Buffett says recession may be worse than feared
April 28, 2008 11:09 AM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Warren Buffett, the world's richest person, said on Monday the U.S. economy is in a recession that will be more severe than most people expect.
Buffett made his comments on CNBC television after his Berkshire Hathaway Inc agreed to invest $6.5 billion in the takeover of chewing gum maker Wm Wrigley Jr Co by Mars Inc in a $23 billion transaction.
"This is not a field of specialty for me, but my general feeling is that the recession will be longer and deeper than most people think," Buffett said. "This will not be short and shallow.
"I think consumers are feeling gas and food prices," he added, "and not feeling they've got a lot of money for other things."
He was not immediately available for further comment. Known for his frugality, the 77-year-old Buffett has lived in the same 10-room Omaha, Nebraska, house for a half-century, despite being worth an estimated $62 billion.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Commerce Department is expected to say how fast the economy grew in the first quarter. Economists on average have projected that gross domestic product grew at an annualized 0.2 percent rate in the quarter.
Two quarters of declining GDP is a traditional indicator of recession. That last happened in 2001. Economists expect the U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday to cut a key lending rate for a seventh time beginning last September.
Berkshire is a $197 billion conglomerate best known for its insurance holdings, such as auto insurer Geico Corp, but it owns more than 70 businesses.
Many of those businesses are tied to the housing market, including Acme Brick Co, insulation maker Johns Manville, and the real estate brokerage HomeServices of America Inc.
Others depend on consumers to spend more on discretionary items, such as Ben Bridge Jeweler and Borsheims Fine Jewelry.
"In the retail businesses ... if anything, they've gotten a little worse," Buffett said. "Of course, things connected with housing, whether it's in brick or whether it's in carpet, those businesses have shown no uptick at all. Jewelry had a bad Christmas ... and it stayed that way."
Buffett sees no respite from the housing slump.
"I think this is going to be fairly long and fairly deep, but who knows," he said.
In March, Forbes magazine pegged Buffett's net worth at $62 billion, ahead of Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim's $60 billion and Microsoft Corp Chairman Bill Gates's $58 billion. Gates is a friend of Buffett and a Berkshire director.
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/pro...428&id=8550727
----this whole recession could have been prevented! All of you that are going to call me...less than patriotic but this is complete bulls**t. This is going to be some of the hardest times that the country is going to see but look on the bright side...we all get a check in the mail ($600.00 or so) to spend on whatever we want!!! That's great right? Until next year when we have to give it back and our tax returns are that much smaller....this is one of "the current administration's" last ways to fist us...other than $4 gas.
OSAMA BIN LADEN NOT THE DUDE TO BLAME FOR 9/11?
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Prescott Prince is a small-town lawyer who has never taken a death penalty case to trial. Yet he finds himself involved in one of the biggest capital punishment cases this century: He's defending the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Prescott Prince says the suspected 9/11 mastermind deserves a fair trial.
He readily acknowledges how his client is perceived as "one of the most reviled people" in the world. But he says it's imperative America give Mohammed a fair trial, just like anyone else accused of a crime.
No civilian court, he says, would accept confessions obtained after a defendant was mistreated. But the CIA admits Mohammed was waterboarded, a controversial interrogation technique that involves simulated drowning.
"I take the position that this is mock execution. ... Colloquially speaking, at least it's torture," Prince says.
The fact whatever Mohammed said during such duress could be used at trial is alarming to Prince.
"That's not the rule of law. That's just insanity." Video Watch waterboarding is "mock execution" »
A Navy reservist who has been called to active duty, Prince, 53, rejects the suggestion that he is less than patriotic for representing an accused terrorist. "I had friends who were at the Pentagon the day it was attacked so I don't accept the concept of 'gee I don't know what it's like.'"
Prince is currently visiting the detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to meet his client. He was denied a meeting with Mohammed on Wednesday due to procedural problems; he will try again today.
Before Prince headed to Guantanamo, he told CNN he had no idea whether Mohammed will accept him as his lawyer. He says he's gone over what he's going to say "about a hundred times a day."
He's been reading the Koran and has met with psychologists and other lawyers who have represented accused terrorists. "This would not be the first time I've met with a client who initially did not want, if you will, court-appointed counsel," he said. "I've had clients call me almost any name in the book. I've had them refuse to come see me." Video Meet the attorney defending suspected 9/11 mastermind »
Still Prince realizes this is different. Very different.
Mohammed has been in custody since he was caught in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in 2003. He was transferred from a secret location to Gitmo in 2006. The government says he confessed to his involvement in the September 11, 2001, attacks and many other terrorist plots.
The government in February said six terror suspects, including Mohammed, would go before military commissions and could face the death penalty if it is judged they were involved in the September 11 attacks. The proceedings are governed by the Military Commissions Act, which Congress passed to handle arrestees in the war on terror. See the terror suspects who could face the death penalty »
The act requires detainees have access to lawyers as well as to any evidence presented against them. They also will have the right to appeal a guilty verdict, potentially through a civilian appeals court and perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court, according to the act. Video Watch general describe charges against al Qaeda suspects »
In the case of Mohammed, the government acknowledged he was subjected to waterboarding, a harsh interrogation technique that many experts believe violates the Geneva Conventions' ban on torture. Waterboarding involves strapping a person to a surface, covering the face with cloth and pouring water over the cloth to imitate the sensation of drowning.
Prince finds that extremely troubling because he says a civilian court would never admit evidence gained through a coerced statement. The government says Mohammed has confessed to 9/11 and other terror plots.
"Even the greenest deputy sheriff or rookie police officer in Skunk Hollow County knows that if you rough up a defendant, anything he says after that is not going to be admitted into court," Prince says. "The officer might not like those rules, but he understands them and will abide by them."
But a judge in a military commission could have it entered into evidence. "We have created a system under the military commissions that says in essence, 'if he was roughed up, but what he says still seems reliable, we'll accept it any way.' And that's just wrong."
Prince says there are other complications. He may not have the chance to cross-examine Mohammed's accusers and may not see all the evidence to be put forward in court. Video Watch families of 9/11 victims push for fair trials »
Prince doesn't believe Mohammed can get a fair trial and says the country risks trashing "our constitutional values when it becomes convenient to do so."
"I don't want to impugn anyone's character, but this is where Ronald Reagan's term 'trust but verify' will come into play," he says.
The military has assigned him a three-person team consisting of another lawyer, an intelligence analyst and a paralegal. The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers have also teamed up to find volunteers to help Prince and the other lawyers defending accused terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.
Norman Reimer, the executive director of the NACDL, explained the daunting task this way:"It's going to require all of the ingenuity and resources -- not just to defend the accused -- but to defend the American system of justice and what we stand for in the world. That's what this is about."
Two lawyers from Boise, Idaho, have agreed to help Prince. No strangers to terrorism cases, David Nevin and Scott McKay won an acquittal for a Saudi man who faced terror charges.
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Prince for years ran a small practice in Richmond, Virginia. But last year, the reservist was called to active duty and spent six months in Iraq. He never thought this would be his next assignment.
"I could have said, 'No,'" he says, before adding, "I don't think I would have been doing honor to myself or honor to my calling."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/23/...ney/index.html
---I'm not touching this with a ten foot pole
Official: Polygamists Got 31 Underage Girls Pregnant
A Texas child welfare official has confirmed that of the 31 of the 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 living at the Yearning For Zion Ranch are either pregnant or have given birth to children.
Texas officials took 463 children into custody earlier this month, following a raid of the ranch after a phone call was made to a domestic violence hotline.
It is believed that young girls were forced into marriages with much older men.
---I feel like these chicks are down with polygamy because no one else would ever want them...it takes 8 of these chicks to make 1 moderate looking broad! Naw but really...they are the creepiest looking sea hags I've ever seen. Check out Tina Yothers on the far end of the pic! But I mean if this guy's pimpin' little kids then he needs to hang...f*** it put his ass in prison and let Albert the Aryan and Pookie the Pirate have their way with him. I'm sure he'll be S******* D*** for tits in no time! (For those of you who are confused please forgive my OZ reference)
Captive Austrian Kids Never Saw Sunlight
AMSTETTEN, Austria (Reuters) - A 73-year-old Austrian electrical engineer has confessed to holding his daughter captive in a secret, windowless cellar for 24 years and fathering seven children by her, police said on Monday.
The case, centered on a nondescript two-story building in the small industrial town of Amstetten, bears chilling similarities to that of Austrian Natascha Kampusch who spent eight years locked up in a basement before escaping in 2006.
Some parts of the cell in which the family were kept were no more than 5 feet 6 inches high and officials said the basement even contained a padded cell.
"This is an appalling crime. I know of no comparable case in Austria," Franz Prucher, head of security for Lower Austria told a news conference.
Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, says her father, Josef Fritzl, lured her into the basement of the block in 1984 and drugged and handcuffed her before imprisoning her.
Three of her children, aged 19, 18 and 5, had been locked up in the basement with her since birth and had never seen sunlight, police said, raising worries about their physical and mental state. The younger two were boys, the eldest a girl.
Three other children -- two girls and one boy -- were brought up by Josef and his wife.
As well as confessing to locking up his daughter for 24 years and siring the seven children, Fritzl also admitted to burning the body of the seventh child in the heating system when it died soon after birth, said Franz Polzer, head of criminal investigations in the state of Lower Austria.
All the victims are receiving medical treatment, said police. State prosecutors said Fritzl would be summoned before a judge later on Monday.
Investigators spent the day combing through the cells where the victims had been held captive. Forensic experts in white uniforms and gloves carried out boxes of evidence from the house which is on a busy street with shops.
Fritzl had hidden the entrance to the cell behind shelves and only he knew the secret code for the reinforced concrete door, said officials.
Photographs showed a narrow passageway leading into other rooms which included a cooking area, sleeping area and a small bathroom with a shower. A tube provided ventilation.
Amstetten, located in rolling hills about 130 km (80 miles) west of Vienna, is an industrial town of about 22,000 people.
HOSPITAL VISIT
The case unfolded when the 19-year-old girl became seriously ill and was taken to hospital, prompting doctors to appeal for the girl's mother to come forward to provide more details about her medical history.
Fritzl then brought Elisabeth and her remaining two children out of the basement, telling his wife -- who thought their "missing" daughter had chosen to return home, police said.
Elisabeth agreed to make a comprehensive statement to the police after receiving assurances she would have no further contact with her father, who she said abused her from the age of 11.
Kampusch, who spent her teenage years held captive, offered to help the victims and told ORF radio she might talk to the family.
"I can imagine that it is very difficult both for the mother of the children as well as for the wife of the perpetrator to get through this," she said.
Psychiatrist Max Friedrich, who treated Kampusch, said the children were undergoing tests in hospital, in particular for problems with their eyes and skin due to the lack of daylight.
"And socially ... the (children) could not develop any sort of sense of community which they would get from going to school or playgroup," Friedrich told Reuters.
SHAME
The case has raised questions about how authorities and neighbors failed to notice anything unusual in the "house of horrors," not least because officials said Fritzl had over the years built extensions to the secret cellar.
"The community of Amstetten should drown in shame ... The neighbors are turning a blind eye," the Oesterreich newspaper wrote in an editorial.
The daily Der Standard wrote: "The whole country must ask itself what is really, fundamentally going wrong."
Another puzzle is how Josef's wife Rosemarie could have been unaware of what was going on.
Police have said they believe Rosemarie did not know what happened to her daughter when she disappeared in 1984. It was assumed Elisabeth had left voluntarily when her parents received a letter from her saying they should not search for her.
---NO COMMENT...wait...STOP TORTURING PEOPLE WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION. His Daughter? F***** gross!!!
