Billionaire Warren Buffett, himself a major employer via subsidiaries of his Berkshire Hathaway holding company, doesn’t see any reason to hire back tens of thousands of workers at his own first until there is a clear sign of recovery.

Buffett doesn’t expect to hire "until orders start coming in,” he told CNBC in an interview. As for the consumer economy, he added, "you're not going to have people feeling good until jobs come back."

Berkshire units have jettisoned 25,000 in the last year and a half.
Buffett also criticized Obama’s plan to tax banks to pay for the bailouts so far.

Banks "are cleaning up their own mess," and not necessarily making "obscene profits," he told the financial news network.

U.S. unemployment has stuck at 10 percent despite signs of life among some industries.

Some economists are predicting unemployment will stay above 8 percent for several years as the economy slowly emerges from the worst recession since the 1930s.

China’s loose monetary policy has largely kept the global economy afloat as the United States worked to revive its own frozen credit system.

Now there are signs that the Chinese are worried about a major bubble in housing and uncontrolled lending.

Its top bank regulator said on Wednesday that the country would trim credit in an attempt to slow expected 16 percent annualized growth there.