Buffett says government is doing the right things

Buffett says government is doing the right things

news.yahoo.com

Buffett spoke briefly before the opening of the annual meeting for his Berkshire Hathaway Inc., expected to draw an audience of roughly 35,000 people.

"The government is doing the right things," Buffett said. "They're acting in a countercyclical manner."

But Buffett said he can't predict how quickly the economy and the markets will improve. He said last fall that the U.S. faced an "economic Pearl Harbor."

(visit the link for the full news article)

Buffett, the financial wizard approves of the Obama admins actions, you would think all these people who claim they believe in the market system would start showing some faith. Maybe some of these people will start to wake up the idea that those who promote these free market ideals are nothing but a bunch of con artists.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by poet1b


I wish people would realize that Warran Buffet is a tool. I mean come on, even he lost money in the last few years which means he's not making such great decisions about his economy now is he?

In any case, the only thing wrong with the economy is that were not scared enough yet apparently. They still need to propagate this fear in us in order to keep this going.

I highly suggest people watch South Park Season 13--Margarita Ville for a great take on the economy and the idiots who run it.

~Keeper

reply to post by tothetenthpower


I don't think anybody runs the economy. There are numerous groups who flex their influence, and take advantage whenever they can.

As far as trying to scare everyone, seems that Buffett is trying to re-assure people. Ah, but why listen to Buffett, when you can listen to the talking heads at Fox. It is the repubs who are screaming as loud as they can that the end is near because Obama is destroying the economy.

Then, here you have the guy who probably understands the markets better than anyone, supporting Obama's policies. It only makes sense to heed his advice.

reply to post by poet1b

I don't think anybody runs the economy. There are numerous groups who flex their influence, and take advantage whenever they can.

True. The economy is a highly complex system, and it's impossible to "run" the system. If you try, you'll lose every time. There's just far too many variables to take into account. Nobody really knows what's going on with the economy, or how to fix it. We can spot trends and manage them - but that's all we can do, manage. We can't control it. Only interact with, and react to, it.

Barring, of course, instances of deliberate manipulation such as insider trading. Even then, it's possible your actions can backfire.

reply to post by Lasheic


I certainly beg to differ. Unfortunetly there ARE people who run the economy and manipulate the system at will. They are primarily called the Fed and the IMF along with a plethora of other agencies and people.

I will agree that it is extremely complex system that most people would not be able to get around, unless you have insider trading as mentioned above.

However, we all know that whoever has the money controls the country and right now, that's not us or our government. So really anything Warren Buffet says about the economy is only what he sees going on at the end of his nose.

~Keeper

Personally, I think Buffett knows exactly what he is talking about. Buffett has demonstrated over and over that he can see what's going on with the market better than anyone. The thing is, that Buffett disagrees with all these people who think they know what the market needs, who want corporations to rule the world.

It must be hard to take, that the guy who has demonstrated that he knows the markets better than anyone supports government regulation, which all the free market people claim to be the problem. Not only does history show over and over again that free market principles don't work, that they only succeed in making the rich richer, mainly by robbing the middle class, but that they also inevitably lead to large market fluctuations that eventually lead to an economic collapse such as we are currently experiencing.

reply to post by Lasheic


A highly complex system which was created,who better to run and know how it works than the creators? As for Warren,like tothetenth power said.He is a tool,he is just a gear in this economic system like the rest of us.He may think he is powerful and influential because of the billions he has accumulated,but the people who print the faux money look at him like a pawn no doubt.

reply to post by tothetenthpower

They are primarily called the Fed and the IMF along with a plethora of other agencies and people.

They don't control it. They attempt to manage it. Big difference. Much of our economies strength lies in confidence value. The confidence of everyday people like you and me who consume products - or don't. Who buy stocks... or sell their investments. Who refinance their home mortgage several times over, or recognized when something was "too good to be true".

Nobody can control the markets. Nobody has the resources or the leverage to know all the variables. It's mostly all educated guesswork in observing trends (emergent patterns), what influences the trends, and trying to recreate them. However, interactions yielding a certain result one day, may on the next day, provide a wholly different result despite an identical interaction.

You might be misunderstanding my use of "Complexity". I don't merely mean to say there's a wide array of specific and technical components. Complexity Theory is a slightly different way of saying Chaos Theory (there's some finer points of detail which differentiate the two though)

Control over the economy would suggest a linear causality... a highly tuned series of levers or buttons (economic actions) which effect certain desired results. Linearity is like a rocket flying to Mars. You can model it quite easily, and it's predictable. You need that level of predictability if you're going to know what consequences your actions will have and give you that control.

A complex system is like water babbling over a rock bed. It's highly dynamic and extremely difficult to model, and even more difficult to predict. If you release a toy boat into the stream, you can look for trends in the water to try to steer your boat through initial placement - but it may not stay on course. Releasing an identical toy boat in the same spot may see it veer off in a different direction than the first. Control becomes much more difficult - practically impossible. And even if interactions do have similar results - you have to keep your eye open for small variations that can cause large ripple effects days, weeks, years, even decades later. As said... you can only manage it, react to it, interact with it, but you cannot control it.

reply to post by Solomons

A highly complex system which was created,who better to run and know how it works than the creators?

Just because it's created by man, doesn't mean it's controlled by man. To suggest otherwise is a fallacy. The internet is a good example of a complex system that wasn't built by anyone (especially not Al Gore). Perhaps maybe it's early backbone, but certainly not it's current form. It more or less came together on it's own as a result of multiple competing technologies and protocols. It "built itself", in a sense, because even if the individual components were created by top-down organizations, it was their chaotic interactions and competitions (not to mention consumer choices) which assembled it from the bottom up. There is "Internet Authority Bureau" who has control over it and decides where to expand, and when, and with what framework. No country governs it's content. That's why it's often been likened to the wild west.

reply to post by Lasheic


I understand your point and your correct about the fact that the system is too complex for any one individual to control.

However, when you look at what the economy is built on, which is debt. And who controls said debt? Who decides when the interest rates are to come up on money borrowed?

Who provides us with all money and debt this country has had in the last 100 years?

The bankers have, they control the money at the highest possibly position in the pyramid. So regardless of wether the system built itself over years and everybody's ideas, it's being manipulated at a level that only very few have access to.

~Keeper

Jim Ellis, Assitant Managing Editor, Business Week Magazine:

"Wall Street doesn't do what is good for the country, Wall Street does what is good for Wall Street."

That summs it up well. So of course he says the government is doing the right thing.

Thats all I have to say about that.

reply to post by tothetenthpower


But the foundation of our economy isn't debt... it's confidence. Debt is leverage, and it does allow you some power to effect change within the system. However, what are the consequences of your actions with that leverage going to be? To a certain degree we know what some of those consequences might be. If China called in American debts, we know it would be bad - and it would tank the world economy. Yet... just what form will that collapse take? Who's going to fall first? Who's going to go bankrupt? Who can capitalize on the situation? How long will it last? What effect will the collapse have on the public welfare, and how will the public reaction to the collapse affect the collapse itself?

Nobody knows. We just know it would be bad... very bad. You may write those above questions off as minute details, but these are the base-level interactions which can cause dramatic modifications on the higher levels.

reply to post by Lasheic


Consumer confidence is based on how much money the are earning and how much they have in their wallets. It also depends on how much purchasing power a single dollar has.

All of those things are regulated by the people who provide us with money.

You are correct in what you are saying, none of it is wrong, but at the top of the pyramid, the VERY top, it all comes down to what you have, and who is giving it to you.

In this case it's the bankers with THEIR interrests in mind, not ours. It's controlled at the highest level, therefore any intervention below that section of the pyramid is rendered useless.

~Keeper

It never ceases to amaze me how many people buy into the Warren Buffett myth. He's a complete creation of Wall Street who use his phony image to promote the myth of the "buy and hold" strategy. It's this very "buy and hold" mentality that keeps dumbed down people's money in the markets so that it can be manipulated up and down, thereby feeding trillions and trillions of dollars into the hands of the manipulators... Wall Street.

Of course Buffett's going to say the government's doing all the right things... but nonetheless, they're not!!

[edit on 2-5-2009 by Albertarocks]

Yeah, of course, big bankers gave all those billions to Buffett so he could support banking regulation and taxes. Of course, that is the real conspiracy.

YEAH, that's the ticket, the real powers behind money gave Buffett all that money, the reality is Buffett is a doofus that doesn't know a thing about the market.

Or maybe you people are some of the biggest suckers on the planet.

If Buffett doesn't know anything about how markets work, how did he get all of his billions investing in the market. Why listen to someone with demonstrable knowledge just because he disagrees with a bunch of people who have never shown they know anything about the markets.

Originally posted by poet1b

Buffett says government is doing the right things

news.yahoo.com

Buffett spoke briefly before the opening of the annual meeting for his Berkshire Hathaway Inc., expected to draw an audience of roughly 35,000 people.

"The government is doing the right things," Buffett said. "They're acting in a countercyclical manner."

But Buffett said he can't predict how quickly the economy and the markets will improve. He said last fall that the U.S. faced an "economic Pearl Harbor."

(visit the link for the full news article)

Yep - buy up some shares and MBS's, its a great idea - especially if I am trying to sell my worthless crap but no-one is buying - come on! Everything is doing great - here come buy my crap.

He isn't saying that the economy isn't recovering, or to buy stock, only that the thinks Obama's admin is doing the right things.

You can let your biases control you, or you can take off those blinders, and start to consider that maybe the free market pipe dream isn't what is was supposed to be.

Originally posted by poet1b


Buffett, the financial wizard approves of the Obama admins actions, you would think all these people who claim they believe in the market system would start showing some faith. Maybe some of these people will start to wake up the idea that those who promote these free market ideals are nothing but a bunch of con artists.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Buffet does not support the Free Market. The biggest reason he does not, is quite simply with the free market enforced his company would soon be bankrupted..

He prefers the tax payer prop up the stock market -- which is what we are doing by keeping dead institutions alive -- so that even though he's lost a considerable amount of money through the recession, he has not lost nearly as much as he should.

The Bush/Obama policies protect the ultra rich like Buffet, and it offers them the largest percentage of help in comparison to "the little people".

Of course Buffet has nothing to complain about.

*edit* and YES Buffet wants us to get back into the markets, to buy the "cheap" stocks. It's called Pump And Dump, and in such a program the media and the major holders of influence tell the people to buy buy buy while they begin to sell sell sell. The result is eventually the rally diminishes, the stocks set new bottoms but the wealthiest are spared the largest percentage of losses, while the smallest holders of stocks take the biggest beatings.

This has been a US Economic policy since Reagan.

[edit on 5/3/2009 by Rockpuck]

Exactly how do you enforce the free market? The free market is supposed to function naturally, with competition leading to efficiency.

Buffett has succeeded in a period during which the rules have been loosened, and in general, for big business, the laws have been ignored, rather than enforced. Buffetts success in this environment shows that those who want to believe he is incompetent are fools who would rather embrace delusion than face reality.

It isn't Buffett who is being propped up, it is the bankers who wanted the rules eliminated in the first place who now have their hands out begging for government to save them. In fact, Buffett is bailing out those same bankers who called for less government.

Reagan supported the free market concept that causes these boom bust cycles. When will people wake up to the reality that there is no such thing as a free market.