Somebody's buying these treasury bills at 1/20th of one percent. I mean we consuming about $2 billion a day of goods and services beyond what we're producing.As long as we consume more than we produce, and we trade away little pieces of the country daily, they're going to own something. Now, they can't run from American assets. I mean every day the rest of the world is going to have about two billion more of American assets than we have, as long as they sell us these goods.
Howard Warren BuffettThe commercial paper market, when that dries up, you know, that's just like sucking the blood out of the economic body of the United States.
Howard Warren BuffettI don't think it would be crazy to have a model or an entity model on the Reconstruction Finance Corp. That goes back to 1932, although it was really implemented in '33 under Jesse Jones, and it invested in mostly banks initially and preferred stock and that sort of thing.
Howard Warren BuffettWe have a terrific economy, it's like a great athlete that's had a cardiac arrest.
Howard Warren BuffettYou may be very mad at some guy that walked away with a huge golden parachute, but that really isn't the important thing. I mean, if Pearl Harbor came along, you could have said the planning was wrong by the military ahead of time or maybe the battleships shouldn't have all been in the harbor and all that kind of thing.
Howard Warren BuffettYou can go back to tulip bulbs in Holland 400 years ago. The human beings going through combinations of fear and greed and all of that sort of thing, their behavior can lead to bubbles. And it may have had and Internet bubble at one time, you've had a farm bubble, farmland bubble in the Midwest which resulted in all kinds of tragedy in the early '80s.
Howard Warren Buffett