Much of the fun of observing the friendship between Warren Buffett and Bill Gates is derived from the fact that they are such unlikely comrades. In Gates, you have the 54-year-old quintessential tech geek billionaire. And in Buffett, the revered 79-year-old homespun, value-investor billionaire. What could they possibly have in common?

Oh yeah, billions. Together, the two are worth a combined $100 billion, an announcer pointed out during an event in New York Thursday organized to let future business leaders -- MBA students at Columbia University -- ask questions of the fabled capitalists.

Comedian Carol Leifer has spent decades in comedy, writing for Seinfeld (she contributed to 75 episodes, including writing the famous "Marble Rye" episode), The Larry Sanders Show, Saturday Night Live and, of course, her own stand-up comedy shows. This year she wrote her first book, a memoir called, When You Lie About Your Age: The Terrorists Win.

It's a fun read and Leifer has a light touch with weighty topics like aging, religion and relationships. However, she doesn't write much about money and investing. So I followed up with a few questions:

Q: What is the biggest money mistake you ever made?

A: When I invested in the Pocket Bass Fisherman.

Q: What is the smartest money move you ever made?

This is just one of the Innovative Ways to Stimulate the Economy suggested by DailyFinance contributors.

Want to create more jobs and get millions of people who avoid taxes now to start paying into federal and state coffers? How about reforming the so-called nanny tax?

The tax laws around hiring childcare workers are notoriously difficult to comply with and easy to flout. Reforming them would be one small step toward stimulating the economy, but a giant step for household workers and the busy families that can afford to hire them, but find the maze of required paperwork too daunting.

Welcome to DailyFinance, a new web site offering business and financial news and analysis. Our goal is to combine the immediacy and conversational tone of blogs with the serious reporting and financial expertise of traditional journalism, and to serve it up with the best in online data and investing tools.

Our goals are ambitious, but we're starting today in beta with a simple blog format. We're still assembling our team of top-notch journalists and financial experts, and integrating a new set of calculators and tools. DailyFinance is part of the AOL Money & Finance family of sites and readers of our sister sites, BloggingStocks and WalletPop, will recognize some of our writers.