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FINANCIAL NEWS
Buffett: 'I'm a Huge Bull on the American Economy

No bailout needed, says billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

The investing legend said this week that he thinks the U.S. economy can fix itself soon enough, and without a federal stimulus plan.

"I am a huge bull on the American economy," Buffett told Ontario daily The National Post. A recession is looming, but Buffett says the United States has overcome worse and come out ahead.

"It is not a smart thing to sell the United States short over the years — or Canada for that matter,” Buffett said. "The world does get better. People get more productive. More human capacity is unleashed over time.”

Buffett said that the financial institutions that got wrapped up in sour mortgage loans can and will sort out those bad investment vehicles without government help.

"The ones that have taken the big write-offs, they're not going out of business, but they're selling a lot of new shares in the process so they're diluting future earnings. They're paying a price,” Buffett said.

The banks might not be great investments for a while, even for a few years, but they are not "permanently crippled” by all those subprime loans.

In any case, a government-led bailout simply won’t be necessary, Buffett said. The banks took the risks, and they should take the losses, not American taxpayers, he said.

Buffett also spoke in relative favor of the investments made by foreign countries, often using U.S. dollars from their exports or from high-priced crude oil.

He said the rise of sovereign wealth funds was the "inevitable consequence” of the U.S. trade deficit.

"If we're going to consume US$2 billion a day more of foreign goods than we sell to the rest of the world we have to ship them something in exchange,” Buffett said.

What they get is dollars, which inevitably find their back to the United States in the form of investments here.

"The United States is fueling the sovereign wealth funds. We're making deposits in their wealth funds in effect,” Buffett said.

As for the housing crunch, Buffett says he does not see a major credit problem ahead, or at least not enough to seriously damage the U.S. economy.

"I went through 1982 when short-term money cost 21 percent. This is not a tough period,” Buffett said.

MY SWING COUNTERS
(Each thousand shares represents a transaction at different price and time. It is not the volume actually been traded.)
Code/Price/Date/#Shares/Closing/Remarks
DBHD/0.3875/0906/4000/0.33/ hold
Dialog/1.639/1009/8000/1.57/ hold
Foutain/0.1475/0105/6000/0.00/ suspended
Idaman/0.3287/1025/4000/0.185/ hold
K1/0.9280/0411/4000/1.01/ hold
MEMS/0.135/0211/1000/0.18/sold @0.20
MVest/0.804/0719/5000/0.865/ hold
Nscom/0.05/0713/1000/0.00/ suspended
Palette/0.1050/0829/4000/0.08/ hold
Putera/0.56/1115/3000/0.64/ hold
SKPRes/0.1633/1102/3000/0.15/ hold
Tebrau/1.2251/0822/4000/1.10/ hold