‘We live in a bizarre world dominated by magical-thinking’
by Shawn Langlois
Market Watch
‘If money doesn’t loosen up, this sucker will go down.’
President George W. Bush famously uttered those words a decade ago as the U.S. government was scrambling to restore liquidity and calm panicky markets during the upheaval of the financial crisis.
A few years after that, Berkshire Hathaway’s BRK.A, +0.45% Warren Buffett hailed Bush’s comment as “the greatest economic statement of all time.”
At the time, Buffett said Berkshire always has at least $20 billion in cash. “Some day in the next 100 years when the world stops again, we will be ready,” he explained to a group of M.B.A. students in 2013. “There will be some incident, it could be tomorrow — at that time, you need cash. Cash at that time is like oxygen.”