American Economy has "fallen off a cliff"

The American economy has “fallen off a cliff”, according to billionaire Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway. In an exclusive interview to CNBC, the investment guru said economic developments in the United States have been “very close to the worst case" that he had imagined, although conditions could have been far worse had the Federal Reserve not stepped in last September.
Buffett also blamed the US administration for sending out confused messages and said the 535 members of the Congress should stop sparring over solutions to the economic crisis. “The message has to be very clear as to what the government would be doing. We have had — it is nature of clinical process somewhat — but we have had model messages and the American public does not know,” Buffett said. “They feel they don’t know what’s going on and the reaction is to absolutely pull back.”
Good days ahead
"The American economy can't turn around on a dime, that doesn't happen," Buffett said, when asked to specify a timeframe for the American economy to recover. "Five years from now, I can guarantee you that the machine will be running fine. But I'd like to get there a lot faster than five years. And we can."
The US, Buffett said, is caught in a negative feedback cycle and added that with Americans being scared, they are changing their buying habits, which in turn, leads to further losses and layoffs.
“However, it (the negative feedback cycle will end,” Buffett said. “I don’t want this to be the last line of the movie. I had a line in my annual report (his annual letter to Berkshire shareholders) that America’s best days lie ahead and we will talk about why that is. And that is the final answer. But how fast we get there depends enormously on not only the wisdom of government policy, but the degree to which it is communicated properly to people.”
Economic war
Calling the situation an economic war, Buffett likened to the economic crisis to Pearl Harbour and called upon the Americans to help President Barack Obama in tackling the crisis. “When you have a Pearl Harbour, you have to know that the nation is going to be united on December 8,” he said, adding, “The army doesn’t blame the navy because there were too many ships in Pearl Harbour. The army doesn’t say it is your fault, so we are not going to send our troops. Similarly, we have little squabbles otherwise, but we put them aside, everybody wants to work into the Fed’s plans.”