Inflation in China is very high. It’s hard to figure how that will benefit us, but on a list of things that come under the rubric “grim satisfaction,” the continual travails of that sleeping giant always register. Bad air. Bad water. Poison in the children’s toothpaste they export. Dead dogs worldwide due to crud in the pet food they offer the world. The explosion of their chief internet provider built almost wholly on illegally purloined music from American labels… so while more rain on their parade is not really good news — particularly since it probably just hurts innocent civilians over there, it’s a laugh riot compared to the rest of the crop this morning. 

Credit Suisse, which today fired a bunch of their traders who misplayed some aspect of the mortgage crisis or other, leading to a modest, single-digit billion problem that will have to be managed this quarter. That’s sort of good news for UBS, which looked really deficient recently when it took a nearly $15-billion writedown. Perhaps they’re high-fiving each other over there.

Wal-Mart beat the Street’s expectations. Of course, at the same time they cautioned that ‘08 might not be the engine for growth that people might want it to be. Earnings came in at $1.04 per share for the fourth quarter and their stock lost four cents. Yeah, yeah, it’s rational.

The head of MBIA is out, replaced with a guy who thought he had retired. That’s always a good sign, except for the fact that people who come out of retirement are generally not as adept at bailout out the rowboat as they used to be. Still, a change will do them good, right? Or the illusion of change, which in our world is almost the same thing.

Let’s see… we’re getting down to some pretty slim pickins for those looking for a lift. Most people are not prepared for retirement, according to one study. That’s not good, especially for Gen-Xers looking to take over anytime soon. Even that new head of MBIA is 59. Where’s the new blood? Oh, I remember. In charge of risk management at the banks. Perhaps the world news offers more hope for the terminally optimistic?

Heidi Klum has offered to let Britney live in her house for a while, to help the ailing victim of celebrity back on her feet. That’s nice.

Bono was seen holding hands with Penelope Cruz in San Tropez. That’s like finding out that Al Gore drives a Cadillac Escalade.

And Castro resigned. That’s got to be good for somebody.

As we used to say, without irony: Have a nice day, everybody.

On Tuesday, Warren Buffett declared that he has offered to assume liability for insurance on the municipal bonds that three major bond insurers now cover, to the tune of $800 billion.

The good news is that one firm has already rejected the offer, Buffett says. So it must feel it’s okay without the help of Berkshire Hathaway. I guess that’s not altogether a bad thing, huh? I mean, I’m not totally sure that I’ll be all right without the help of Berkshire Hathaway.

I own some bonds. Until recently, I thought they were completely safe. The idea that the insurance companies that cover them could fail never occurred to me. When everybody started talking about that possibility, I don’t mind telling you I felt a certain amount of unease. The phrase “wake up screaming” comes to mind.

Now here comes Warren Buffett to save the day, offering to prop up the situation not just with financial power, but with the one thing that we all need right now: confidence that there’s somebody running the store who just might know what’s going on and is prepared to put his money where his mouth is.

I get a kick out of Bono jumping in to ameliorate third world debt. I get goose pimply when I hear all the philanthropic stuff coming out of Davos. But this kind of thing really floats my debentures.

You have to look more than a hundred years back to find an act of comparable magnitude, I think. It was 1895. There was a panic in the markets. The U.S. Treasury was out of gold to back our currency. And J.P. Morgan stepped in to prop up the entire monetary system of the United States with his own capital and a bunch of money from abroad.

Every now and then we get to a place where certain individuals are doing better than the nation-states they live in.  It’s rare when one of them offers to fulfill a quasi-governmental role to re-establish confidence in the system that produced all that value for them.

So thanks, Mr. Buffett. Not just for the willingness to secure $800,000,000,000 in liability. There is that, of course. But also for giving us the feeling that there is a man behind the curtain, and that someday, some way, he’s going to make sure everything’s gonna be all right.