I was just reading this piece in today’s New York Times on the enormous profits being posted by the investment bank Goldman Sachs, and I was reminded of an article I read a week or so ago in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi. Here are clips from both for your consideration.

First, the New York Times:

…Analysts predict the bank earned more than $2 billion in the March-June period, thanks to its trading prowess across world markets. If they are right, the bank’s rivals will once again be left to wonder exactly how Goldman, long the envy of Wall Street, could have rebounded so dramatically only months after the nation’s financial industry was shaken to its foundations.

The obsessive speculation has already begun, along with banter about how Goldman’s rapid return to minting money will be perceived by lawmakers and taxpayers who aided Goldman with a multibillion-dollar cushion last fall.

“They exist, and others don’t, and taxpayers made it possible,” said one industry consultant, who, like many people interviewed for this article, declined to be named for fear of jeopardizing business relationships.

Startling, too, is how much of its profits Goldman is expected to share with its employees. Analysts estimate that the bank will set aside enough money to pay a total of $18 billion in compensation and benefits this year to its 28,000 employees, or more than $600,000 per employee. Top producers stand to earn millions…

Now, a clip from Matt Taibi’s article, entitled “Great American Bubble Machine”:

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money…

The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They’ve been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they’re preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet…

After the oil bubble collapsed last fall, there was no new bubble to keep things humming — this time, the money seems to be really gone, like worldwide-depression gone. So the financial safari has moved elsewhere, and the big game in the hunt has become the only remaining pool of dumb, unguarded capital left to feed upon: taxpayer money. Here, in the biggest bailout in history, is where Goldman Sachs really started to flex its muscle…

When I read the Taibbi piece initially, I was somewhat inclined to believe it, but, now that I read that the men and women of Goldman Sachs are already averaging $600,000 in pay and bonuses just a few short months after their taxpayer bailout, I’m absolutely convinced that there’s something’s going on. I know that they’ve apparently paid back the piece of the bailout pie that went to them directly, but clearly they’ve benefited from all of this in other ways, such as though contracts and subsidiaries, as well. One wonders what might be done about something like this in a functioning democracy – you know, one in which elected officials aren’t beholden to corporate interests.

Oh, and if you’re interested in reading more about this, the folks at Sachs issued a statement in response to Taibbi’s article. And, Taibbi, as you might have guessed, then fired back himself.