I wish I had been invited the other day to Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, the baroque pile of Lord Rothschild. The lure was not the chance to meet Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, or even Arnold Schwarzenegger and other sundry tycoons. The real coup for Lord Rothschild was that he had Warren Buffett as a house guest and co-host.
The chance to meet the billionaire American investor would have most financial hacks drooling. In the pantheon of business figures, the "Sage of Omaha" dwarfs everyone. It's not so much his $36bn fortune, second only to that of Microsoft's Bill Gates. It's the modest, unfancy manner in which he has accumulated all that loot that intrigues us.
The ukulele-playing, cheeseburger-munching Buffett shuns Wall Street, plays the straightest of bats and follows the simplest of investment philosophies: buy shares in companies you like and understand, then just sit on them for a long time.
Only one journalist made it into the inner sanctum. Anatole Kaletsky of the Times, in a beautifully written piece, described how he had never before seen such rich and powerful people enjoying themselves so thoroughly as they confessed despondency, helplessness and fear about the outlook for world peace and prosperity. It "made me think of Boccaccio's sybarites, eating sweetmeats on their hilltop outside Florence, as plague ravaged the world outside".
On the wrong side of the Waddesdon gates, we envious, plague-ridden, lesser hacks could only grit our teeth and take comfort from Anatole's repeated failure to spell his co-host's name right. (Perhaps it was all those gourmet meals that persuaded him to call him Mr Buffet.)
Eventually, I did speak to the great man, though like everyone else, I had to promise to plug one of his pet companies as a condition of getting my phone interview.
Yes, he still believes in share market investment for the long term. No, he doesn't yet think the worst is over. Yes, some business leaders had behaved very badly in the recent spate of corporate scandals. They should and would be going to jail, but this was useful in "cleansing the system".
Buffett is one of the few business leaders whose reputation has remained unblemished by the unravelling of so much of corporate America. He has long been a towering figure. What other plutocrat has made so much money without bringing upon himself both opprobrium and envy? Buffett's only sins seem to be a nauseating appetite for Coca-Cola (he owns a big chunk of the company) and a very un-Nebraskan menage a trois with his wife and mistress.
Today, he is the leader without parallel. Clay feet are being discovered in boardroom after boardroom. While Buffett, 72, prospers, capitalism still has at least one hero.
Affordability. It's a horrible word and a horrible idea. But it underpins the thinking of the banks and the bond markets as they lavish ever bigger loans on both people and companies. Household debt alone is at a record £800bn and still mushrooming, according to the latest figures. The theory is that borrowers can afford much bigger debts than in the past because interest rates are low. Mortgage lenders now offer loans of up to five or six times a borrower's income, compared with a maximum of three times in the past. Credit card companies happily extend thousands of pounds in perpetuity to strangers. Companies cheerfully gear up to take advantage of money at its cheapest for 30 years.
In the boardrooms of the banks, borrowers are regarded rather like useful pack animals, now able to take on much bigger loads of debt than in the past.
There are two dangers for lender and borrower. One - well documented - is that circumstances change for the borrower. Home-owners lose their jobs. Companies lose their customers. Interest bills then become harder to pay.
The other - less well understood - is that the principal never goes away. We've grown used to inflation eroding debts away to nothing. With inflation below 2 per cent, that no longer happens.
The banks have shown themselves congenitally incapable of lending responsibly.
That's partly the way they account for loans and partly the way their staff are rewarded. The important thing - for reported profits and immediate staff bonuses - is making the loans. Choosing borrowers who will actually be able pay the money back is less of a concern.
With the downturn, there will be tears for individual borrowers and banks. But the macro implications are equally alarming.
Cheap money and the growth in consumer lending are the only things that keep the economy going. At some point, the ass's knees will buckle.
