Warren Buffett Says ‘The Financial Panic Is Behind Us’
Legendary investor Warren Buffett offered some reassuring words to American college students, and the U.S. financial community, yesterday. The Associated Press’ Tali Arbel wrote last night:
Capitalism is still alive and well, say the world’s two richest men, despite lingering shocks from the longest, deepest recession since the Great Depression.
“The financial panic is behind us,” said famed investor Warren Buffett, who recently made what he called an “all-in wager” on the U.S. economy by acquiring railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe. “The bottom has come in stocks. Don’t pass on something that’s attractive today.”
Sitting facing each other in an auditorium filled with nearly 1,000 cheering people at a CNBC-sponsored event at Columbia University in New York, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Microsoft founder Bill Gates fielded questions from Columbia Business School students on the recession, investing and what’s the next Microsoft.
There were at first reassurances that the U.S. economy had not collapsed since the last time the two sat in front of a student audience, in Nebraska in 2005.
“We proved that we can make mistakes,” said Gates. “But the fundamentals of the system, a marketplace-driven system where we invest in education and a great infrastructure for the long-term, that’s continued.” Even in the country’s “darkest hour,” he said, American businesses were still innovating.
“Last fall was really blindsiding,” Buffett said later. Still, “I did not worry about the overall survival of our economy.”
Source:
“Buffett, Gates tell students worst is behind us”
Tali Arbel
Associated Press, November 12, 2009
