New York Times

The New York Times excoriated Goldman Sachs in an editorial published in yesterday's paper and described Goldman's pledge to provide $500 million in funding to small businesses as "crumbs from its table". The article went on to say that Blankfein's mea culpa earlier in the week didn't "come close to an apology" and suggested Goldman should turn their massive 2009 bonus pool over to the taxpayers who funded their survival.

I'm not sure what moral high ground the Gray Lady thinks she's standing on, but it brings up some interesting points. There is an increasingly popular market myth that Goldman Sachs didn't need to be bailed out and that they were just taking one for the team when they accepted $10 billion in TARP money. It's a nice story, but it's patently false.

More evidence of this came out this week when John Mack addressed Wharton in this now famous video. While describing Morgan Stanley's precarious position in October of last year, Mack stated that he received numerous calls from a desperate Blankfein begging him to hang in there, "because I'm 20 minutes behind you".

I was reading the New York Times today, as I do when I’m feeling a little self-flagellatory, and I stumbled across an article by Andrew Ross Sorkin that painted a bleak picture of Obama’s address to Richard Parsons, Roger Altman, and other Wall Street honchos last week.