In response to an FT article by Tom Braithwaite on 22nd April 2014, entitled 'As Goldman glister fades restoring brilliance is tough'
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ffef6d4a-c954-11e3-99cc-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz46aKbgfKb
"Surviving the crisis and then immediately thriving was the crowning glory of an investment bank that has inspired more respect, envy, fear and loathing than any other...A decade later, under chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman avoided the fate of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns. Call it superior risk management. Credit the “big short” that Goldman placed on the mortgage market. Or lay it on Goldman’s unofficial motto to be “long-term greedy”.
I call their avoidance of Lehman's fate, as being due to having a former CEO as the Treasury Secretary, a President who knew nothing about anything and did exactly what he was told to do, a gutless Congress, and a Fed Chairman whose analysis of what caused the great depression was and is wrong. Put it all together and you get what we've got now - widespread fraud, a financial tail that wags the production dog, a system of Crony Capitalism, and a 'free' market that is as rigged as China's.