When Rudolph Giuliani became mayor of New York City in the 1990s, one of the first things he did was clear Times Square of its vice trade. Will Warren Buffett do the same at Goldman Sachs Group?

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Buffett has agreed to invest $5 billion in the New York investment bank. Goldman, of course, doesn�t own any businesses of ill-repute�unless, that is, you count its private-equity arm, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, whose latest fund is roughly $20 billion. And according to Buffett, private-equity funds may actually be worse than any peep-show booth.

�You can sell it to Berkshire, and we�ll put it in the Metropolitan Museum; it�ll have a wing all by itself; it�ll be there forever,� Buffett said in February, perhaps a little frustrated with competing against LBO shops for investing opportunities. �Or you can sell it to some porn shop operator, and he�ll take the painting and he�ll make the b�- a little bigger and he�ll stick it up in the window, and some other guy will come along in a raincoat, and he�ll buy it.�

Goldman Sachs, home of Buffett�s favorite banker, is, of course, delighted that Buffett overcame such scruples to make his investment. The bank crowed in a news release Tuesday that Buffett was �arguably the world�s most admired and successful investor.� Just as important, he was available. As Deal Journal noted Tuesday, banks are going to have to rush for capital infusions. Many private-equity firms are gearing up, but so far sovereign-wealth funds appear to be sitting on the sidelines. Morgan Stanley sought its solution in the arms of a foreign bank, Japan�s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial.

Oh, that �arguably� in Goldman�s statement may give others pause, but it may well be in the spirit of affectionate tweaking between Goldman and Buffett. The Oracle of Omaha has often praised his favorite Goldman Sachs banker, Byron Trott, with backhanded slaps at Trott�s profession. �Byron�understands Berkshire far better than any investment banker with whom we have talked and�it hurts me to say this�earns his fee,� Buffett said in his 2003 investor letter. �Byron is the rare investment banker who puts himself in his client�s shoes,� Buffett said this year.

Buffett�s scorn for Wall Street was hard-won during his time at the helm of scandal-plagued Salomon Brothers in the early 1990s. Buffett, expecting a quick cleanup job, brought his Midwestern sensibility to the firm, which was then struggling not to appear ethically challenged. �Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless,� he warned the freewheeling, sharp-elbowed traders and bankers. Just when he thought his job was done, Buffett would have to whack the next mole: a massively mistaken trading order or a disgruntled former executive. Buffett�s final indictment of his Solly experience: �far from fun.�

It seems Buffett�s investment in Goldman is another case of Wall Street being eager to join any club that won�t have investment bankers as members. Ken Lewis, chief executive of Bank of America, also once scorned investment bankers. With his acquisition of Merrill Lynch, he now employs thousands more of them.