Warren Buffett Thanks Uncle Sam For Being “Remarkably Effective”
In a letter thanking Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, Sheila Bair and George W. Bush, Warren Buffett said that at a time when corporations and Americans' jobs were lined up like dominoes, just waiting to fall, only one counterforce was available – Uncle Sam.
“Well, Uncle Sam, you delivered,” Buffett wrote. “People will second-guess your specific decisions; you can always count on that. But just as there is a fog of war, there is a fog of panic – and, overall, your actions were remarkably effective.”
The Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) chairman and CEO noted the criticism that the government has received, mostly because of the earlier decisions that got us into this mess. “Most prominently, for not battling the rot building up in the housing market,” he said. “But then few of your critics saw matters clearly either. In truth, almost all of the country became possessed by the idea that home prices could never fall significantly.
Buffett concluded by saying that while Uncle Sam is often wasteful and sometimes bullying (and on occasion, downright maddening), “in this extraordinary emergency, you came through – and the world would look far different now if you had not.”
