Billionaire Buffett warns of 'muddled' message on economy

Another high-profile backer of President Obama added his voice today to those fretting publicly that the administration is not doing enough -- or taking the right actions -- to shore up the financial system and turn around the economy.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said on CNBC that the Obama team is sending mixed some signals about its approach, hurting consumer and market confidence.

"The message has to be very, very clear as to what government will be doing," Buffett said. "And I think we've had, and it's the nature of the political process somewhat, but we've had muddled messages and the American public does not know. They feel they don't know what's going on, and their reaction then is to absolutely pull back."

As the Globe reported on Saturday, there are some Obama supporters and others who say the government should more aggressively take on failing banks, putting them into federal receivership and following the response to the 1980s savings and loan crisis.

Buffett also admonished Republicans for unnecessarily beating up Obama, saying they "have an obligation to regard this as an economic war and realize you need one leader."

UPDATE: White House spokesman Robert Gibbs asserted that Buffett was criticizing Washington as a whole, not Obama in particular. He emphasized instead Buffett's call for Democrats and Republicans to cooperate for the good of the country.

In his daily briefing, Gibbs said that while there's always room for improvement in communicating the right message on the economy, "we have to continue to give people a realistic sense of where this economy is, but also ...we've got to make sure people understand that brighter days are ahead."

"But I think Mr. Buffett would agree that ... that this problem isn't going to be fixed overnight," Gibbs added. "The problems that we dealt with starting in sort of early to mid- September of last year didn't start last summer. Many of those problems started years ago. Many of the systemic problems that were rooted in what ultimately failed took place a while ago."