Funny. Matt Taibbi with a definitive takedown of a particularly vapid “defense” of Goldman Sachs:

It’s not that Goldman cooked its first-quarter profit numbers, or was using a computer program that by its own admission could be used to manipulate the New York Stock Exchange, or that it got a special waiver for the entirety of 2009 to ditch traditional accounting to make its risk appetite look lower, or that it gorged itself on public money for a year and turned almost all of that money into bonuses for its employees, in the middle of a crisis in which vast numbers of Americans are literally going hungry and losing their homes. All of that is an error of perception. Why, just look at Lloyd Blankfein! Would a man wearing a suit that baggy be guilty of such things?

This is really what Moore is saying! It’s that stupid! Enjoy it while you can, folks, because one doesn’t often see p.r. flacking this entertainingly ham-handed and idiotic. The ones who are capable of it, they usually don’t survive to adulthood; they get clipped from the herd by predators. …

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They are reduced now to arguing that they make their money because  their employees pat each other on the back and do trust-falls to instill mutual confidence in each other. The whole world is throwing heavy subpoenas and damning stacks of numbers at them, and they’re coming back with, “We succeed because we let a smile be our umbrella.” This sh*t is literally as weak as it gets.