Buffett: Bank woes are "poetic justice"

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Buffett: Bank woes are "poetic justice"

Thu Feb 7, 2008 10:00am EST

By Wojtek Dabrowski

TORONTO (Reuters) - The woes in the U.S. financial sector are "poetic justice" for bankers who designed and sold complex investments that have since gone sour, billionaire investor Warren Buffett said on Wednesday.

The head of the Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N: Quote, Profile, Research) (BRKb.N: Quote, Profile, Research) group of companies also played down worries about a credit crunch by saying that recent interest rate cuts mean low-cost funds are readily available.

But he warned that the U.S. dollar will continue to slide unless the country can rein in its yawning trade deficit -- the "biggest factor" behind the decline. Still, he said, the U.S. economy will "do very well over time."

Buffett, one of the world's wealthiest people, appeared to see irony in the fact that many of the banks who marketed complex investments which have now crashed are bearing much of the fallout.

"It's sort of a little poetic justice, in that the people that brewed this toxic Kool-Aid found themselves drinking a lot of it in the end," he said.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0631767220080207

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Buffett interview with National Post (Canada):

http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=291567

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