*12Five hundred dollars was not chicken feed. It would have been equivalent to about $4,300 in 2007.

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*13Including distributions, withdrawals, and losses.

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*14 Also known as boney piles-residue from removing impurities like shale and dust from raw coal. Once thought to have value, today they are abandoned, catch hard-to-extinguish fires, and even cause whole towns to relocate.

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15 Current assets are a measure of liquidity-how fast a company can raise cash. They include cash, easily saleable investments, inventory, and money due from others. They exclude items like real estate, equipment, debt, and pensions, which cannot be readily liquidated or are owed to others.

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*16In a "layoff center," bookies bet to balance their books and even their odds.

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*17"Par value" is the face value of a stock, usually set at a low level by the company at its incorporation. Its legal roots are archaic-designed to ensure that the company does not offer its stock below par-and have no real economic significance in today's market.

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*18 A million dollars in those days would be worth closer to eight million in 2007.

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*19 Suppose Warren earned 15% for the Buffett Associates partnership. His fee would be $5,781 after each partner got their set 4% interest. With Homer Dodge's money he would earn fees of $9,081 in total. He would invest his fees back into the partnerships. The next year, he would get 100% of the earnings on that $9,081, plus another round of fees on the others' capital. And so on.

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*20 Although Dan Monen, or some other helpful proxy, would often clue the aspirant in to what was required.

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*21 Pronounced "bee-A-triss."

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*22No relation to Malcolm Chace, who had become chairman of the board when Berkshire Fine Spinning merged with Hathaway Manufacturing.

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*23Inventory "shrinkage" is just what it sounds like: inventory that is unaccounted for, usually because of shoplifting or employee theft.

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24Her name was pronounced "A" like the letter of the alphabet.

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*25Assuming the Dow averaged four percent a year, a partner's thousand-dollar investment in BPL would turn into $5,604 after twenty years at nine percent-$3,413 more than the $2,191 that an owner of the Dow would have.

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*26Later Remington Rand merged with Sperry and became Sperry Rand, then, after merging with Burroughs in 1986, it became Unisys.

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*27If a company's book value is $1 million and a buyer pays $3 million, the remaining $2 million is for intangible assets-some specifically identifiable, like trademarks and patents, the rest unidentifiable customer "goodwill." Accounting rules used to require sellers to gradually charge off, or amortize, these costs over time.

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*28Wite-Out and Liquid Paper are opaque correction fluids, once commonly painted over typewritten material so that words would either disappear or could be typed over. Everybody used to have a bottle of one of these products on their desk. They still exist.

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