Poor choice of words

A "financial Pearl Harbor"?
Really, Warren Buffett?
While the financial crisis in the United States has already shown what it can do to the investment banks and how its effects are resonating with investors, is it really fair or prudent to call this a "financial Pearl Harbor"?
Let's examine:

• If he means to suggest we could have seen it coming and should have done something more to prevent it or at least mitigate the damages, I'd say he's right.
• If he means to suggest that it was precipitated by actions by the United States or US agents, he might be right.
• If he means to suggest it will draw us into a larger conflict, I don't follow.
• If he means to suggest the Japanese are behind our economic failings, I say he's still living in Ronald Reagan's America.

Is this a warning from Buffett? Is the current economic situation just the start of something even bigger? That's what his allusion would suggest. While a federal bailout of numerous US financial institutions constitutes a sea change in US policy, I don't know if it is historically analogous to the attack on Pearl Harbor.