Buffett is all about fundamentals. He's not always right, but he's pretty much always the most dispassionate. Kind of like the Moneyball of financiers. What he's saying there is that bad times show who is playing the game with a strategy and who is playing it recklessly. Unfortunately, the man in charge of our entire economy is one of the most reckless, undisciplined people in the history of the modern financial world. But that doesn't change Buffett's point. And it explains a lot of why he has so much cash right now.