Fred Barbash-Moderator - Good morning and thanks for joining us. I was struck this morning by Warren Buffett's comments, not only because he's so wise, but because he's been a strong Obama supporter. In his remarks, in a CNBC interview, he addresses the economic crisis as if it were a war...say Pearl Harbor, and expresses his concern that neither the Congres, nor, implicitly, the administration, is treating it as such. He's particularly concerned about the White House taking advantage of the situation to pursue a wider agenda."
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“I've never seen the consumer or the Americans just
generally more fearful than this. And they're also confused. And you can get
fearful very quickly, but you don't get confident, you know, in five
minutes. You can get fearful in five minutes, but you won't get confident
for some time. And government is going to play an enormous factor in how fast it
comes back. And if you're confused and fearful, you don't get over being
fearful till you aren't confused. I mean, the message has to be very, very
clear as to what government will be doing. And I think we've had--and it's the
nature of the political process, somewhat, but we've had muddled messages, and
the American public does not know what--they feel that they don't know what's
going on and their reaction, then, is to absolutely pull back.”
But best he speak for himself: Here are some excerpts. Sorry they're so long but he packs a lot in.
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“I don't think anybody on December 7th would have said a
`war is a terrible thing to waste, and therefore we're going to try and ram
through a whole bunch of things and--but we expect to--expect the other party
to unite behind us on the--on the big problem.' It's just a mistake, I think,
when you've got one overriding objective, to try and muddle it up with a bunch
of other things.”
"....
“I think that the Republicans have an obligation to
regard this as an economic war and to realize you need one leader and, in
general, support of that. But I think that the--I think that the Democrats--and
I voted for Obama and I strongly support him, and I think he's the right
guy--but I think they should not use this--when they're calling for unity on a
question this important, they should not use it to roll the Republicans all.”
"....
“If you're in a war, and we really are on an economic
war, there's a obligation to the majority to behave in ways that don't go
around inflaming the minority. If on December 8th when--maybe it's December
7th, when Roosevelt convened Congress to have a vote on the war, he didn't say,
`I'm throwing in about 10 of my pet projects,' and you didn't have congress
people putting on 8,000 earmarks onto the declaration of war in 1941.”
So what do you think? Is Buffett's criticism on point?
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