Dollar draws fire from Buffett and others

NEW DEHLI, India, April 22 (UPI) -- Investment titan Warren Buffett, speaking in New Delhi, said the U.S. dollar was not the best bet these days and would not be for at least the next 20 years.

At a public appearance in India's capital, where he was shopping for companies to buy, Buffett said, "I would recommend against buying long-term fixed-dollar investments," The Washington Post reported Friday.

"If you ask me if the U.S. dollar is going to hold its purchasing power fully at the level of 2011 five years, 10 years or 20 years from now, I would tell you it will not," Buffett said.

Buffett, nicknamed the Oracle from Omaha, has said South Korea is prime "hunting ground" and Japan, after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, represented a "buying opportunity."

Others have echoed his concerns, the Post reported.

"The United States is one of the serial abusers of deficits and inappropriate budgets and finance," said Bill Gross, chief executive officer of bond investment company Pimco, which recently sold its entire U.S. treasury bond holdings.

"Do the headlines in terms of debt ceilings and 10 percent budget deficits and the back-and-forth between Republican and Democratic orthodoxies, does that matter? Sure it does. It's not confidence-inducing," Gross said in a recent interview.

The dollar hit a 38-year low in March in trades with other major currencies, the U.S. Federal Reserve said. "This is the true measure of what the dollar's worth. It shows what you can buy with the U.S. dollar," said Harvard economics Professor Kenneth Rogoff.