We are in a recession, unless you want to stick strictly to the technical definition, which I really don't think has much meaning to the fellow who has lost his job or is facing a money-market fund that isn't paying him out, or whatever it might be.

My general feeling is that the recession will be longer and deeper than most people think. But what the stock market, the stock market often does not behave in sync with what's going on in business. So, I wouldn't want to predict what the stock market might do. My feeling from what I see in the economy is that this will not be short and shallow.

In '73, '74 we had this stagflation situation, and we really had a meltdown in equity prices as really good companies got down to three and four times earnings and they weren't phony earnings. So nothing like that's happened in this situation.

The dollar's going to get weaker over time. And the government can talk about how it's in our interest to have a strong dollar, but we're not following policies that lead to that, and it's just a consequence and it'll just continue to be. If you do the same thing over and over again, you're going to get the same result...

Indonesia or Thailand couldn't do this because they couldn't issue--they couldn't issue debt in their own currency and have people keep accepting it.

There were a lot of dumb lending practices that were dumb lending practices in private equity financing, and that's why the banks are hung up with the loans. It isn't that the companies are terrible, but if you loan too much money on anything, you're going to lose money.

People make mistakes in capitalism. They shouldn't be penalized for being misled, but they shouldn't be protected from mistakes. Capitalism without failure is like Christianity without hell.
-Warren Buffett