When Buffett Wants Another Stimulus (BRK.A, BRK.B)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Buffett ImageWarren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B) is essentially supporting a second stimulus package. He gave an interview to ABC’s “Good Morning America” and said that the economy is not in free fall but not in a recovery either.  He thinks 2009 is going to be a very rough year.

He went as far as to call the first stimulus package a half a tablet of Viagra and having a bunch of candy mixed in… it doesn’t have the intended effect. He also noted that TARP was not done in a very sophisticated way.

Buffett still maintains that the U.S. will come out of this better than ever and the best days of America are ahead.  While that belief of Mr. Buffett may or may not be true, it is hard to not consider how much the rest of the world has caught up to us in the last generation and the last decade.

If you wonder whether or not a second stimulus package would be self-serving for Buffett, don’t give it too much thought.  Of course it is self-serving.  All you have to do is look through his most recent holdings and most recent investments to see how Buffett’s empire would win from it.

The ABC interview can be seen at http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/

Jon C. Ogg
July 9, 2009

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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