QuestionerIn view of the Iraq war, consumer debt that's increasing, declining job growth, declining pay in the jobs that are growing, prospects of increased interest rates, what would your view be about the investment future for the next five to ten years in view of all these negative factors going on?
WarrenWell, I would say that at any given point in history, including when stocks were their cheapest, you could find an equally impressive number of negative factors. I mean, you could have sat down in 1974 when stocks were screaming bargains, and you could have written down all kinds of things that would have caused you to say, you know, the future is just going to be terrible. And similarly, at the top, you know, or any time you can write down a large list of things that would be quite. on the bullish side. We don't pay it, we really don't pay any attention to that sort of thing. I mean, we have, you might say that our underlying premise, and I think it's a pretty sound underlying premise, is that this country will do very well, and in particular it will do well for business. Business has done very well, you know, the Dow went from 66 to 10,000 plus in the hundred years of the 20th century, and we had two world. wars and nuclear bombs and flu epidemics and we, you name it, Cold War. There's always, there's always, there's always problems in the future, there are always opportunities in the future, and in this country the opportunities have won out over the problems over time, and I think they will continue to do so absent weapons of mass destruction, which is another question, and business won't make much difference if anything really drastic happens along that line.