Alice Schroeder

As a profit-making endeavor, managing other people’s money is hard to beat. The business requires very little invested capital. There are no worries about getting paid in full when the bill comes due, since fund managers control their customers’ money. And lackluster performance is no bar to hefty profits because fees, based on the dollar value of assets under management, are paid even when returns are abysmal.

Nassim Taleb believes in probabilities, not predictions, but at times it can be hard to tell the difference. “The real Black Swan event,” he said in June, “is that people are not rioting against the banks in London and New York.”

One of the biggest questions surrounding Berkshire Hathaway stock has been what happens the day Warren Buffett retires or gets hit by the proverbial truck.

Sometimes the cutesiness of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is part of its endearing charm. Sometimes it is a minor quirk to be brushed aside. Occasionally, it can mislead, as happened this week when Warren Buffett’s favorite scribe, Carol J. Loomis of Fortune magazine, began her insider’s report on the hiring of 50-year-old Ted Weschler, the founder of Peninsula Capital Advisors LLC, as a Berkshire investment manager. She wrote: “It is surely unprecedented for a person to spend $5,252,722 to get a job, but in a funny way, that is precisely what Ted Weschler, of Charlottesville, Virginia, did.”

Where are the jobs? Of all the questions coming out of the financial crisis, this is the big one. In August, the U.S. economy added no new jobs for the first time in 11 months.

Charles T. Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, has been Warren Buffett’s sidekick since 1959. While Buffett made a name for himself as a statesmanlike critic of inept auditors, see-no-evil regulators, fee-gouging money managers and greedy CEOs, Munger gradually emerged from Buffett’s shadow to tongue-lash those same targets mercilessly.

How much should it cost the U.S. Air Force to develop a reliable system to detect sniper fire in a fraction of a second and pinpoint the shooter’s location almost as fast? If you’re thinking millions of dollars, how does $50,000 sound? The Air Force is evaluating sniper-detection proposals, and that’s how much it will award a researcher who provides a solution and the proof that it works.

Rome in the first two centuries A.D. faced a yawning gulf between rich and poor. The mighty empire built on tribute reached its geographic limits. Its economy created few exportable goods. Slaves acquired by conquest built most of its bridges, roads and aqueducts and took jobs in farming, mining and construction. As this cheaper labor replaced Roman citizens, idle, unemployed, hungry people filled the capital.

Last month, the news broke that David Sokol , who was Warren Buffett ’s presumed heir apparent at Berkshire Hathaway Inc., made $3 million from Lubrizol Corp. stock purchases while he was pushing Buffett to buy the company.

What were they thinking? How could Warren Buffett excuse David Sokol’s trading in Lubrizol Corp. stock while Sokol was pitching the company to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. as an acquisition candidate?