Buffett: No double-dip recession

Warren Buffett ruled out a second recession in the U.S. and said businesses owned by his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. are growing.

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“I am a huge bull on this country,” Buffett, Berkshire's CEO, said Monday in remarks to the Montana Economic Development Summit. “We will not have a double-dip recession at all. I see our businesses coming back almost across the board.

“I've seen sentiment turn sour in the last three months or so, generally in the media. I don't see that in our businesses. I see we're employing more people than a month ago, two months ago.”

Buffett, who spoke via video connection to an assembly in Butte, Mont., said U.S. banks were ready to boost lending, and he encouraged entrepreneurs to seek financing for their business ideas. Berkshire is the biggest shareholder of Wells Fargo & Co., the top U.S. home lender.

“It's night and day from a year, year and a half ago,” Buffett said. “I know Wells Fargo, they would love to have $50 billion more of loans now. Go in and talk to the banker.”

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer and General Electric Co. Chairman Jeff Immelt also told the nearly 2,000 business leaders, government officials, aspiring entrepreneurs and others at the summit that things were getting better.

Ballmer said there soon will be more technological advancement and invention than there was during the Internet era. That will help drive business growth, he said.

“I am very enthusiastic what the future holds for our industry and what our industry will mean for growth in other industries,” said Ballmer, whose company is based in Seattle.

“All areas of science today are moving forward more quickly,” Ballmer said. “The speed of scientific breakthrough is accelerating.”

Immelt said that angry political rhetoric is not helpful and that headlines are too focused on finding negative indicators. He said business at GE, one of the world's largest companies, is improving.

Immelt said the country is going to need to adjust, though. The economy since the 1970s has been driven by consumer credit and a misguided notion in building a “lazy” service economy, he said. The key to recovery, he said, is manufacturing, with an aim to reduce the trade deficit.

“It was just wrong. It was stupid. It was insane,” Immelt said of the push for a service-based economy. “The future of the economy has to be as an exporter.”

This report includes material from the Associated Press.

Bloomberg News