Financial 'Pearl Harbor' Is Past, Says Buffett

The Oracle of Omaha still sees tough times ahead for the US economy, but he says he thinks the worst is in the past, CNCBC reports. “We’re at a war now to some degree, but Pearl Harbor was September,” Warren Buffett says. “There was a strike at the heart of the American system, the financial system. And we got past that.” But “the war isn’t over,” particularly for Buffett, who will face antsy shareholders tomorrow.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway investment firm had its worst year ever in 2008—share values were off 9.6%—and some say “he took his eye off the ball,” the Financial Times reports. “The hard questions will be asked this year,” a watcher said of the usually laudatory annual meeting. “There will be people who always stand by him and others who will ask: ‘Have you lost your way?’” (More investors stories.)