According to the AP, billionaire investor Warren Buffett told NBC that the U.S. is engaged in an "economic Pearl Harbor.".

Buffett also said that it never paid to bet against the against America. So, what did he mean?

Probably that Pearl Harbor was a catastrophe. But, it ushered in a period of four years of war. The US prevailed, but the cost was tremendous and there were no easy fixes. Pain and sacrifice were the currency for bringing the country back to a semblance of what it had been before the conflict began.

Buffett has made the comment before that the deleveraging of the broad credit markets would be a lengthy process and that part of the economy might struggle to survive in the process. He says he never believed that derivatives were safe and that banks that relied on them for earnings would eventually be faced with the balance sheet fiasco that has visited US financial firms over the last years.

Buffett had his own bad year in 2008. The return on his investments was not what his shareholders and the public have been accustomed to expecting. His comments about Pearl Harbor may also be a signal that he thinks even his own brilliance will be undercut. The breaking apart of the credit system may just be that bad.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Maybe my pessimism about the ratings for Olympics was premature.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "More viewers tuned in to watch the first two prime-time Olympics telecasts on General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE)'s NBC network than any summer Games in a decade -- even as the Games received record attention on the Internet."

My wife has offered a plausible theory about this performance: people are curious about China and are watching the Olympics because they can not afford other forms of entertainment because of high gas prices. I'm willing to give swimmer Michael Phelps his due as well. Plus, the only other sport competing for the viewer's attention is baseball. Pro football training camps are in full swing as well. The Olympics would be crushed if they occurred during football season or during "American Idol." Americans do have their priorities.

Friday's opening night ceremony attracted 34,2 million viewers, up 35% from the last summer games, according to the paper. I feel bad I missed it because it seems to have been very cool.

Keep in mind that General Electric still may face a tough slog in recouping its $894 million investment in the U.S. broadcast rights. Make goods, free commercial time, are still a possibility if the ratings go south.

The company's Olympic dreams, though, will do little to help the company's suffering shareholders which raises the question of why GE still owns NBC Universal.

Maybe a good Olympics will encourage Chief Executive Jeff Immelt to sell or spin-off the media business which is totally unrelated to the rest of the conglomerate.

NBC News President Steve Capus and his boss at the General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE)-owned network, Jeff Zucker, are thanking their lucky stars that Tom Brokaw will be the interim host of "Meet the Press" through the November election.

Brokaw, who was anchor of "NBC Nightly News" for more than two decades, agreed to take on more duties at the network after chatting over a beer with Capus aboard an Amtrak train traveling from Washington to New York following Tim Russert's memorial service, according to the Washington Post. The 68-year-old Brokaw later called Capus to volunteer to temporarily take over "Meet the Press," the paper said. It was a no-brainer for NBC to take Brokaw up on his offer.

"Meet the Press" is a cash-cow for NBC, attracting well-heeled viewers eager to learn about the doings in Washington. Advertisers likely pay premium rates for 30-second spots on the program because it is so prestigious. It needs a host to fill Russert's role who has both name recognition and a reputation as a non-partisan straight shooter. Brokaw fits the bill on both accounts.

In fact, the 68-year-old native of South Dakota is such a good fit for the program that the network probably wishes he would take the job permanently, even though Brokaw apparently would prefer to spend his Sundays clad in waders at his Montana ranch fishing for trout. Odds are fairly good that Brokaw's tenure will extend beyond the election because finding the right host is not going to be easy.

Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann of the MSNBC network are too partisan and grating to take over "Meet the Press." NBC's Andrea Mitchell and David Gregory are well-respected journalists but hardly household names. Look for them to try to land Katie Couric, whose future at the "CBS Evening News" is murky at best, or CNN's Wolf Blitzer or even Gwen Ifill of PBS.

General Electric's long-suffering shareholders are probably interested in the search as well. Any sale of NBC Universal would be easier knowing that one of its most visible shows is in good hands.

Like, his paymasters, the oil companies -- who contributed $2.7 million to his 2004 campaign -- George W. Bush is feeling sorry for himself. Perhaps his record low poll ratings are hurting his feelings. He went to Saudi Arabia and asked it to increase production. He went to the Middle East and asked them to make peace -- it's a nice sentiment but will results follow? But that's not why Bush is whining.

BusinessWeek reports that Bush's complaint is that he thinks General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) NBC News was unfair in the way it edited an interview. In the Israeli parliament, Bush gave a speech which none-too subtly implied that Barack Obama was like Nazi appeaser, Neville Chamberlain, because Obama has said he would meet with Iranian leaders. Bush thought he was being clever in his non-denial denial. Now he is complaining that NBC is being "deceitful."

That's rich coming from the person who got the U.S. into a war with Iraq based on false claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and ties to Al Qaeda. Is it the "Mission Accomplished" Bush or the "Heck-of-a-job-Brownie" Bush who's complaining about NBC News's "deceit?" Meanwhile -- as I posted here, here and here -- the oil companies have been whining because their earnings are down -- the price of oil has doubled and they have only been able to increase wholesale prices by 39%. Boo hoo!

So as you stand at the pump filling up your tank with $4 a gallon -- a surprise to Bush -- shed a tear for Bush and those poor, suffering oil companies.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns GE shares.

NBC, a division of General Electric (NYSE: GE), is under fire from John Hockenberry, a former correspondent for the news magazine Dateline NBC. In his lengthy rant in MIT's Technology Review, Hockenberry talks about how the network declined to do some heavy-duty reporting on al Qaeda, and instead sent him off to do feel-good stories about firefighters, a pattern of ignoring real news that he claims was routine at NBC.

Hockenberry tells the story of a video montage from Baghdad, showing pictures of real people who had been affected by bombs and war. The story never made it to the air, and he wonders if it was because the footage may have promoted an idea (war is bad) that conflicted with the message NBC was sending at the time.

He details several disappointments with NBC. Hockenberry says he and others worked on finding ways to enhance journalism with the help of the internet. NBC did not really act on any of the ideas, instead focusing on programming that got high ratings, such as the To Catch a Predator shows in which pedophiles are caught trolling the internet for new victims and meeting up with them in secret.

As Doug wrote this past Monday, NBC and Fox launched Hulu, where you can watch television series, shows and even feature-length films from the two networks. With Apple, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iTunes, Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) Unbox and Google, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube, is this launch even necessary? If so, why now?

Well, the television studios do not want to become irrelevant in the age of online video. Too late. There are certain generations who will watch television shows in front of the standard boob tube (the same demographic that seeks out physical newspapers instead of Google News), while other generations will, in the future, watch most of their video online. The Hulu venture is basically television transferred to the internet -- it will be free and ad-supported, just like traditional over-the-air television (sans cable or satellite). But when two competitors join hands to make it happen, red flags start going up. Is there single management of the content? What agenda is there?

And, should YouTube be worried? YouTube is nowhere close to being a broadcast television replacement, with its small-size and substandard video and mono audio. That doesn't mean the technical capability could not be there soon to leapfrog those current limitations and deliver a complete and entertaining experience that would engage each viewer. Google may already be working on this. Say it with me: YouTube 2.

In yet another sign of the decline of network television news, General Electric Co.'s (NYSE: GE) NBC dumped "Dateline" anchor Stone Phillips. He won't be the last high-priced talent to be shown the door.

As ratings continue to decline for news programs at NBC, Walt Disney Co.'s (NYSE: DIS) ABC and CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) profit pressures are intensifying as shareholders demand to see a return for the money being poured into these shows.

That's why Phillips won't be earning nearly as much at his next job as the $7 million USA Today says he earned at NBC. Odds are best that he'll wind up at News Corp's (NYSE: NWS) Fox News Channel, Time Warner Inc.'s (NYSE: TWX) or another cable network such as the Discovery Channel which is now home to former "Nightline" anchor Ted Koppel.

In the wake of Philips' departure, TV personalities up and down the dial are probably quaking in their designer clothes wondering whether they will be next. It's a well-founded fear.

Networks are less patient than ever.

If entertainment programs don't immediately catch on, they are gone after a handful of episodes. Ratings are just as important to news programs. Though nightly news programs have been in decline for years, they still make good money for the networks.

Ratings points translate into advertising sales which translates eventually into profits. No TV star is immune from fiscal realities.

That's why Philips got pushed out the door. "Dateline" has morphed into a program dedicated to catching pathetic sex offenders. His services as a newsman were no longer needed.