Wall Street doesn't feel loved: Warren Buffett

NEW YORK: Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, said Wall Street bankers don’t believe they’ve been embraced by President Barack Obama and are hence withholding their support.

“Wall Street certainly doesn’t feel loved,” Buffett told Charlie Rose in a September 30 interview broadcast on PBS. “I think there was some rhetoric that contributed to that.” Buffett, 81, is seeking to draw backers for Obama’s reelection and planned to attend a fundraiser for the president last week in New York. Obama has been accused of “class warfare” by Republicans for seeking to close the deficit by raising taxes on the wealthy.

Obama has asked Congress to enact a so-called Buffett rule, requiring those earning $1 million or more a year to pay taxes at a rate similar to that of middle-income Americans.

“You take the number of people making a million dollars or over on Wall Street and you can fill a very large auditorium,” Buffett said. “I think the president felt, ‘My God, look at all the things we did for business, and they’re unappreciative, and I’m all that stands between them and the pitchforks.”

Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway, did at least five television interviews on September 30 on topics ranging from Berkshire’s investments and BoFA’s struggles to politics and Europe’s debt crisis.

Berkshire added about $4 billion in common stock to its investments in Q3, Buffett said.

That compares with $3.4 billion in the Q2 and was the most since Berkshire ploughed $3.6 billion into stocks during Q3 of 2008, the height of the global credit crisis.