Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said the credit quality of the U.S. remains "good" and the nation will honor its obligations even as lawmakers debate whether to lift the nation's borrowing limit.
"We will pay our debts in the end," Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said in a Bloomberg Television interview on "In the Loop" with Betty Liu from an Allen & Co. sponsored conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. "Our credit is good. It's not like if we don't pay we can't pay. We have the right to print our own money. The U.S. is a very special place."
The billionaire investor famously supported Barack Obama, who in turn used Buffett as his amulet of normalcy: What, me radical? Tell it to this rich white guy from Omaha. One of the lamest things I can remember having seen in politics transpired in 2008 when Obama was challenged on his radical associations and used Buffett to change the subject. His phrasing was memorably odd: “Let me tell you who I associate with. On economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed chairman Paul Volcker. If I’m interested in figuring out my foreign policy, [Editorial aside: “If”?] I associate myself with my running mate, Joe Biden, or with Dick Lugar, the Republican ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations.”
U.S. employers added 18,000 workers in June, the fewest in nine months, and the unemployment rate unexpectedly climbed, Labor Department data showed today in Washington. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey called for a June gain of 105,000. The unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent, the highest level this year.
This data "means that we are a ways off from getting to be where we should be," Buffett said. The kind of slump we had "doesn't turn around in a week, or a month or even a year. On the other hand, we are coming back,"
