More of the buffett interview http://www.scribd.com/doc/49951733/C...t-March-2-2011
BECKY:
So what are you seeing in your businesses right now? You said that we're back on track, but are we chugging along? Are we inching a long? How are things coming?
Buffett: It's probably closer to inching in most businesses. And in residential construction, it's not inching. It's not going at all. But so you do have this uneven situation. We have a few businesses that are that are really kind of booming, but and we have a great many businesses that are moving forward, and then we have some a few that are stuck. And but I think that's true of the economy.
So but what we've seen now for almost two years is we've seen it getting better. Rather consistently, but not in a dramatic, at a dramatic pace. And what has been interesting to me is that the sentiment has gone up and down quite a bit during a period when you really haven't seen all that much change in the underlying trend.
BUFFETT
: Yeah. Our business at Berkshire was quite a bit better in 2010 than 2009, but we only added 3,000 jobs, you know, from 260,000 roughly, on a base. So we added 1percent to jobs net and yet our business really improved quite a bit more than that.
BECKY:
Mm-hmm.
BUFFETT
: And there were real gains in productivity achieved on the downside. People, at least when they really had to tighten their belts, they found out they could do it. And I think that period is largely over. I think the gains in business will be much more reflected by gains in employment going from this point forward than they have in the first year and a half or two years of this recovery.
CNBC SQUAWK BOX TRANSCRIPT: MARCH 2, 2011PAGE 5
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BECKY:
Does that mean good news by the end of this year? Or does that mean good news by next year because depending on whose forecast you're watching, the employment number could go down significantly.
BUFFETT
: Yeah, yeah.
BECKY:
This year, or it might take two years.
BUFFETT
: I'm not a,I really don't know the answer on that, but if you ask me just to guess...
BECKY:
Mm-hmm.
BUFFETT
: ...I would guess that that by the close to the election of 2012 that unemployment would be probably in the low 7s.
BECKY:
OK.
BUFFETT
: And then how good that'll look to people, I don't know at the time. But that would be my guess from what I see in business