before Obama wakes up and realizes he needs to ditch  Geithner and Summers? Continuing Bush's bailout policy is the worst decision Obama has made so far, both on substance and on politics.

in small business (retail). She's owned her own store for a few years, expanded to a second location two years ago. Her line of credit was just yanked, and she can't find another one. She's low on inventory and can't buy more without a line of credit. She can't get a line of credit without a large inventory to back it.

Wasn't the bailout supposed to free up credit so banks would lend to businesses again?

Goldman paid the money back... with interest... What's the problem?  The government made a cool 5% off of that loan...  better than most stock returns...

I opposed TARP just like opposed the Iraq war.  I wasn't frightened or fooled in either case.  The Democrats in Congress were.  Last September, I was making the case that it was pure stupidity to support the TARP legislation.  I was deeply in the minority here, just like I was deeply in the minority in 2003 during Bush's mad rush to bombing.

Now we've got all these come-latelies.  "Oh, I oppose TARP now when it's sooo freakin' easy to.  They shouldn't have dun that!"  Just like in 2005 and 2006, we've got Green Day finally putting out an anti-war album.  Fuck you, fuckin' chumps.  Where the fuck were you when it could have made a fucking difference?  Hiding in your fucking basement from Bush and his 'bots.

Now we've got a Prez who gave a non-public fundraising speech in 2002.  He made a little bank off people who genuinely put their necks on the line, so he could wiffle-waffle in 2004.  Fuck him, too.  Where was he when some of us were getting tear-gassed because we had the temerity to oppose raw stupidity?  He was cowering in his basement, too.

What did he say about TARP, or housing, or anything else when it would have made a difference?  NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING.

So now I see tons of people here squealing, squealing, "TARP sucks, TARP is the Devil, wah, wah, wah."  So if you were one of those who was with me in opposing it BEFORE it was passed, then kudos and thanks, and you go on with your honest self.  All the rest of you are a pack of timid sheep being deservedly fed to the wolves and I'd like to issue a big fat FUCK YOU to every last one of you.

As a Goldman Sachs alum and very proud of that fact, I must say find these attacks very disconcerting and misguided. It is an exceptional firm with very dedicated employees. The resources are incredible. I had worked at other investment banks for 8 years before arriving at GS and was blown away by their resources and their people. At Goldman, I felt comfortable being out which meant my BF was actually welcomed at company functions. In fact, Goldman sent me on two recruiting trips to recruit LGBT talent. Diversity? Most diverse place I have ever worked. A third of my group were women. In my 27 person group, we had three Indians, two Japanese, a Bulgarian, an Italian, English, a South African, a Malay and me a Colombian and of course Americans. Nor was GS or i-banking some sort of Ayn Rand temple either. Jon Corzine isn't exactly a conservative. Nor am I. The traders were more free marketers but otherwise, I found Wall Street to be a pretty liberal place. Goldman's corporate culture is amazing. Decisions are reached by consensus. Every department has co-heads. The firm was far fairer in the way bonuses were handled. There are no prima donnas at the firm. You work and you get paid for it.

Goldman Sachs is not the problem, the problem is the rules of the game that lo and behold Clinton changed. You are attacking GS for being successful in a game that misguided politicians and their lobbyists designed. Investment banks weren't exactly gung-ho about the repeal of Glass Steagall. We knew that it would mean consolidation and the end of many quality banks. Well, guess what, they were right. My original employer, Alex Brown & Sons, was the nation's oldest investment bank but we were a niche player and highly profitable. I-bank transactions have margins of over 95%. We sold ourselves to Banker's Trust because once deregulation came, you had to become a full-service player or die. I blame Sandy Weill personally. Not fond of Bill Clinton on this score either.

Furthermore, GS (along with VCs and other I-banks) is effectively the American industrial policy maker. The decisions made in these firms power the global economy. Kill it and you kill the greatest creator of capital and of jobs that there is in the world.

If you want to harp on something, at least, get the diagnosis right. If you think GS and Morgan's profits are obscene then ask yourself why are their profits so high right now? The problem is a lack of competition in the banking sector. Separate i-banks from commercial banks and regulate the sector but faulting a firm for successfully playing by the rules is frankly silly. And oh yes, tax the employees to high heaven.

And GS profits come from its trading operations. And since the collapse of both Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers took out two top five players well guess what, numbers one (GS) and two (Morgan Stanley) now effectively have a duopoly. That's why their profits are so high. Two banks are now the sector.

I remember bitterly attacking Obama and his advisors for their complicity in this mess started by the Bushies. THere were only a few of us on this blog who were shouting at the rooftops and it had nothing to do with my ideology(I am actually pro Free market).

It was the so called kook on the left and the right that did the right thing and did not support this bailouts. Obama and his people had a great chance to let their voice be heard during the waning months of the Bushies. Geithner and Summers are smart  people, just not as smart as they think they are. In fact, most of us are not smart enough to engineer a bailout of that scale. When you are not smart, you save your freaking money. But politicians have a herd mentality. Very few are afraid to stick their neck out and call out the foolishness. It happened during the Iraq war and it happened during the bailouts which was welfare for many execs.

This is what happens when the people enforcing and making the rules are former heads of these companies (Paulson, Bernanke). Doesnt Obama realize how incestous is that relationship?

As for the bailouts, the auto industry bailout was no better. They were doomed to fail and file for bankruptcy, every and their mother knew it. So we gave them billions anyway, all to no avail. Thats where Obama screwed up, he had no business giving away that money. All this money given away and now we have a trillion dollar deficit and now are trying to pass a trillion dollar healthcare plan. Something has to give. Fact is we cant afford the healthcare plan now. Polls are starting to tip against it with americans unhappy over the handling of the economy.

Its simple math, you dont spen what you dont have and we dont have the money for healthcare unless we control government spending.

I am sorry but some of the comments above smack too much of defense of free-enterprise capitalism.  Why should we prop up the world economic system?  It is cruel and unjust to everybody, including ourselves.  And so what if Goldman-Sachs is diverse, if there is no class justice?  What about all the other members of those various groups who do not have jobs at Goldman-Sachs.
Again, maybe Goldman-Sachs is the "Democratic" firm, as opposed to the other ones who are "Republican."  Does that mean that they will support high taxes upon wealth, income, property, and business, in order to do something about the terrible maldistribution of wealth, property, and income that we have, which makes us hateful in the eyes of other and of ourselves?  Does that mean that Goldman-Sachs will support making over the financial industry into a public utility? One does'nt think so.
Apart from Glass-Steagal and how it should not have been repealed, and that Goldman-Sachs isn't the only one and should not be singled out, and that the business appears to be run in a rather cooperative fashion (even that has it's problems-is it really an employee-run company?  Are the CEO's elected by the workers?) there does not appear to be much here.  It is interesting, though, that favorable comment about a huge capitalistic organization is made by people who are, oh, so censorious about America and what it does in the outside world.  Without defending such actions, it appears to some that America is evil but capitalism is okay.

One final note:  If Goldman-Sachs is the "Democratic" Wall Street firm, then why did it do so well late last year at the hands of an arch-conservative, arch-Republican administration.

This is in no way a belated endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president.  Judging from who (Mark Penn, Robert Rubin) and what (the cover of Fortune magazine as the "pro-business" candidate)she associated with, she would have been just as bad.

It is also not accurate to suggest that changes in banking regulation came in one fell swoop with the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999. The reality is that assault on the banking regulatory environment began under Jimmy Carter continued under Reagan and really gained speed when Alan Greenspan was appointed Fed Chair in 1987. The rules began to loosened in earnest then.

Part of the impetus was also that Japanese banks were beginning to dominate global finance and there was a fear that US banks couldn't compete with them. Recall that is when Japan is at its height. There is a context. Still, Friedmanism was the ideology of the Reagan-Bush years and the view was then that regulations were stifling US banks. Another driver was that US commerical banks wanted to get in on the highly lucrative commercial paper business. Bankers Trust led the charge in the mid 1980s to loosen Glass-Steagall's prohibition on commercial banks from conducting several underwriting businesses.

Why is Phil Gramm still walking around, and not in some maximum security prision?

Seriously, has there ever been a bigger crime in the history of the world?

Phils ramming through the TWO bills that allowed this to happen, one in the dead of night, then bolting from Congress to make a killing at Bear Stearns, makes Bernie Madoff look like Mother Teresa?

Seriously, what kind of justice is there when this criminal is still walking around free?

My 401K is gone, and at least 1/3 of my company, which had been profitable for 22 years running, is gone. And we sell manufactured Hi-tech to China, we are the fricking poster child for what's good in American manufacturing.

And STILL we got clobbered, and the rest of us have had pay cuts and are working a forced 32 hour week.

Phil, if you're listening, any way I can convince you to put a 45 Auto in your mouth and blow the back of your head off? Really.  Come on, just for a bit of a make-up for literally wreaking the worst havoc in US history?

Just thought I would ask....

The problem with all this is NOT about how legal it is.  It is a matter of morality.  Really.  GS is the least of the evils, not the good guy.  Did they turn their connections and lobbistst loose to fight against the repeal of the laws? Nope.  They may not have lobbied for them, but I know they did not say one peep about stopping the deregulation AND they were set up to immediately take advantage of all aspects of the deregulation regardless of the moral costs.

Right now there is a huge banking/money war going on.  The casualties are NOT the people fighting but the consumers.  And I GARUNTEE that whent eh dust settles that the winner will NOT be setting up a Marshal plan...it is not in the best interests of profit or the share-holders.

Capitalism, right now, has no soul.  The Free market has no soul.  They exist simply to feed themselves and exist at this point.  

So the question is not hwo to make the rules "fair", but how to make our markets healthy through morality.  And if Capitalism and the free-market cannot exist with morality, then we just do not deserve to have them.

Remember the mess and misery caused because it was perfectly legal, and economically imperative, to own slaves in the South.  But it was still immoral.