Warren Buffett Gives Fortune to Gates Foundation - Historic Announcement with Bill & Melinda

Rose: 'Warren Buffett announced yesterday he is giving much of his $40+ billion fortune to The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It means the foundation which now spends $1.5 billion per year on global health, education and libraries will now spend $3 billion per year. Think of the consequences for those who are poor, sick and uneducated. Bill and Melinda and Warren can make even more real the guiding principle that all lives are equal. Warren Buffett joins great names in philanthropy: Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie and Gates have given their fortune back to society. This is the most important and historic announcement ever in philanthropy.'

Buffett: 'It's something I've always planned. My wife Susie and I had planned that whatever I made would go back to society. Originally I thought she would outlive me and she'd make the big decision on the manner. But since her death I had to make the decision.' Rose confirms Susie and Warren decided in their 20s the money would go back to society. Buffett: 'I'm sure she thought I was delusional when I told her I was going to get rich, but as time went along I managed to convince her. It was always going to society, there wasn't any question about that.'

Buffett on why he won't run philanthropy: 'I think I'd be terrible at it. I like fast feedback. I'm the kind of guy if I walk into the ice cream store I want a triple dipper right there. Philanthropy requires a longer view, delayed results. Secondly it probably requires answering to a bigger constituency than I like doing. I like to look in the mirror and ask myself what I'm doing. There are a lot of people whose opinions I really don't want to listen to. You have to be a little more diplomatic perhaps than I am.' His perfect analogy: 'If I had to play the golf match of my life and I could get somebody to substitute for me like Tiger Woods, I would do it. If I had to sing on television and could mouth the words and get Sinatra in the back room doing it for me, I'd do it. If you can get somebody better at doing something that needs to be done in your place, I'm used to that.'

Buffett explains his delayed giving logic: 'Philanthropic needs would be huge today, tomorrow, 20 years from now, 100 years from now. If people were going to devote money to philanthropy, the ones who were high compounders should take care of philanthropy 20 or 40 years out. I really thought it made way more sense than to give $1 million 30 years ago which might have been all I had available. People who were low compounders should take care of current needs.' His analogy: 'If I ran a university with two wealthy alumni supplying all the money, I would take the guy who wasn't going to do much with the money and use his money currently. I would have the other fellow compound for me. So anyway, it was a convenient way to think.'

Bill Gates explains his turning point: 'I read this World Development Report that had a whole chapter on the global burden of disease. I thought: wait a minute, millions of kids are dying from things like malaria - over 500,000, or measles or diarrhea - these things we've totally eliminated in the rich world. And I thought it was being addressed. In the back of my mind I thought this was on the margin, you'd have to struggle to find something really impactful. But once I read that report I said: hey, there is something here. Actually a tragedy that it's not addressed. In terms of being the key priority we could put our energies into, it just jumped out at me.'

Buffett: 'Bill and I sort of have a background mindset of a market system and a market system works awfully well. It's worked well in this country, done pretty well for me and the world. But a market system has not worked in terms of poor people around the world with diseases that should be available for just peanut springs. The market system just fails in that case and you have to interject yourself into that and make sure there is a system that will deliver. I'm a big believer in the market system 95% of the time, but there are things where the market system is not going to solve the problem and that's where Bill and Melinda come in.'

Rose: 'Susie said to me "I'm always wanting him to do more."' Buffett: 'I was not holding her back, we'll put it that way. No one could have had better instincts about doing it and she would have liked to start much sooner, as soon as it could be done on a good scale. She saw people one at a time and saw them with needs now. If I died when I was 60 or something, there'd been a lot of money and she would have really gone to town with it.' Melinda: 'She cared a lot about these issues. She talked enormously about women lifting themselves up, particularly having access to family planning. She traveled extensively, especially to Vietnam and Southeast Asia. She cared a lot about these inequities. Reproductive rights and parenthood, all those kinds of issues.'

On why global health gets more attention: Melinda: 'You have to realize global health is a whole mix of problems - malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, rotavirus. When we talk about it it's hard to talk about it as all one thing. Bill and I are both equally passionate about how do you lift these people from poverty, all the issues related to them. We talk a lot about U.S. education but there aren't quite as many things to go and discuss as there are in global health where we're constantly pushing in all these different areas. As Bill gets more time and we're in the schools more, you'll hear us even more talking about the U.S. education system. We give a lot of scholarships - a thousand kids a year on scholarships through one of our programs. Fantastic stories.'