"We should be buying stocks, and I say that for two reasons: Number One, the market basically today is priced for almost the end of the world. The conditions that have preceded previous periods of rough economic times just don’t exist. The other thing is, if you look back at the last 230 years of U.S. history, there has really hardly ever been a bad time to buy stocks -- especially if you are holding them for the long run."---February 25, 2008

"Every single recession in the United States for the last 80 years has been preceded by a tight Federal Reserve policy -- in other words, excessively high interest rates. And we clearly don’t have that today. Recessions are also preceded frequently by tax hikes or protectionism. So I would say that today we have very low interest rates, we have low tax rates, and we are not moving in a protectionist direction. As a result, those conditions that have led to recessions in the past don't exist. One last point: I know of no point in history where we have ever scared ourselves into a recession. It just has never happened before and I don’t think it will happen this time, either."---February 25, 2008

Is there a problem that is being overhyped by the mainstream general news media -- The New York Times, CNN, USA Today?

A: Yes, I think there are. The biggest one is this whole subprime lending issue. At its worst, and this is using the worst assumptions that I can make, it’ll be about a $250 billion problem. I don’t even think that we’ll get to that level; that’s the worst I can make it. $250 billion is less than .3 percent of all the economy’s assets. We have a $14 trillion GDP. We have $100 trillion in assets. It’s just too small of a problem to take the economy down. So I think we are blowing it out of proportion today and it is causing more fear than it should.