Warren Buffett draws record crowd amid credit crisis

A record 31,000 trekked to Omaha over the weekend to attend Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s annual meeting and hear Warren Buffett's take on the financial crisis.

"The idea of financial panic -- that has been pretty much taken care of," Buffett said, crediting the Federal Reserve's move to bail out Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) by orchestrating its sale to J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) as stemming a run on other investment banks.

During more than five hours of questions from shareholders, Berkshire Vice Chairman Charles Munger criticized some of the financial "innovation" that led to today's financial crisis.

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"Some stupid things were done," Munger said "Alan Greenspan overdosed a little on Ayn Rand" in his enthusiasm to trust the marketplace.

"Even if it was an ax murderer, it was a positive development," Munger said.

The engineers of recent financial innovation, he said, make the Internet moguls of the dot-com bubble years look smart.

"I wish we had those brilliant people back that gave us Webvan," Munger said.

The annual meeting May 3 drew a crowd shortly after sunrise to see performance artist Michael Israel paint a portrait of Warren Buffett, with the company's Benjamin Moore paints, of course. The main event started at 8:30 with a one-hour movie in which Munger quickly rejected Buffett's idea to invest in Internet stocks.

An interesting premise, given that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Yahoo President Susan Decker spent the day together in the seating area for Berkshire directors. (Later that day, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) dropped its pursuit of Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) when the two companies could not agree on price.)

The company's annual meeting included an exhibit area for many of Berkshire's corporate interests. Mars and Wrigley (NYSE: WWY) held a prominent location, offering free gum, candy bars and M&M's featuring a likeness of Buffett. Berkshire is helping to finance Mars' $23 billion purchase of the Chicago gum maker.

The exhibition underscored Berkshire Hathaway's (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B) diverse corporate interests. Dairy Queen was hawking Dilly Bars for a buck for charity, while other exhibitors pitched World Book encyclopedias, Shaw carpeting and NetJets' private planes.

Buffett's ties to the San Francisco Bay Area include ownership of See's Candies in South San Francisco and press-release distributor BusinessWire in San Francisco. He also holds a 9.2 percent stake in Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC). Buffett added to Berkshire's stake in the San Francisco bank over the past year.

Asked to expand on his outlook for the stock market, Buffett replied, "I'd like to expand but I couldn't answer. It's just not our game."