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The prices in that field (food) make it very, very, very tough to make an intelligent deal

Despite his disagreement with some of Trump’s policies, Buffett said the U.S. economy would be better off in four years under any president. He said that U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made “a lot of sense.”

On Kraft Heinz’s snubbed bid for Unilever, Buffett said it was never intended to be a hostile offer and that there was not a “backup deal.” Berkshire is a key investor in Kraft Heinz.

“Will there be another deal at Kraft Heinz some day? My guess is yes, but who knows when, I mean, there’s no backup deal, and again, it would have to be friendly and frankly, the prices in that field make it very, very, very tough to make an intelligent deal.”

Asked about Berkshire’s US$86 billion cash pile, he said the conglomerate was “always looking” for acquisitions but that there was “nothing close.”

Buffett said it was enormously important for the U.S. economy to have 30-year government-guaranteed mortgages, but that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not necessary in order to accomplish that.

On 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds, Buffett said: “It absolutely baffles me who buys the 30-year bond” and that doing so was not sensible at current yields. U.S. 30-year government bonds last yielded 2.964 per cent.

When trillions of dollars are managed by Wall Streeters charging high fees, it will usually be the managers who reap outsized profits, not the clients

Buffett reiterated that Americans are better off buying plain-vanilla index funds than committing money to active managers. He added that the hedge fund industry’s standard fee structure of 2 per cent of assets and 20 per cent of investment gains “borders on obscene.”

In an annual letter to shareholders on Saturday, Buffett slammed fee-hungry investment managers: “When trillions of dollars are managed by Wall Streeters charging high fees, it will usually be the managers who reap outsized profits, not the clients.”

Buffett praised Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos as possibly the best manager he had ever seen and said Berkshire “missed big time” by not purchasing Amazon shares early on. Buffett said the U.S. economy was doing “terrific,” even at just 2 per cent growth per year.

© Thomson Reuters 2017