"Interest rates are like gravity in valuation. If interest rates are nothing, values can be almost infinite. If interest rates are extremely high, that's a huge gravitational pull on value - and we had that in the early 1980s. So we have gone into this period where Berkshire Hathaway is sitting with billions of dollars of euros in an insurance company that we have in Europe, and they will bear a negative rate.  We would be better off if we had a big mattress in Europe that we just stuck all of this stuff in it - if only I could just find the person whom I trusted to sleep on the mattress! That's what we would do. If we have a billion euro at -35 basis points, that would be 3.5 million euro a year that it's costing us just to have that. That means you don't want to collect your receivables! It distorts everything".  We thought when we started it that it would end fairly soon. Europe, in particular, needed further jolts in the arm and they've extended it. We can't get too far away from it [due to the problem of the U.S. raising rates while Europe is at negative rates] - what that does to the dollar and what that does to trade and what that does to business." -Buffett https://lnkd.in/eY2NVdPZ