I once had an argument with an Obamunst pre-election who claimed Obama could fix the economy because “unlike that moron Bush” Obama was smart enough to listen to Warren Buffet. I said Warren Buffet can’t stop the deleveraging of the Credit Derivative Markets (which may literally be financial Armageddon) nor could he or anyone fight the markets. You simply cannot artificially avoid the busts that follow booms without creating larger busts and you can’t, as Peter Shiff has argued, have a credit driven society where the government makes policies (like farm subsidies) that decrease the incentive to produce actual wealth.

At which point he called me a Fascist and said America will be just fine after Obama wins the election. This one’s for you:

Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) — Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. fell the most in at least 23 years, dropping for the eighth straight day since reporting a 77 percent decline in third- quarter profit.

The stock plunged $11,550, or 12 percent, to $84,000 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading and has slipped 41 percent this year, compared with the 45 percent drop in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. Berkshire, based in Omaha, Nebraska, rose in 17 of the past 20 years.

“There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with Berkshire, what’s really happening is people are wondering if there’s something fundamentally wrong with the economy, and Berkshire is in some ways a bit of a proxy for that,” said Michael Yoshikami, president of YCMNet Advisors in Walnut Creek, California, which manages $850 million including Berkshire shares.

Berkshire has posted four straight profit declines, the worst streak in at least 13 years, on falling returns at insurance businesses and investment losses. Buffett, ranked by Forbes magazine as the richest American, has committed at least $28 billion this year to acquire companies, finance buyouts and purchase securities as prices fell and competitors were hobbled by limited access to credit.

Berkshire’s shareholder equity, a measure of assets minus liabilities, fell by about $9 billion in October on declines in debt and equity markets, the firm said Nov. 7. American Express Co., the credit-card company that is one of Berkshire’s top 10 stock holdings, plunged 47 percent since Sept. 30 as borrower defaults increased. Wells Fargo & Co., Berkshire’s No. 2 investment, dropped about 35 percent.

So Warren Buffet may not be smarter than any other high profile investor, you know, the ones who helped drive a policy of replacing actual wealth with credit. Who would have thought?