FORTUNE — At last year’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA) annual meeting, Warren Buffett expressed concerns over the way the Federal Reserve would begin tapering its bond buying stimulus program. But this year, he appeared confident in the Fed’s stewardship.
Buffett’s positive outlook may have less to do with the recent regime change at the Fed, from Ben Bernanke to Janet Yellen, and more to do with the release in February of transcripts from Fed meetings during the 2008 financial crisis. To Buffett, the meeting minutes provided insight that reinforced his faith in Bernanke — if not the rest of the Fed staff.
“What was interesting to me, when the minutes of the Fed from the period in 2008 came out, was how a number of the members of the Fed were not getting it. They didn’t really understand, or it seemed so to me, just how serious things were,” Buffett said during Berkshire’s annual meeting in Omaha on Saturday.
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“I give particular credit to Bernanke that he acted, while there was certainly not a unanimous view of those surrounding him that the kind of actions he did were really necessary,” Buffett continued. “In my opinion, he did a masterful job, and from everything I’ve seen about Janet Yellen, I feel the same way about her.”
While Buffett reiterated last year’s comments that the long period of low interest rates enforced by the Fed is a movie “we haven’t seen before and we don’t know how it ends yet,” he reassured investors that so far, so good.
“It’s the zero interest rate policy that’s had a huge effect both in rejuvenating the economy and on asset prices,” Buffett said. “It has not, in my view, produced a bubble — it can produce one, but this is not a bubble situation, at all, that we’re living in. But it’s an unusual situation we’re living in.”
