Goldman Sachs has announced that it “earned” 13.4 billion in profit in 2009 and was set to pay 16.2 million in bonuses, which equates to around a half million per employee, although the bonus money will not be evenly spread around the firm.  “Since the financial crisis, all Wall Street banks have benefited from an array of federal programs and low interest rate policies that enabled the industry to roar back in profitability in 2009.” And let us not forget “yesterday’s news” that “[a]n arm of the Federal Reserve, then led by now-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, told bailed-out insurance giant AIG to withhold key details from the public about overpayments that put billions of extra tax dollars in the coffers of major Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs….Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Wachovia got full value for their derivatives contracts with AIG, and taxpayers got stuck with the bill. In total, $27.1 billion of public money was transferred to companies that did business with AIG. It was largely seen as a “backdoor bailout” for firms like Goldman.”

Here is a link to the Goldman “profit” article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/business/22goldman.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Here is a link to the “how Geithner engineered a secret bail out for Goldman” story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/07/geithners-new-york-fed-to_n_414449.html

 Michael