The market still works!
With all due respect to Buffett, nobody has yet made a compelling case to me that there is, in fact, a crisis that extends much beyond overleveraged banks with bad business practices. There's a simple fact lost among all of this fearmongering and jawboning about how bad things could get if the government doesn't throw $700 billion (or more) at failing financial institutions. The stock and vulture-capital markets are still generally working, in spite of the cries from politicians and failing speculators to the contrary.

The market also has a really good mechanism to help struggling financial companies get money. It's called "price," and it's still functioning. You can see it in action by looking at the one-year CD rates that various banks are offering to entice people to deposit money with them.

When the people lobbying the hardest for a bailout are those who stand to benefit from it, you have to ask whether their motives are altruistic or self-serving.

I was beginning to wonder if anyone was going to pick up on the fact that this was a good investment for Buffitt.