Billionaire Warns US is Heading Towards a "Share Cropper Society"

Billionaire US investor Warren Buffett has warned about the extent of the US trade deficit. Mr Buffett made the comments in his widely-read annual letter to shareholders of his Berkshire Hathaway holding company. He warned that the US trade deficit, which totalled $672bn (£484bn) last year, meant a knock-on over-reliance upon foreign investment into the US. Mr Buffett said this foreign investment could become too dominant. "Other countries and their citizens now own a net of about $3,000bn of the US," he said. Using an analogy from the 1930s, Mr Buffett said this meant the US could be heading towards a "sharecropper's society", meaning that a great many Americans could have to pay a large proportion of their future incomes to absent, and in this case foreign, landlords. "But that's precisely where our trade policies, supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, are taking us," said Mr Buffett.  [more]