Warren Buffett: "Our first stimulus bill...was sort of like taking half a tablet of Viagra"

Amanda Carey | July 9, 2009

Billionaire tycoon Warren Buffett recently weighed in on the need for a second stimulus. On ABC's Good Morning America, Buffett had this to say about the recession, Wall Street, and...Viagra:

I think that a second one may well be called for. It is not a panacea. A stimulus is the right thing[...]you hope it doesn't get watered down in many ways. Our first stimulus bill...was sort of like taking half a tablet of Viagra and having also a bunch of candy mixed in...as if everybody was putting in enough for their own constituents. It doesn't have really quite the wallop.

I hope I'm not the only one who thinks the Viagra metaphor is a little off. So far the economy still seems to be going in only one direction: down. 

Buffett also put in his two-cents about the government's public-private investment plan, in which private investors buy up toxic assets from banks that received federal stimulus money:

I do not like the idea of any kind of a plan involving the government where Wall Street makes a lot of money. My plan provided that they would make no money whatsoever, and the American public would make the money. I just think that Wall Street owes the American people one at this point.

Coming from a man who made his fortune investing in Wall Street, Buffett seems pretty intent on preventing anyone else from doing the same. How does he manage to sleep at night with all that evil money lying around?

Matt Welch and J.P. Freire on Warren Buffett here and here.