Warren Buffett to the rescue

Warren Buffett warned us about a “financial crisis like the one currently engulfing Wall Street,” said Ben Steverman in BusinessWeek online. Now that it’s here, the investment guru is profiting by pumping billions into GE and Goldman Sachs, two companies “near the eye of the financial storm.” Buffett’s confidence should ease the panic, but it won’t be enough to “stem the crisis.”

No, but there is another way Buffett could lead us out of the darkness, said Richard Beales in Slate. Let him run the $700 billion rescue. Sure, the “legendary” investor and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway “certainly has more rewarding things to do.” But it’s hard to think of anyone better equipped to manage a giant pot of taxpayer money without going power mad, or bending to political interference.

While Washington is at it, said the Toronto Globe and Mail in an editorial, it should put Buffett in charge of all the government’s “emergency economic stabilization” efforts. One reason the nation is seized with fear is that few people understand how bad things are, and how the government can help. “Buffett, with his genius for explaining and persuading, could rally both the financial and political worlds and the American people.”

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