Buffett Interview: Markets, excesses, bailout, fear

• In my adult lifetime I don't think I've ever seen people as fearful economically, as they are right now.
• Sheila Bair moved 8% of deposits in the US from one set of institutions to another. She'll never get a golden parachute...we have some great public servants.
• I'd rather be approximately right than precisely wrong . ANd it would be precisely wrong to turn [the bailout plan] down.
• [The American Economy] is like a great athlete that's had a cardiac arrest. It's flat on the floor, the paramedics have arrived. They shouldn't argue whether they put the resuscitation equipment a quarter of an inch this way or that, and they shouldn't criticise the patient for having high blood pressure...[basically, address the problem, not the symptoms]
• This is really an economic pearl harbour.
• As long as you have markets, you'll have excesses.
• I believe in mark to market. In 1974 - I told our shareholders what they [common stocks we held] were worth then - mark to market is reality. [You may not agree with it but it's reality]
• The treasury can make a profit out of this deal ... but only if they buy at current prices, not inflated prices. Maybe for a bank looking to sell $1 billion of assets it should be like sell $100 million in the market, and we'll match the remaining $900 million at those prices and terms.

Time will tell which bits of it are right.

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 9:36 AM and is filed under Crisis2008. You can subscribe to any comments to this entry via RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.