Warren Buffett on Stimulus and TARP

From Ben Stein interview with Warren Buffett in  Fortune (10/19/2010)

"When would you start hiring a lot more people?" I ask him.

"When demand picks up," he says. "We don't hire because we get a tax break or because someone in the government tells us to. We hire when there's more demand for what we are making or moving or selling. It's that simple."

"Where will the demand come from if a business as big as yours is being so cautious?" I ask.

"It's already coming," he says. "It's already happening, and it will pick up. Look," he adds, "we needed a really big stimulus in the fall of 2008 -- a really, really big stimulus. We didn't get it. It was a miracle that Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) bought Merrill for $29 when it was probably worth 29 cents if left on its own for a few days. If that hadn't happened, everything would have collapsed. The whole commercial-paper market would have stopped. Every domino would have fallen. Berkshire (BRKA, Fortune 500) would have been the last, but it would have fallen too. Ken Lewis saved the whole system for a while, until TARP could rescue it. But now we're just going to get a very slow recovery because people are still scared. But we are seeing recovery, definitely."

"How about in housing?"

"That recovery is still a long way off. That market got way out of equilibrium, and it's going to take a long while for it to get fixed."