. >> pauline lat >> is the prime minister awa thathe sietynd 1 branches is being csed in the villa inmy nstitu? and can he assure mhat the prime ministern his govnment uld d all they cano he those cstuents w are losing nearly 250 jobs in the area which is very ser rural area. woulhe please assur us the government wl do all hcan to help the conituent who are beingeahisery crueblow at ts very dficult time? >>hank you, mr. spker. iite understand why m honorae friend wants to raise this iss it's desperate sad what's happenedo the building societ obviously, the gernmentill stand rey to dol it can to retrain people who have lost theijobs. and take sure tha theget thery best oortunity a to makeure we go on having a ro financial service sector. this is not as the ilding societreminds us. is is not just about theity of london. it about tt that mins of people in our untrrk in fincial services, providing a go serve, a we need to he th. >> one of e pros that stands to be affec by th decisionf the government to put 600 millionnds worth of hoing investment o hold is the housing elements, the redeve

what is your view of what csed the financial crisis? >> in terms of direct causes, certainly the weakening of the housing market, the softening of that market, and importantly, the very rapid tightening of credit for mortgage borrowers who needed to refinance. that greatly exacerbated the issue. the sudden tightening of credit produced the kind of large and rapid problem that we saw. >> it is principally a problem of people not being able to finance -- refinance debt costs failures? >> that was an important contributor. it acted as a catalyst. >> mr. buffett, we have had housing bubbles before. we have had other kds of asset mobile's before, most recently an oil price asset bubble. this one was quite special. i want to press you a little bit on this because i would like to get your see of why this one was special. why did it get so large? why did someone with your astute knowledge about the economy and not see that this was an extraordinarily different bubble from one we have had bore? >> i wish i could give you a good answer to that. i