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Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said on Monday (March 3) the U.S. economy is in recession. Speaking on CNBC television, Buffett said the economy is heading south even though gross domestic product has not yet fallen for two straight quarters, a definition many economists use to identify when a recession begins. "By any common sense definition, we are in a recession," Buffett said. "Business is slowing down. We have retail stores in candy, home furnishings and jewellery. Across the board, I'm seeing a significant slowdown." Last week the Commerce Department said U.S. GDP rose at a 0.6 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter. Buffett also said homeowners are particularly feeling the effects of falling real estate prices. "I will tell you that, on balance, most people's situation, certainly their net worth has been heading south now for a considerable length of time, and if you owned a house and you had an eighty-percent mortgage on it, so you had twenty-percent equity, you might not have any equity now, and millions of people are in positions somewhat similar to that," said Buffett. Buffett said economic conditions have not deteriorated to levels in 1973 and 1974, a deep recession also marked by rising oil prices and falling stocks. The 1970s were also a period of rising inflation and unemployment, which together with recession creates "stagflation." Buffett said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has a "very tough balancing act" in trying to boost economic gro...