Trade deficit:
Buffett views the United States' expanding trade deficit as a trend that will devalue the US dollar and US assets. He believes that the US dollar will lose value in the long run, as a result of putting a larger portion of ownership of US assets in the hands of foreigners. In his letter to shareholders in March 2005, Warren Buffett predicted that in another ten years’ time the net ownership of the U.S. by outsiders would amount to $11 trillion.
Americans ... would chafe at the idea of perpetually paying tribute to their creditors and owners abroad. A country that is now aspiring to an ‘ownership society’ will not find happiness in – and I’ll use hyperbole here for emphasis – a 'sharecropping society’.
Author Ann Pettifor has adopted the image in her writings and has stated: "He is right. And so the thing we must fear most now, is not just the collapse of banks and investment funds, or of the international financial architecture, but of a 'sharecropper society, angry at its downfall"
Buffett and tobacco:
During the RJR Nabisco, Inc. hostile takeover fight in 1987, Buffett was quoted as telling John Gutfreund:[123]
I’ll tell you why I like the cigarette business. It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It’s addictive. And there’s fantastic brand loyalty.
—Buffett, quoted in Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco
Speaking at Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s 1994 annual meeting, Buffett said investments in tobacco are:[124]
fraught with questions that relate to societal attitudes and those of the present administration. I would not like to have a significant percentage of my net worth invested in tobacco businesses. The economy of the business may be fine, but that doesn't mean it has a bright future.
—Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting (1994)
Typical liberal that sees no faults in investing in "hazardous" habits for financial gain but God forbid we be allowed to live the way we see fit. What a sack......
