Warren Buffett says he never lost confidence in capitalism, even in the darkest hour of the financial crisis — and that the United States is still the best place in the world to invest money.

"The financial panic is behind us,” Buffett told an audience at Columbia Business School, where he appeared with Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

“Our economy was sputtering, still is sputtering some.”

“(But) this country works. We’ve got 200 years of proof and it’s going to continue.”

Gates clearly concurred.

“We have a complex financial system, and we’ve proven that we can make mistakes,” Gates noted.

“But more fundamental than that is the innovation, the fact that you can create new companies, that people are willing to take risk and invest, that there’s great science going on,” Gates said.

“Even in that darkest hour, people were working on new drugs, new chips, new robots. . . things that will make life better for everyone in the decades ahead.”

Despite the fact that the U.S. economy started to grow again in the third quarter, U.S. consumer sentiment fell in early November amid a grim outlook for future job prospects, although separate data showing rising imports in September raised some hopes of renewed U.S. economic growth.

The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said its preliminary index of sentiment for November fell to 66.0, the lowest level since August, from 70.6 in October.

This was well below economists' median expectation of a reading of 71.0, according to a Reuters poll.