In defense of Goldman Sachs

Recently, Goldman Sachs became a main whipping boy of Wall Street. Most people have a very negative opinion of the firm, there are website - like www.godmansachs666.com, negative commentary directed at the firm does not seem to stop.

Matt Taibbi, a distinguished journalist, who also runs his own blog at www.smirkingchimp.com, published an article in "Rolling Stone" highly critical of Goldman Sachs.

It may appear from this article that the firm is the source of all the evil that happened in this country, and, it seems that a lot of people interpreted it that way.

On July 21, 2009 Mr. Taibbi was a guest on NPR's "On Point" where he debated facts in his article with Goldman's "consultant" Charles Ellis.

The audio of this program is available from the program's website, or it can be downloaded here.

Mr. Ellis' argument in defense of Goldman Sachs was that the firm is just following the rules and is just better at the game than other firms, while Mr. Taibbi was bringing more and more examples how Goldman was influencing the rule-setting in Washington in order to maximize its profits and bonuses to its employees. In the nutshell - yes, the system is crooked, and Goldman is the biggest and smartest crook in the bunch.

At the end both were asked on how to fix the problem. Mr. Ellis offered the usual - "fix the regulatory climate" suggestion. Matt Taibbi went directly to the core. He suggestion is to have a Election Campaign Financing reform which will prohibit companies like Goldman Sachs to buy the government.

Needless to say, Election Campaign Financing reform is the cornerstone of The Great Task political platform.