Warren Buffett

"I'd Rather Be Approximately Right, than Precisely Wrong."

- commenting on the planned taxpayer bailout of Wall Street.

Good point, Warren.

The worst housing slump since the Great Depression has resulted in record mortgage defaults in the U.S. and a yearlong contraction in global credit markets, driving down stock prices and sending firms like GE and Goldman in search of funds. For Buffett, who had $44.3 billion in cash at the start of the year, it's also been a call to action.

``The prices make a lot more sense now,'' Buffett said in an interview from San Diego with PBS's Charlie Rose yesterday in which he described the economy as being ``flat on the floor'' with cardiac arrest. ``You want to be greedy when others are fearful and you want to be fearful when others are greedy.''

As home foreclosures climbed across the U.S., Buffett spent at least $28 billion this year to acquire companies, finance buyouts and purchase securities for Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire. Buffett is Berkshire's chairman.

``In my adult lifetime, I don't think I've ever seen people as fearful, economically, as they are right now,'' Buffett, 78, told Rose. ``They are not wrong to be worried.''

And so it goes...

- M&G