Berkshire Hathaway Safer than U.S. Treasuries

Via Bloomberg:

Two-year notes sold by [Warren Buffett's] Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in February yield 3.5 basis points less than Treasuries of similar maturity, according to data compiled by Bloomberg ...

While Treasuries backed by the full faith and credit of the government typically yield less than corporate debt, the relationship has flipped as Moody’s Investors Service predicts the U.S. will spend more on debt service as a percentage of revenue this year than any other top-rated country except the U.K. America will use about 7 percent of taxes for debt payments in 2010 and almost 11 percent in 2013, moving “substantially” closer to losing its AAA rating, Moody’s said last week.

For different reasons John Hussman doesn't like the market at this level:

The 2007 peak reflected rich valuation multiples against earnings that were themselves inflated by abnormally elevated profit margins. The anchoring of investor expectations to a period of rich valuations and unusually wide profit margins may not be reasonable, but it prevents any ability to “forecast” a significant near term decline, much less a sustained downtrend ... With the overvalued, overbought conditions of October now compounded by rising yield pressures and overbullish sentiment on a variety of measures (investment advisors are again down to just 21.3% bears), we remain defensively positioned here.