Folksy set was on the highest burner possible at Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women’s conference this morning, as legendary financial investor Warren Buffett took to the stage.

Buffett, who was interviewed by Fortune’s terrific Carol Loomis onstage in Carlsbad, Calif., held forth to the crowd–made up mostly of women–having instructed Loomis previously to “do anything with me…I like your crowd.”

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It’s hard to know what to think of the economy’s direction, even if you are trying to glean some knowledge from those whom you imagine might know a thing or two about it.

Indeed, if you listened to a variety of tech and media execs talk about what its status is of late, it’s a wonder we can get out of the woods, since no one knows exactly where we are in them.

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When Time Warner reports its second -quarter earnings tomorrow morning, before the markets open, most Wall Street analysts are not expecting much from the media giant, as it continues to slog toward a rejiggering of itself.

Time Warner–which owns assets like the Warner Bros. movie studio, the AOL online unit, the HBO and Turner cable networks and Time Inc. magazines–is expected to earn 37 cents per share, compared to 72 cents a year ago, according to a poll of analysts from Thomson Reuters.

Revenue is expected to be $6.97 billion, down from $11.56 billion in the same quarter last year. This drop is mostly due to the March spinoff of its cable unit, Time Warner Cable.

But AOL and its magazine unit are expected to continue to drag on Time Warner’s financial performance.

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Last night, BoomTown went to a lovely party thrown by David Hornik, the August Capital VC who also runs The Lobby conference in his spare time.

He threw the event because those who attend the annual invitation-only gathering in Hawaii wanted to get together again during the year in Silicon Valley for even more schmoozing.

I went to the first Lobby in the fall of 2007, so Hornik let me in to have some pizza and beer at August’s offices on Sand Hill Road and use my Flip video to ask those in attendance where they thought the digital sector was in terms of the economy and innovation.

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Next up on the seventh D: All Things Digital conference program was an onstage interview that Walt Mossberg did with AT&T Chairman, CEO and President Randall Stephenson.

Stephenson was queried about a lot of topics, including the status of the Apple iPhone deal, the company’s network glitches, the economy and competitors like the new Pre from Palm, and more.

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BoomTown went down to Silicon Valley’s most exclusive country club–also known as Stanford University–where Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took to the stage for a talk at Memorial Auditorium for the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar.

Ballmer–who went to and then dropped out of Stanford Business School for a job at the fledgling Microsoft–was in an ebullient mood and even joked about problems with the Windows Vista operating system.

Party on, Steve!

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A major Yahoo investor yesterday told me that he liked what he saw so far from new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, but he was wary.

“I like the sizzle,” he said, referring to Bartz’s decisive take-no-prisoners style. “But I am still waiting to see if steak is there too.”

Well, Bartz sizzled at its first-quarter earnings conference call today, tossing off some ribald words as she also handed over some tough news to chew on, announcing Yahoo’s much-expected weak first-quarter results. The company also said it would cut five percent of its staff of 13,600, which is close to 700 employees.

BoomTown liveblogged the call with Bartz, who noted about Yahoo: “The most important takeaway was the importance of having a ‘Wow!’ experience.”

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Last week, the economy took a much needed breather from its toilet-circling behavior of late, with the stock market showing gains for several days running.

Who knows what today will bring, given all the volatility, but most of the big consumer-focused digital companies saw solid upticks over the last five days.

You could also feel the revelry at the South by Southwest gathering that started this weekend in Austin, Texas, with lots of Web 2.0 partying and discussions of a Twitterific-Facebooktastic future.

Maybe happy days are here again? Um, nope.

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I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name/It felt good to be out of the rain/In the desert you can remember your name/’cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.

Actually, for Yahoo, which is holding its big annual meeting of the company’s advertising sales staff in Indian Wells, Calif., maybe just a little pain since BoomTown is only a scant few miles away, as the crow flies, attending the Demo09 conference in Palm Desert.

The Yahoofest will include an appearance by its energetic new CEO, Carol Bartz.

Don’t worry, Yahoo PR, I will not crash the proceedings or be bribing the bartenders to get more leaks. But you Yahoos should still be careful with the wine in the hot tub anyway–as Carol says, loose lips sink ships!

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Here’s a chart from a not-entirely-unexpected story in The Wall Street Journal today chronicling how the “deepening recession is speeding up the shakeout in Silicon Valley, forcing droves of start-ups to shut down or sell themselves at fire-sale prices.”

You knew that was coming, didn’t you?

And here is a not-so-lovely pair of charts to show you why.

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made an appearance at the three-day U.S. House of Representatives Democratic Caucus Retreat today to talk about innovation and, let’s be real, the very bad economy and the impact on businesses like the tech giant.

The confab has already seen an appearance by President Barack Obama yesterday and one by Vice President Joe Biden this morning. Ballmer got the lunch spot today.

Ballmer’s message was a bummer, appropriately: “In my view, what we now have will be a fundamental economic reset.”

Here’s his whole speech.

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Time Warner online unit AOL is cutting 700 employees due to the weak economy and the ensuing falloff in advertising revenue, but also because of recent structural changes made to refocus the once-mighty service.

AOL CEO Randy Falco sent a memo this afternoon to AOL staff about the layoffs and other cost cuts being made, confirming the moves.

Other changes: Goodbye to raises and a hello to a consolidation of AOL’s facilities.

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Yesterday, TechCrunch’s U.K. blogger Mike Butcher spun the tale of buyer’s remorse run amok with a report that Time Warner online unit AOL was “seriously considering selling Bebo, the social network it acquired for $850 million only a year ago,” citing poor performance and a bad advertising market.

Later, AOL went on the record saying “there is no truth to this rumor,” although Butcher insisted otherwise from his sources.

Well, actually, no. While Time Warner was crazy to pay that much for Bebo, it is not quite that nuts to sell it for bupkis.

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Oh, a nice tiny surprise from Yahoo, as it reported its fourth-quarter results, which came in at 17 cents a share in adjusted earnings, compared to the 12 to 13 cents Wall Street was expecting.

“Despite the challenging economic environment, Yahoo! delivered adjusted operating cash flow above the midpoint of guidance for the fourth quarter,” said new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz in the company’s official release.

But let’s experience Bartz Live and Unplugged at the fourth-quarter earnings call, including a Q&A in which–the company noted at the top of the call–former Yahoo CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang might make an unexpected cameo appearance.

(He didn’t.)

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Earlier today Microsoft decided it would drop the bomb early by moving its second-quarter earnings conference call to 8 a.m. PST instead of 2:30 p.m. PST.

BoomTown, naturally, had to liveblog the Microsoft event, in which its execs tried mightily to put lipstick on a very ugly pig. It was a good effort, at least.

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