Buffett: We're Winning Economic War -- Slowly

During his guest appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box today, Warren Buffett said the economic war is going slightly the U.S.’s way at this point, but that the improvements are coming at a very slow pace.

“Well, we got past Pearl Harbor, but we will win the war,” Buffett said, referring to his prior statements that the financial crisis was an “economic Pearl Harbor” for the U.S. “But — and it’s going slightly our way at the present time, but the spill-over from the financial panic into the real economy was huge and particularly things like housing had to stop because we had this huge over supply.  I — we’ve got about 80 businesses now, and I get figures on them on a very real time basis. And I would say that there’s a few businesses that really have had a fair amount of bounce, in terms of electronic components and that sort of stuff. … There’s others that’ve had no bounce at all. And I would say that, if anything, it’s getting better but at a very, very slow rate.”

Buffett, who released his 2009 year-end letter to shareholders over the weekend, also says that he’s not finding the values he was a year ago. “Stocks are a lot less attractive now then they were a year ago,” he said during his CNBC appearance. “Far less attractive. … And bonds are less attractive.”

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