...and not the Times. I'd guess it goes by the name "Warren Buffett," the informal Obama adviser and Post board member. Here's Obama about 19:40 into yesterday's interview: "Now I don’t want to have a very detailed conversation in front of Warren Buffett, because he will recognize every wrong thing that I say here..."
Not a bad card to play if you're a media organization trying to broker a sit-down with the president-elect...
P.S. By the way, the full quote is very reassuring to those of us who worry that the economy won't recover until we fix our broken financial system:
We can’t just spend our way out of the problem. At some point credit has to flow effectively. Now I don’t want to have a very detailed conversation in front of Warren Buffett, because he will recognize every wrong thing that I say here. But I think he would concur with the general proposition that the credit markets are still very weak. That banks now are fully caught up in a downward spiral where they have now affected the real economy [and] the real economy is now affecting their balance sheets. So we’re going to have to intelligently and strategically infuse some additional capital into the financial system…
Well said.
--Noam Scheiber