Buffett: $5bn Goldman stake was bet on US economy

Warren Buffett's $5bn investment in Goldman Sachs after Lehman Brothers collapsed was a ‘wager' to allow the Federal Reserve to take on debt and prop up the economic recovery.

According to Bloomberg, Buffett says the investment was "essentially a bet" on the US economy, in an interview released today by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Buffett adds he was confident the US had strong government officials in place to lead the US out of recession. "It was a bet essentially on the fact the government would not really shirk its responsibility at a time like that to leverage up at a time when the rest of the world was trying to deleverage," says Buffett. "I made the fundamental decision we had the right people in Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke a...