2009 Morningstar Investment Conference – 7

By Benjamin Clark

This morning during the general session, Mr. Robert Rodriguez of First Pacific Advisors provided the keynote presentation. Mr. Rodriguez began by explaining his recent announcement of his coming sabbatical, stating that it has been planned for six years and should be considered a succession plan. Then he moved on and started discussing the buildup to the credit crisis.

Essentially he laid blame on the federal government beginning with bailouts over the last 30 years and ending with the federal reserve’s responses to the tech and housing bubbles (and their denial that bubbles were forming in the first place). It seemed as though he was just going to go on a rant but after a little bit of time he suddenly became a very engaging and thought-provoking speaker.

I will have a detailed response to his speech next week – this was the type of speech that deserves reflection and full absorption prior to comments (the text of the speech will be uploaded to his firm’s website later today). For now, though, I will say that he made a very compelling argument against all of the elected members of our federal government and the response to the economic situation.

Next, I attended the Wide Moats Work breakout session with Pat Dorsey, Paul Larson, and Josh Peters, all Morningstar Analysts. They all had interesting things to say regarding companies they currently are interested. Some of the names that came up include pipeline companies, Compass Minerals (CMP), Realty Income (O), and Vanguard Dividend Growth (VIG). Once again I’ll try to make a more detailed response later next week to each of these names.

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2009 Morningstar Investment Conference – 7