Can the longest and most speculative bull market since the 1920s truly come to an end without its patron saint being knocked from his pedestal, at least a bit? Probably not. And this week the Oracle spoke.

The stage was set at a hearing in lower Manhattan, where Warren Buffett was called to testify about his huge investment in Moody’s, the credit ratings agency that is one-third of the ratings cartel that also includes Standard & Poor’s and Fitch. Although Moody’s deigns to give only five blue chip US corporations its coveted triple-A rating, and even took it away from Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway last year, Moody’s saw fit to bestow this blessing on more than 4000 packages of junky mortgage securities in recent years, providing full cover for the investment firms buying the toxic paper.

One would think such behavior would have the noble Buffett up in arms, but instead he had to be dragged into the hearing by subpoena. Once he began talking, it was clear why. Buffett was in full denial mode, weaving a tall tale about the nature of the housing crisis. In fact, he sounded positively Alan Greenspan-esque. “I think [Moody’s] made a mistake everyone in the country made,” said Buffett, who would clearly rather have been sipping a Cherry Coke back in Omaha. “I’m not inclined to come down on someone who made a mistake that 300 million Americans made.”

Oh really? Isn’t mistake-avoidance exactly what the ratings agencies are paid to provide? And didn’t they have access to reams of information about these toxic mortgage packages that no average American ever saw? Buffett told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that no one, save for hedge fund investors Michael Burry and John Paulson, could have seen the housing bust coming. Not true. Dozens of prominent economists on Wall Street and in academia warned of the coming doom, including Steve Roach of Morgan Stanley, Nouriel Roubini of NYU and Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates, to name a few.

Commentators chalked up Buffett’s strange performance to an inclination to “talk up his book,” that is, to stand behind a company in which he has a big financial stake. But since when has Ol’ Warren been so touchy-feely with the management of a losing investment for him?

Kraft’s CEO Irene Rosenfeld certainly didn’t get the kind of wet kiss from Warren that Moody’s CEO Ray McDaniel did the other day when she pursued a takeover of Cadbury against Buffett’s advice.

No, something else was going on at that hearing. It’s called reputation protection and if it were a derivative Buffett would be buying lots of it. The question that wasn’t asked on Wednesday that still hangs out there today is not whether 300 million Americans missed the housing bubble, but why the man who is the world’s greatest investor not only missed it, but increasingly tied the fortunes of his company, Berkshire Hathaway, to the “American Dream.”

In addition to Moody’s, the Berkshire portfolio of companies are highly correlated to housing, including such brands as Benjamin Moore paint, Shaw carpet and Clayton homes. Like Greenspan, Buffett missed the signs of a bubble and is now trying to tell the world that virtually no one could have seen it coming. What a shame. No wonder Buffett didn’t want to testify.

Yes, the Oracle, like the Maestro, made a mistake. A big one, at that. But rather than using his great mind to delve into the causes of the collapse and the ratings agencies’ role in the mess, Buffett, like Greenspan, chose to stick his head in the sand.

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