Ah, Goldman Sachs:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. ratcheted up risk-taking to an all-time high in the second quarter, increasing equity bets 58 percent to amass record trading revenue and quarterly earnings.

Value-at-risk, a measure of how much money the firm could lose in a day’s trading, rose to $245 million from $240 million in the first quarter, the New York-based firm said yesterday. The figure stood at $184 million last May

It’s easy to make piles of money when you’re betting it all on each roll of the dice, with the taxpayers to backstop you in the event of snake eyes. Taibbi has more:

The story of Goldman’s risk-taking behavior was irritating enough even before some untoward news came out yesterday; it suggested that the Wall Street leader had emerged from the bailout period having learned no lessons at all, not only not being more careful than before (when its riskiness was a factor leading to all of us having to bail the banks out) but actually increasing its risk-taking behavior. Now we hear even more startling news. It seems Goldman wrote to the SEC earlier this year and asked for some sort of exemption to the standard VaR calculation. As it always does, Goldman got its exemption, one that’s valid through the New Year. Unfortunately no one knows what the new methodology is yet, but one can be sure that whatever it is, it is actually underselling how much risk Goldman is taking.

As Tyler over at Zero Hedge points out, this is doubly odd because the SEC would not seem to have the authority to grant Goldman such an exemption — that should be the Fed’s purview. In any case the whole thing stinks. I would be furious if I were a Goldman shareholder; for the state to give the bank’s management license to underreport its liability, without my knowledge, would be the kind of thing that would drive me right into a class-action litigator’s office.

I don’t think you understand. What’s good for Goldman Sachs is good for America! So pony up, as if you’ve got a choice.