THE AUSTRALIAN BUSINESS:
WARREN Buffett says the US economy has “fallen off a cliff”, describing the crisis as “an economic Pearl Harbour”, as concern spread about the US administration’s fitful attempts to halt the collapse of the US banking sector.

The leading investor, an informal adviser to President Barack Obama, whose financial diagnoses are widely respected — although he conceded he failed to predict the severity of the crisis — said the economy had come “close to the worst case” imagined, and that recovery would be slow.

Mr Buffett, one of the wealthiest men in the world, said the entire banking sector had been hours from collapse in September, and would have imploded without the $US700billion ($1trillion) Wall Street emergency bailout.

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