Monday, September 29, 2008

A Sharecropper's Society

From Warren Buffett:

Buffett warned in 2003 that mortgage-backed derivatives were “financial weapons of mass destruction” and that, while the Federal Reserve system was created in part to prevent financial contagion, “there is no central bank assigned to the job of preventing the dominoes toppling in insurance or derivatives.”

In his letter to shareholders in March, 2005, Warren Buffet predicted that in another 10 years’ time the net ownership of the US 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 ’sharecropper’s 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."

0 comments - Post a comment :

Post a Comment