"You only hear from Charlie Munger here," Darrach McCarthy said. "He's got a very original take on things."

Munger sees little need to discuss Berkshire's sorry performance. Many of the people here were at Berkshire's annual meeting just a few days before. Berkshire lost 9.6 percent of its book value in 2008 -- the company's worst performance in 44 years. It's still considerably better than the Standard & Poor's 500 index, but not good enough.

Instead, Munger focuses on Wesco and its long-term outlook. He says Wesco is solid and well-financed, and predicts that the financial crisis will have no lasting effect.

Today he's negative about the economy, but positive about stocks -- a bullish sign. In the late 1990s, Munger complained that he didn't see much to buy. The market quickly proved him right. But, at current market prices, Munger sees many long-term investment opportunities.

"I am willing to buy common stocks with long-term money at these prices," Munger said. "Is Coca-Cola worth what it's selling for? Yes. Is Wells Fargo? Yes." He owns both.

"If you wait until the economy is working properly to buy stocks, it's almost certainly too late," he said. "I have no feeling that just because there's more agony ahead for the economy you should wait to invest."

But you need to be selective.

Green energy is an example. A government push toward sustainable businesses might help revive the economy, but dumping money into every environmental firm to come along would be a dangerous path.

Not surprisingly, Munger was less than bullish on automakers. The U.S. auto industry has adapted too little, too late, he said, and seems capable of survival only with regular infusions of cash from taxpayers, which he doesn't recommend.

"The natural consequence of capitalism is that some companies succeed and some companies die," Munger said.

But capitalism, he said, doesn't equal deregulation.

Financial firms, which were at the forefront of the economic cataclysm, need to be re-regulated into boring, slow-growing businesses, Munger said.

"I don't see any reason why a major bank that was 'too big to fail' should be anything but a very boring business," he said. "I don't see any reason why you should have a system where every bright young man fresh out of college should have $8 billion to play with."