Buffett's Goodbye & the Ghost of Financial Systems Past

What does the wealthiest man in one country do when he stops believing in its markets?

He counts his cash.

Warren Buffett announced this morning that he's stepping down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway by year-end, handing power to Greg Abel, while pledging to accelerate donations to his children's foundations. The markets didn't crater. No headlines screamed about succession uncertainty. We've known this was coming. What matters is what Buffett actually said—and more importantly, what his balance sheet is still doing.

Berkshire holds $381.6 billion in cash. The company has trimmed its stock holdings for twelve straight quarters. Twelve. That's three years of the world's greatest investor essentially saying: I don't know what to do with my money at these prices.

This is not a man in his nineties enjoying a well-deserved retirement. This is a man staring at equity valuations and deciding that nothing is worth his capital right now. Not tech, not industrials, not boring utilities. He'd rather hold literal dollars in this environment than deploy them. The signal is embedded in what he's not buying, not in the graceful farewell letter that will hit shareholders by Thanksgiving.

His successor gets a company with barely any dry powder and a mandate that amounts to: the good deals are gone, and I've been too cautious to spot the mediocre ones.

Meanwhile, in the Crypto Timeline We've Apparently Chosen to Live In

The shutdown officially moves toward resolution after Democrats and Republicans pass a continuing resolution funding the government through January 30, 2026. The Senate voted. The House will vote Wednesday. Trump will sign. Normal functioning government resumes.

And on the same day this happens, Trump unveiled plans for a "New Structure Bill" aimed at replacing the "outdated" financial system with a cryptocurrency-based model, potentially moving the entire system on-chain.

Read that again. The man running the executive branch just floated the idea of dismantling the Federal Reserve infrastructure and moving everything to the blockchain while the government was literally shut down for 41 days because of budgeting disputes. The shutdown—which will slash Q4 GDP growth by approximately 1.5% and permanently lose $11 billion in economic output—was happening because the normal political system couldn't agree on basic spending. And the response is: let's replace the system with code.

This isn't policy. This is performance art directed at people who've never actually built financial infrastructure at scale. XRP jumped 12% in 24 hours on the news. Ethereum whales are actively rebuilding positions. The market is pricing in the possibility that America's government might one day be run on crypto rails.

Think about what that means. The same institutions that can't agree on a spending bill for a month would need to manage decentralized finance. The same Treasury that miscalculates tariff dividends by trillions would be maintaining blockchain infrastructure. We went from "government shutdown is a failure" directly to "let's replace government with a ledger" without a beat of irony.

What Actually Transpired

The shutdown is ending, which means:

• Economic data will flow again starting next week. The Fed can actually see what the economy looks like and won't have to make rate decisions in a fog.
• Q4 growth is materially impaired. This will show up in the October employment report and retail sales.
• The yield curve will reprice based on real information instead of speculation about whether data even exists.
• Bank CDS will normalize. Financial stocks had a bad few days because institutions profit on rate volatility and lending spreads, and neither of those things looked great when the data was frozen.

Buffett's exit means:

• A company with $381.6 billion in cash and no strong conviction that anything is tradeable.
• A generational pivot from one of the most disciplined capital allocators in history to someone we're about to watch navigate the worst valuation environment in decades.
• Proof positive that at least one person who spent sixty years making money in capital markets is no longer confident in its current pricing.

And Trump's blockchain financial system means:

• The market is now explicitly pricing in scenarios where traditional financial infrastructure becomes optional.
• Tech valuations are held aloft by the prospect that decentralization could happen and crypto would replace current banking relationships.
• We're living in a moment where a shutdown caused by political dysfunction is being addressed not by reforming politics, but by replacing the entire system that politics governs.

The meta-story isn't the shutdown ending. It's that we're now openly debating whether the financial system itself should be deleted and rewritten while the government that manages it can't even keep itself open for 41 days.

Buffett saw this coming. He's going quiet, passing the keys, and staying in cash.

That's not pessimism. That's a 95-year-old who knows something when he sees it.