Before recession can turn to recovery someone needs to make a big bet and name the new game.
It just happened.
In what may be the climactic move of his long business career Warren Buffett has bet $44 billion on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad and named the new game.
Efficiency.
Efficiency is what I like to call the low-hanging fruit of the War Against Oil.
Most attention here goes to energy production, to solar cells, wind farms and tidal engines. But you get exactly the same bottom-line impact from saving a barrel of oil as from replacing it with wind.
Buffett spent 10 days on this deal, speeding the transition of Berkshire-Hathaway from a mutual fund dependent on its CEO into a conglomerate whose unit managers drive the stock price.
The question a lot of people will be asking, however, is what a 19th century business can possibly teach the 21st century?
A great deal.
It's true this deal has something to say about Berkshire as well as Burlington. Buffett is not just making his company a conglomerate, but one that sells stock at popular prices.
But the smart takeaway here is the new economic game, and the gains we can all generate, on our own bottom lines, by getting more efficient. A penny saved is truly a penny earned.
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com