Warren Buffett On The Economy: "Three Or Four Years From Now Everything Will Be Fine" (VIDEO)

Warren Buffett made an appearance at the "Fortune Most Powerful Women Conference" and while he acknowledged that the financial crisis was like nothing we had ever seen, he nonetheless said he remains very optimistic about the future of the economy:

I know it'll get better. We've been through all kinds of economic problems in this country for a couple hundred years. Our genius in the United States is not in avoiding problems, it's in overcoming problems. We've overcome every problem we've ever faced... Three of four years from now everything will be fine.

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Comments

[balancedsolution]

10:25 AM on 09/18/2009

Warren, it will be fine....

But in 3 to 4 years we will see the mass destruction of many families, businesses and other institutions.

Our public discourse will get coarser and we will have to go through a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering in the mean time.

You have money! Many i know are living paycheck to paycheck.

Tell them it'll be ok in 3-4 years and they don't know where they'll be.

[mrjames1]

09:55 AM on 09/18/2009

Three or four years? Wrong, Mr. Buffett

The complete world financial situation in 26 words

Money = store of human labor, services, capital
Interest = cost of consuming now versus later
Fourty years of consumption blown in last twenty years
Payback is here

[hu.man]

07:05 PM on 09/17/2009

Buffett is not really offering any solutions other than we need to watch the financial sector more closely which is a given. There are definitely many challenges afoot in order to shore up the confidence in the financial system and even reshape the way it interacts with the rest of the economy.

I am not really sure why anyone is listening to Buffett on macro issues. He is not an economist and clearly has no interesting or innovative solutions to offer. With his clout, I would like to see Buffett champion the Wall Street and banking reform efforts on the Capitol Hill. But he just strikes me as the kind who just wants to game the system to his advantage than a person who would actually do something to serve the entire society.

Clearly, Buffett know how to make money but as far as affecting real change in the economic system he seems pretty clueless. I found the following clip by Blackrock's Larry Fink much more informative and strikingly on the mark as far as what is taking place in the global economic system:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1259071126&play=1

[porsche996]

06:02 PM on 09/17/2009

Everyone, every single economist, financier, banker every single one of them acknowledges that this depression is the first and worst of it's kind. That means by exclusionary logic that none of them have any experience of this kind of marketplace or economy. None of them.

3-4 years? Ludicrous. 3-4 decades? Perhaps.

[TheTwelveTwelveProphet]

04:05 PM on 09/17/2009

"Everything will be fine"? Time for you to step down Warrem. Everything and everyone responsible for the 'meltdown' is still running the show. It's business as usual. Oh it will appear to be better times, great times in fact, just like prior to the recent meltdown and the Great Depression.

Watch Learn Prepare

So writes

The TwelveTwelve Prophet

[kanester]

01:49 PM on 09/17/2009

It's always easy to make cheery pronouncements when:

1. You've got enough cash to last out bad times even if they last 100 years.
2. You'll probably be dead of old age before your prediction can be tested.

Gosh, Buffett really went from relatively savvy to mostly irrelevant in a short time, didn't he?

[ProfessorDuh]

10:28 AM on 09/17/2009

It's nice that you have a lot of time, old man. Millions of out-of-work people don't, and find they can't eat your vague, fatuous, cheery generalities.

[changemaid]

07:39 AM on 09/17/2009

I am not a savvy investor but I do see alot of news stories that do point to Wall Street well on the road to recovery and it would seem that people would be optimistic. I was a little suprised this morning when on Channel 4, The Early Show, right after the story that the stock market hit the 10,000 mark on its upswing, Harry( not sure if that is his name ), the anchor, in his opening line to his guest, who is a financial expert, remarked about it in a negative tone ingnoring the positive comment that had just aired on his own show.. The guest was suprised and said that things were looking up and she was very much looking foward to the rebound. Immediately after, the weather man came on saying that as the stock market comes down , so does the rain... If it had been only 1 comment after such positive financial news, I would have just thought Harry was being stupid, but both back to back hinted at network coached talking points. Why? Did anyone else catch that this morning or had I just not yet had enough coffee.

[porsche996]

06:06 PM on 09/17/2009

Paying attention to the stock market numbers to try and sort out or gain an appreciation of economic health is like watching the pari mutual reports of betting activities at the local race track and trying to determine the state of the economy.

Ludicrous.

[BigPictureReg]

09:28 PM on 09/17/2009

More savvy investors count on this misinterpretation by others of linking stock market levels with economic performance. After all, everyone can't win, and it's the winners who constantly feed this disinformation to those who listen to the sound bites, hot tips and crowds for their financial perceptions and advice.

As I once heard it said by the stockbroker to his client, "....I'm not in this business to teach you things, I'm in this business to sell you things..."

If you're buying, or holding, without learning, the odds are against your success.

(P.S. - If it was hitting 10,000 this morning, it wasn't one of ours. It's (the Dow Industrials, anyway) still trying to make it back there, after falling through last year - some performance we've got going here - back where it was 10 years ago)

[kells1001]

11:14 PM on 09/16/2009

There are a couple of things that separate our present difficulties in the US from past problems. We are a nation at the mercy of Globalization and free market policies guided in many ways by other nations. The concepts of morality and nationalism are now guided by Globalization and greed. We will survive, but the real costs may be sacrificing Individual Rights, Human Rights and Democratic choices to assure the success of all those Banks, Corporations and their cronies which are to big to fail. We are a nation lead by men and women who have found to avoid losing they can always change the rules, break their promises and place the burdens on someone else ie: primarily a bankrupt constituency.

[louisr]

12:48 AM on 09/17/2009

Agreed, and the "philosphy" of yours sounds reverent, BUT BUY STOCKS NOW!!!

[gobarackgo]

10:40 PM on 09/16/2009

When the Dow was at 6500 the Republicans said it was a reflection of the market's negative reaction to Obama's stimulus bill.

I guess that means that now it's pushing 10,000 it's a positive reaction to Obama's health care and climate change proposals.

Hey, free marketers. The market's never wrong. Right?

[BigPictureReg]

09:30 PM on 09/17/2009

Hey, you've been hanging around some of my conversations, haven't you.

Fanned.

[gobarackgo]

09:45 PM on 09/17/2009

Great minds think alike!

[kfdan]

10:25 PM on 09/16/2009

" ... he nonetheless said he remains very optimistic about the future of the economy:"
I have a lot of respect for Warren Buffet but ... he's wrong on this point. Without serious regulation of banking and Wall Street trading there will continue to be an imbalanced and unstable financial system in America! Get rid of the FED and take a serious look at why our forefathers detested the central banking concept. The facts have not changed and the reality is that central banks will enslave a people!

[CaptainHowdy2]

10:21 PM on 09/16/2009

CAUTION: Monetary System Collapse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1VbGcaVvFM

[AZterritory]

09:56 PM on 09/16/2009

So Warren, ya gonna buy my meds and pay for COBRA insurance at 1400 a month for me until things 'get better'? Yeah, thought so. Thanks for nothing.

[schatsie]

09:08 PM on 09/16/2009

when nurses graduate from the Best Hospital in America and cannot find jobs, you know we are in the ditch....warren is in denile....

[louisr]

12:51 AM on 09/17/2009

No, Your'e "in denial."

Only chance in 50 years to BUY, BUY, BUY. A working-man could never pick up such baragains, BUT watch them and sell them when you "think" things will go south again.

Once in a lifetime opportunity. This is a FACT.

[schatsie]

08:56 PM on 09/16/2009

Wonder if WARREN will pay up on his tax bill of a billion dollars (and no fines and interest charges, he gets to hold onto his money FOREVER while the rest of us are going under AND PAYING OUR TAXES.....

And that he collects SALES TAXES IN OREGON and IOWA and does not turn them over to the STATES...This is criminal when states are having to raise taxes on everyone else....

Read Free Lunch, read Family of Secrets....