OMAHA — Billionaire Warren Buffett said Monday the U.S. economy is essentially in a recession even if it hasn’t met the technical definition yet. Buffett told cable outlet CNBC that the reports he gets from the retail businesses his holding company owns show a significant slowdown in purchases.
The chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway noted millions of people have lost equity in their homes because home prices have dropped: “I would say, by any common-sense definition, we are in a recession.”
The technical definition of a recession most economists use is two consecutive quarters of negative growth in the nation’s gross domestic product.
On Thursday, the Commerce Department reported that the gross domestic product increased at a 0.6 percent annual pace in the quarter that ended Dec. 31, compared with a 4.9 percent performance in the previous quarter.
