Except for the chosen ones -- CEOs and the like who have outrageous salary and benefit packages -- almost nobody has been able to escape the financial pain in the world today.

'My pal Warren,' Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A and BRK.B), who only draws a $100,000 salary, has watched his net worth diminished by billions of dollars as his stock has unraveled like everything else. I last read Buffett had a 31% stake in Berkshire so he understands his shareholders angst, even if he does not feel their pain. The stock has dropped from a 52-week high of $151,650 to yesterday's close of $77,500 for a loss of 49%.

Once again in quarterly SEC filings Berkshire's holdings were released and I could not help but wonder if this great holding company had not become one more giant index fund. There are a lot of quality names in the mix including:

• Burlington Northern Santa Fe (NYSE: BNI)
• Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO)
• ConocoPhillips (NYSE; COP)
• Johnson and Johnson (NYSE: JNJ)
• Kraft Foods'A' (: NYSE: KFT)
• Procter and Gamble (NYSE: PG)
• U.S. Bancorp (: NYSE: USB)
• Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC)

The above referenced stocks are all down with the market and there are still more that might be considered fallen angels or turn-around plays within Berkshire's holdings that include:

• American Express (NYSE: AXP)
• General Electric (NYSE: GE)
• Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS)
• Home Depot (NYSE: HD)
• Lowe's Cos (NYSE: LOW)

In addition to these publicly traded stocks Berkshire holdings include privately held Geico Insurance, See's Candies, Dairy Queen, Florsheim Shoes, and a multitude of others. Since so many stocks have been accumulated over the years I started to view BRK as a stock index and with that in mind did some comparisons between the Standard & Poors 500 and BRK.

The following is a three-year chart that illustrates that buying BRK instead of the index anytime in the last three years would have been beneficial by a 30% margin.

I'm looking at my screen and I rub my eyes. Could it be? On the left-hand column I read a headline, "Slowing Economy Spurs Bond Rally." Over there in the side bar is the cute box that shows the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500. The chart spikes peppily. "11610.55" is the bright number next to DJIA. "1330.60" reads the S&P 500 -- its five-year high. [Update: at market close, the S&P 500 had hit a brand-new five-year high of 1336.34, with the DJIA at its 2006 high and second-highest close ever, 16669.39.] The world is full of bright, happy green that seems to belie the sad economic data, the slow in advertising, the doom for American autos.

Could it be true?

It seems as if it is. One one side we have the DJIA and the S&P 500. The Dow's all-time high is 11,750 (140 90-ish points away), while the all-time closing high is only 11,722 (that's 111.45 52.61 points away from right now, if you're counting along with me). The S&P is raring to go, as well, creeping ever so slowly up towards its all-time high of 1,552 (although it's still 222 215 points away, 16.6% 16.1%). Strikingly, the current level is higher than the index has been for five-and-a-half years.

And yet, still, economy slumps, slows, dips, weakens. Why are consumers so confident, why are investors eagerly buying up stocks, while the rest of the indicators seem to warn them away? I've searched my brain for a creative answer, and can't discover one. What do you think?