It's always nice to have a few billion in spare change lying around. Just when everything looked like it was going down the chute, Warren Buffett comes in and inject up to $10 billion in Goldman Sachs. Mind you, it's not exactly a quick fix. He is just putting up a lazy $5 billion to save the bank, and he has the option to pay another $5 billion over the next five years. He is also in effect telling Berkshire Hathaway investors, and for that matter the broader market, that the world is not about to end.

And investors loved it, with US index futures and European stocks rising. Mind you, that was after Monday and Tuesday's horror sessions which produced the steepest two day fall in the sharemarket since 2002. That eclipsed last week's effort which is really saying something.

There's two ways of looking at this. One is that Buffett could see how dire the financial crisis was and he knew had to intervene. The second is that he is actually picking up a big slice of the most profitable investment bank for dirt cheap and he'll get his money back in spades.