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The latest appearance of the relieving cavalry comes in the venerable form of legendary investor Warren Buffet (78) and his long time investment partner Charlie Munger (84).

Warren and Charlie run Berkshire Hathaway, a phenomenally successful investment company that is also one of the biggest players in US insurance.

Yesterday they announced a $5bn investment in Goldman Sachs, until recently arguably the most powerful financial institution on earth, but now blasted by the chilly winds that have wiped out most of Wall Street's investment banks.

Warren and Charlie have been less than flattering about Wall Street in recent months, Buffet some years ago describing derivatives (the packages dreamed up by investment banks to flog dodgy debt) as "financial weapons of mass destruction".

And he was right of course.

Charlie has also proferred his views on Wall Street, criticizing its "crazy culture of greed and overreaching".

This was back in the early 90s when Warren and Charlie helped to rescue Salomon Brothers, the investment bank described in Tom Wolfe's seminal novel Bonfire of the Vanities and the subject of Michael Lewis' rather better book Liar's Poker.

Salomon traders used to describe themselves as "big swinging dicks", rather as Goldmanites used to view themselves as "masters of the universe".

They're no longer that, of course, but Warren and Charlie can usually spot a bargain and they clearly see US financial stocks at near their bottom.

Their investment should help to stem the latest panic on Wall Street, caused by the delays to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's bill to buy $700bn of bad investments from US (and some other) banks.

Both the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress are demanding extra bits to the bill to channel direct aid to US homeowners and punish errant bankers.

Paulson says this can come later (actually he doesn't want it at all) but the bill will be agreed in the end, probably early next week.

In the meantime, and not wholly unconnected, the FBI has announced it is to investigate various market players to see if they have been guilty of misleading investors.

Quite clearly some of them have and a few unlucky souls can anticipate losing most of their money and spending quite a long time behind bars.

As former Telegraph owner Conrad Black discovered recently, America may be the home of freebooting capitalism but it can turn very nasty when people lose the voters' money.

French buy British Energy

Electricite De France, 84% owned by the French government, will announce later today that it's to buy British Energy, the nuclear power operator, for around £12.4bn.

The UK government owns 35% of British Energy, so this will be a nice windfall for Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling.

But it will stoke fears about the UK energy market which, since it was privatized, has been dominated by foreign companies that have cheerfully charged UK consumers eye-watering prices.

The only home-grown operator Centrica, which owns British Gas, has hardly been slow to whack up its prices either. But it will agree to take 25% of EDF's nuclear output (one of the problems with the energy market is that the operators have preferred to sell their gas to continental markets rather than the UK) and also take a 25% stake in all new nuclear plants built by EDF.

This will be dressed up as a UK stake in the power source that Business Secretary John Hutton has been saying is essential "unless we want the lights to go out."

EDF has been chosen because it has a good record of building nuclear plants in France, in stark contrast to the UK's home-grown efforts.

But, as fuel prices rise inexorably this winter, flogging off still more of the UK's energy sources to foreigners will become even more contentious.

The Government's handling of the energy supply market (a process begun by the Conservatives who declined to save a portion North Sea oil and gas revenues, as the Norwegians did with their resources) may go down as the biggest economic cock-up of the last 30 years.

Stock markets still on a knife-edge

European markets tried to rally this morning (Wednesday) following a more solid overnight performance in the Far East.

But there's no conviction in the buying and they could take another powder as traders close their positions on Friday.

The only thing that will stop the FTSE 100 dropping back below 5,000 is evidence of robust corporate earnings and some signs of recovery in the housing market.

New figures show that house sales and mortgage approvals touched all-time lows in August and, without a cut in interest rates by the Bank of England and some sort of government action, they're likely to rub along the bottom for some time to come.

PM Gordon Brown, fresh from a spirited performance at the Labour Party conference, greatly assisted by the rather excellent former PR woman Sarah Brown, is off to New York now to give his advice to the Americans.

They're certain to say, we're doing our bit to solve all these problems, what are you Brits going to do?

The Bank looks certain to cut rates in November (why not October?) but Brown knows he needs a big idea and, in case he's still dithering, the Americans will help him make up his mind.

So expect a big policy announcement (or leak) over the weekend.

Stephen Foster is a former news editor of ±±¾©Èü³µpk10, former editor of Marketing Week and Evening Standard ad columnist. He is a partner in Editorial Partnership and writes the blog and Politics of the Media for Brand Republic.