Steve Wevodau

Warren Buffett says “you couldn’t have anybody better in charge” for the economy than Barack Obama, but warns “it’s going to take time” before things get better.

In an interview with Tom Brokaw for Dateline NBC, Buffett says there’s a lot of fear everywhere as the country faces “an economic Pearl Harbor .. something it hasn’t faced since World War II.”

Buffett predicts that Obama’s plan for a massive stimulus program will help, but not right away.

“We’re gonna have a medicine coming in a dosage we’ve never seen before … but it won’t have immediate impact … It takes time for it to hit the economy in real force.  So people should not expect miracles in February or March or April.  That isn’t gonna happen.”

Buffett thinks Obama will make sure the American people know that there will be some pain and sacrifices to be made.  “That’s exactly what he’s gonna say, ’cause it’s the truth.  And he’s smart enough to know it’s the truth … and he’s the kind of person who’s going to tell you the truth.  So, I think he’s the ideal president for it.  But that’s not because I think he can wave a magic wand.”

While Buffett doesn’t rule out the possibility that unemployment will rise to double digits before the end of the year, he doesn’t expect the current economic downturn to be as severe as the Great Depression of the 1930s.

And he remains very optimistic about the country’s ability to come through troubled times.  “The truth is we’ve done it before and we’ll do it again … But it’s not always a smooth ride.”

“In the end,” Buffett says, “since 1776 it’s never paid to bet against America.”

Dilbert creator Scott Adams doesn’t trust Warren Buffett’s October call to buy U.S. stocks hammered during Wall Street’s worst year in decades.

AP Scott Adams poses with a two-dimensional Dilbert in this 2006 file photograph.

Over the weekend, Barron’s ran a profile of Adams, whose daily comic strip about dysfunctional offices and managers everywhere has been making cubicle-dwellers smile for 20 years.

Adams also writes about the economy and the stock market, among other things, in his own blog on Dilbert.com.

Now the real-world economic downturn is affecting Dilbert’s fictional high-tech employer. 

Barron’s says Adams thinks capitalism will end up in the dustbin of history because modern technology allows crooks and market manipulators to destroy vast amounts of capital in very little time.

While Adams does not think Buffett is one of those crooks, Barron’s reveals that Adams doesn’t even trust the Oracle of Omaha.

Washington editor Jim McTague writes:

Adams “just worries that the master’s objectivity has been clouded by do-good impulses. ‘His social conscience makes his motives suspect. He plans to give all of his money away to charity. He’s a very liberal guy. So when he buys stock when the country is panicking, it might be for another reason,’ like rescuing the market, Adams contends.

Barron’s notes that Adams is suspicious of money managers in general, after he “lost a bundle following advice during the tech bubble” of the late 1990s.  (That advice, of course, didn’t come from Warren Buffett.)

Adams tells Barron’s he’s recently started moving some his money into stock ETFs, diversifying from the tax-free muni bonds that sheltered him during the recent storm.  This time around, however, he’s making all the decisions himself.

Buffett certainly wouldn’t argue with that approach.