( Reuters) – Billionaire financier Warren Buffett on Saturday said the United States’ capability to endure crises provides a silver lining as it fights the coronavirus, even as he acknowledged that the global pandemic might significantly harm the economy and his investments.
Warren Buffett addresses shareholders at the annual meeting of his Berkshire Hathaway Inc, which is being practically broadcast due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Omaha, Nebraska Might 2, 2020, in this still image taken from video. Yahoo! Finance/via REUTERS
Over more than 4-1/2 hours at the annual conference of Berkshire Hathaway Inc ( BRKa.N), Buffett stated his conglomerate has taken many actions reacting to the pandemic, consisting of providing cash to having a hard time operating systems, and throwing in the total on a multi-billion-dollar bet on U.S. airlines.
Buffett also said he stays crazy about making a huge acquisition, which he has actually refrained from doing given that 2016, however has not provided financial backing to companies as he did during the 2008 financial crisis because he saw nothing attractive enough, even after the recent bearish market.
The 89- year-old opened the meeting in Omaha, Nebraska with 1-3/4 hours of remarks to soothe anxious investors, urging them to remain devoted to stocks in spite of this year’s bearishness, even if the pandemic gets a 2nd wind late this year.
Highlighting his remarks with lots of plain black-and-white slides, Buffett called handling the pandemic “quite an experiment” that had an “extremely large” range of possible financial results.
However he said Americans have stood firm and succeeded through such crises as the Civil War in the 1860 s, the influenza pandemic a century ago and the Great Depression. American “magic” dominated prior to and would do again, he said.
” Nothing can stop America when you solve down to it,” Buffet