Warren Buffett CNBC Interview All Videos

they are concerned about what’s happening in italy. this fellow grio who won 25% of the election there said he would like to see a vote from the italian voters whether or not they want to still be in the euro. where do you think we stand with the euro which is right at 130 right now? we still haven’t worked out a sustainable system for the euro, we have — stemmed the fear when draghi said that he would do whatever it takes. whenever a central banker who can print money says i’ll do whatever it takes, that’s very reassuring. but it doesn’t solve the problem. i mean, you — the inconsistency of the fiscal policies of people that were trying to hook themselves to a common monetary unit has to be solved in some form and we haven’t gotten there yet. europe is not going down the drain or anything. europe ten years from now will be producing more goods than it is today. but there are a lot of — there’s a lot to work through. draghi headed off the immediate problem when he said i’ll do whatever it takes. let’s get to some questions real quickly. all right, go ahead, joe. yeah, it’s great to go to viewer questions. i had a big — huge philosophical question for warren and how it’s going to work its way out. seeing what we’ve been through for the past couple of months, with the — with the prospect of the sequester, beck and i don’t know how we should do it warren but you look at the deficits we’re running a trillion dollars, and you see how hard it was just to raise taxes, you know as we did at the end of the year and then to do the 85 billion which this year isn’t even going to be 85 billion and i just wonder, whether we’re going to get to the point where we decide we want this much government and we just need to pay for it and that means rich people don’t have enough so we’d have to raise taxes on the middle class, i guess. i mean, do you see a way out of it as hard as it was just to cut $85 billion? we got another $900 billion a year that we somehow have to deal with, and it can’t all be revenue. we can’t raise taxes — do you see a way to — to do this? politically? joe, there’s a way of it. we found a way out of a civil war. and a country half slave and half free. we found wayut of two world wars. we found a way out of a great depression. this country has a lot going for it. you don’t see it. you read about the headlines about what government is doing, but, we have had an economy that works very, very well. i mentioned in the annual report that i bought my first stock when we were losing the war in the pacific. and, since that time the dow has gone from 92 to 14,000 or so. i mean and it and the headlines were terrible. this country goes through all kinds of problems and we like to talk about them when they appear and they’re in the headlines but we’ve got such a basically strong and good country that we will overcome the 535 people do and it will work over time. but you’re still — sometime i think you’re a democrat and other times i think you’re a closet republican. you think that the size of government shouldn’t be above 21, 20.5, 21% of gdp. you’re not arguing — that’s — that we should go to 25. maybe we should be at 25% to make it more fair and to give more entitlements and to take care of our citizenry sort of the way europe does. maybe we should go to 25. but you don’t — that’s not — you’re not — i’m not — i’m not — no i’m not there, joe. i’m at 21.5, and 18.5 on revenue. and incidentally that three points of gap will work out fine over time. i mean that will not take debt as a percentage of gdp up. so it’s very workable. it doesn’t seem like it day by day perhaps but it’s very wrkable. maybe in a good economy we don’t need to cut maybe we come down and we — with people need less assistance, so maybe we won’t stay at 25 or whatever, maybe we’ll get back down and get and then maybe the revenue goes up in a good economy, and both sides shrink. is that — is that what you think finally and we do something with means testing or i don’t know, maybe we solve our — means testing — yeah we are in the 25 right now. if you look at — if you look at 3.6 trillion of spending and 16 trillion of gdp, that is not 25. it would be 4 trillion if it was 25. it’s about 22.5. so we’re getting there. all right. yeah, we’re — we’ll get there. let’s bring in a question from a viewer charlie silver which kind of plays in to what joe was just talking about. are you still as optimistic about the american economy and the stock market as you were when you wrote the op-ed piece in the new york times in november of 2008 maybe you were more positive about the stock market then. well stocks were cheaper. then and maybe you’re more positive about the economy now? well, i’m always positive about the economy. long range. i mean, this country works. all you have to do is look at, you know, just in my lifetime, six — six for one on real gdp per capita. we have a, you