Warren Buffett Webcast on the Credit Crisis

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Warren Buffett quotes from the interview:

“In my lifetime I don’t think I have ever seen people as fearful economically as they are now”
“The major institutions in the world are all wanting to de-leverage”
“I don’t like what is going on with executive compensation“
“unemployment is going to go up under any circumstances, the 6.1 [% unemployment rate] is going to go higher, but whether it quits at 7% or whether it quites at 10, 11 or 12, depends on, among other things the wisdom of congress, and then the wisdom of caring out the plan congress authorizes”
“I just wonder if it [the $700 billion bailout] is enough”

“AIG would be doing fine today if they never heard of derivatives… I said they were possibly financial weapons of mass destruction and they have been, I mean they destroyed AIG, they certainly contributed to the destruction of Bear Stearns and Lehman”
The biggest single cause was that we had an incredible residential real estate bubble.
[on consuming more than we are producing] I don’t think it is the most pressing problem at all. We are trading away a little bit of our country all the time for the excess consumption that we have, over what we produce. That is not good. I think it is terrible over time.

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