DealZone

Buffett sees “poetic justice” in “toxic Kool-Aid”

February 7, 2008

Warren Buffett sees more than a bit of irony in the woes of the U.S. financial sector, especially banks who designed and sold complex financial instruments that have since gone sour.

“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.
The Berkshire Hathaway CEO also played down worries about a credit crunch by saying that recent interest rate cuts mean low-cost funds are readily available.

“I wouldn’t quite call it a credit crunch. Funds are available,” Buffett said during a question and answer session at a business event in Toronto. “Money is available, and it’s really quite cheap because of the lowering of rates that has taken place.”

He added: “What has happened is a repricing of risk and an unavailability of what I might call ‘dumb money,’ of which there was plenty around a year ago.”

Click here to read the full article by Wojtek Dabrowski.

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