Dear Commons Community,.

In his latest annual letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett  takes other corporate leaders to task for complaining all of the time about “uncertainty” in the world, including most recently the political morass in Washington and all of the regulatory and tax “uncertainty” that it has spawned.  As reported in The Huffington Post: 

“A thought for my fellow CEOs: Of course, the immediate future is uncertain; America has faced the unknown since 1776,” he wrote. “It’s just that sometimes people focus on the myriad of uncertainties that always exist while at other times they ignore them (usually because the recent past has been uneventful).”

“If you are a CEO who has some large, profitable project you are shelving because of short-term worries, call Berkshire,” he added. “Let us unburden you.”

Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, spent a record $9.8 billion on plants and equipment last year, Buffett wrote, up 19 percent from 2011, and “will almost certainly” spend more this year. Berkshire spent about 88 percent of that $9.8 billion in the U.S., Buffett wrote.

“Opportunities abound in America,” Buffett wrote.

Thank you for your leadership, Mr. Buffett.  You should be in Washington, D.C.

Tony