BOSTON If you like your investing no-frills and low-cost, prepare for your introduction to Warren Buffett. Investors in mutual funds that track the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index will soon have a stake in the investing legend’s company for the first time. A split that has made Berkshire Hathaway’s famously expensive stock suddenly affordable means S&P will add the company to the index, possibly within a couple of weeks.

Quotations on topics currently in the news . . . Investor Warren Buffett, on whether the Massachusetts vote was a referendum on Congress, the White House, and Obamacare: “It’s those three things plus the economy . . . .Certainly people generally in the country do not like the health bill . . . .And they don’t feel good about Congress, and they feel less good about the administration than they did a year ago—clearly. And they feel like the economy is dragging on for a long time. So all of those factors converged.“

Legendary investor Warren Buffett is making what he calls an “all-in wager” on the U.S. economy—$34 billion to buy a major railroad that hauls everything from corn to cars across the country. Burlington Northern, the nation’s second-largest railroad, is the biggest hauler of food products like corn, and coal for electricity, making it an indicator of the country’s economic health. The railroad also ships a large amount of consumer goods—including items imported from Asia—from big Western ports like Los Angeles and Seattle.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says the economy appears to have leveled off at the bottom of the recession over the summer, but Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO still isn’t seeing much improvement.

Billionaire Warren Buffett said yesterday the economy has not yet had any bounce and will take some time to recover, but he complimented the government’s efforts over the past year to solve the problems. Berkshire Hathaway’s chairman and chief executive conducted a couple of live television interviews yesterday in New York. The interviews came before his lunch with a Chinese investment manager who bid $2.1 million in a charity auction to dine with the Oracle of Omaha.