Goldman Sachs’ remarkable comeback from the brink of financial Armageddon is adding luster to Warren Buffett’s investment street cred — and more importantly, lining the billionaire investor’s outsize pockets.

Buffett’s $5 billion investment in Goldman is yielding a paper return of more than $2.5 billion for his investment firm Berkshire Hathaway, which last September extended a billion-dollar lifeline to Goldman after Lehman Brothers collapsed.

Back then, as the credit crisis was roiling Wall Street, Goldman was among a handful of big-name Wall Street firms feared to be on the verge of suffering a fate similar to that of the now-defunct Bear Stearns and Lehman. That made Buffett’s investment all the more risky.

Both Goldman and rival Morgan Stanley sought protection from market turmoil by taking the unprecedented move of converting into bank holding companies at the peak of the market’s hand-wringing.

However, during the first half of the year, Lloyd Blankfein’s Goldman has so far emerged as one of Wall Street’s biggest winners, making Buffett look like a genius.

Goldman last week reported a 33 percent jump in second-quarter earnings to $2.7 billion on the back of the firm’s fixed-income trading.

Buffett’s Goldman investment sees him owning roughly 43 million warrants to purchase Goldman’s stock at the strike price of $115 a share.

Factoring the difference in the strike price at which Buffett’s options might be converted, given Goldman’s closing price of $165.45 yesterday and the 10 percent dividend on the preferred shares, Buffet’s investment is worth some $2.6 billion.