Under all that frosting and decoration, the flesh of American popular history, is a bitter and salty cake, for if monies are the ultimate expression of capitalism, are not those that clutch the largest fistfuls, the gods of its construct.

And as long as we affix $$$ to every component of this world, in order to jot it down in the book of ownership, our tale of woe for profit, the only way we can gage our endeavors, will continue.

Skippy…seems the pain train lost its breaks down a large hill again. Biblical Gluttony pure and simple.

I agree that Taibbi took the right approach here, put out an article with the allegations (which are all very likely true as far as I can tell), without necessarily having the rock-solid evidence to back them up at this point, just to at least try to wake America up to the situation and get the real investigations/reporting/muckraking going.

One thing that I've wondered about for some time is how much of all of this was really Goldman versus the other investment banks such as JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, etc. Did they come up with most of the "innovations" such as using CDS to get around reserve requirements, or was that JPM? Did they come up with the No Doc subprime mortgage securitizations first? My impression is that Goldman was really the overall leader in much of this, just as JP Morgan was the leader back in the '20s. And as JPM became the public face of contrition during the Pecora hearings, perhaps Goldman will this time around in the next few years… we can hope.

What will asset allocation look like at 2009 year-end? I say another bust.

And of course GS and JPM are smart enough to be in this game for themselves, not for St. Alan, and not at all 'for the country.' This is part of Greenspan's anti-regulatory bias/malfeasance: one can regulate or one can manipulate. It is quite obvious which he prefered, and reasonably obvious which he chose.

GS as a Frankenstein was a band of made men; it didn't 'just grow.' This contention is something which should really be researched rather than baldly asserted as I do here. Taibbi wanted to hit the market while the issue was fresh. Let's see what a couple of years of muckraking journalism will make of this. GS and JPM are the Standard and U.S. Steel of our times. And we surely need to bust their trusts' death grip.

Yves — I was hoping you might directly address the Matt Taibbi RS article on Goldman in a blog post, since it's gotten a lot of attention.

It's a great article, my only quibble is with the "Engineering Every Major Market Manipulation Since The Great Depression" subtitle, which many have latched onto. This gives the article too much of a conspiracy-theory feel, as if Goldman has been some sort of evil behind-the-scenes influence continuously over the last 80 years, when in reality all of the market manipulations happened in the last dozen years (except for one in the '20s). It also makes it easier for Goldman to dismiss the article as wild conspiracy-theory nonsense, which is what they've semi-successfully done.

The key question is what changed 12-15 years ago to turn Goldman into the damaging entity it has recently become. And I agree with Yves' theory that part of it was probably Goldman going public, which changed the focus from "long-term greedy" (which is mostly healthy) to the short-term greed/fraud/bubble approach which has wreaked so much havoc.

I'd say "duh" isn't right. Most the Americans I know are clueless about GS. Most Americans think this is all "those people's" fault.

So, "huh, what's on `merican idle" or "See, just like Rush said, it's THOSE PEOPLE" would be more appropriate "exclamation".

However, she can't actually declare she's running for President because that itself would trigger federal campaign finance regulations. As of the end of July she's just a citizen — she can raise as much money as she wants (and spend it on virtually whatever she wants) without being subject to the regulations that other public officials are subject to.

As to her being "dumb" — I would only argue that the person we have in the White House must be dumbest who's ever occupied it so long as he's pursuing the policies that he apparently is.