The Chinese Are Coming, The Chinese Are Coming!

Filed in archive Economy on June 24, 2005

Reuters reports on a CNBC interview in which Warren Buffett acknowledges he took some lumps during the recent strength in the US dollar. However, he maintains a bearish outlook on the greenback.

Far more interesting were his thoughts on what we can expect as a nation against a backdrop of the expanding current account deficit:

"We are going down a path that has long been described as dangerous by some of the smartest people in this country," he said, referring to warnings from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and former Fed chief Paul Volcker that the U.S. current account deficit is unsustainable.

...Asked when he felt these imbalances might be corrected, Buffett said: "It may be a month from now, it may be five years from now, who knows. It's not without consequences."

One of those consequences, Buffett said, is the kind of $18.5 billion bid launched by Chinese state-run CNOOC Ltd. for Unocal Corp.

...But the Berkshire Hathaway chief said that the fall of U.S. concerns into foreign hands was in some ways akin to an erosion of sovereignty.

"If we're going to consume more than we produce, we have to expect to give away a little bit of the country," Buffett said. "It's a deeply embedded structural problem. We do not have an answer for it now."