s kind of disappeared as–
MUNGER: Well, yes, but Jack Ma is one of the swingers. So, they just cut his, they said, “To hell with you.” He basically gave a speech when he said to a, to a one-party state, “Well, you guys are a buncha jerks, don’t know what you’re doing. And I know what I’m doing, and I’m gonna do it better.” And he was gonna wade into banking and no rules and just do whatever he pleased.
QUICK: He also brought–
MUNGER: The Chinese, the Chinese–
QUICK: Banking to a lot of people—
MUNGER: Communists did the right thing. They just called in Jack Ma and say, “You aren’t gonna do it, sonny.” And, and I wish we had a, I don’t want the, all of the Chinese system, but I certainly would like to have the financial part of it in my own country.
Munger also renewed his criticism of the trading platform Robinhood as “beneath contempt,” adding “it’s a gambling parlor masquerading as a respectable business.”
The comments follow him lamenting that the app has “become a very significant part of the casino aspect, the casino group, that has joined into the stock market in the last year or year and a half.”
