Buffett: “Fairly Significant” Chance For U.S. Recession

Posted In: Crash Prophets, Dollar, Economy, Global Economy, Recession, Subprime

CNBC’s Becky Quick, who is a co-anchor on the morning program “Squawk Box,” traveled exclusively with Warren Buffett on his Far East tour. On their flight back to the United States, the legendary investor talked about the likelihood of a U.S. recession sometime soon. From the CNBC website earlier today:

Becky: Caterpillar suddenly looking a lot less optimistic about the economy, worrying about a recession itself. Does any of this become a game changer as we start to hear from more and more companies in the earnings season?

Warren: Well, we’ll find out. Business has slowed down some, not as much you might think. Unemployment has been very good but we won’t know that we’ve been in a recession until well after we’ve been in it. It could easily happen. A lot of the ingredients are there for it. I will guarantee you, you are young, in your lifetime you will see 6 or 7 recessions, probably. That is just part of capitalism. And I don’t know, I don’t know exactly when they will happen. I don’t know how deep they will be, but they will happen and sometimes they will be exacerbated in various ways by mistakes people have made in investment markets or maybe in the housing market or something of the sort. But that is just part of a market system. And you know, if I had to pick the chances that we are going into a recession, I would say they are fairly significant, but I don’t know anything that you don’t know.

As to the significance of a U.S. recession on the global economy, the “Oracle of Omaha” had this to say:

Becky: If the U.S. does go into recession, do you think it’s going to be the type of thing that catches around the globe like a cold? Are other economies going to get dragged into it?

Warren: Well, historically they’ve always said that if we get a cold, the rest of the world gets pneumonia or something. But, we are still very important in the U.S., and we are still very linked in many ways. But we aren’t as important as we used to be relative to the rest of the world.

In a post from last week, I noted how Warren Buffett is negative on the U.S. dollar and also feels the subprime crisis has another 6 months to 2 years to play out.

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