[Gondring]

The perception is that, in high risk/reward investments that they make, Goldman takes almost all the reward, and the US taxpayer takes almost all the risk.

Yup...very familiar...the economics of Mussolini's fascist regime...

"In actual fact, it is the State, i.e. the taxpayer, who has become responsible to private enterprise. In Fascist Italy the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise. As long as business was good, profit remained to private initiative. When the depression came, the Government added the loss to the tax-payer's burden. Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social."

--Under the Axe of Fascism, by Gaetano Salvemini, p. 416 (1936).

Note that big business, not small business, got Mussolini's bailouts, too, such that bankers and investment houses made off with taxpayer money.

[rightwingcrazy]

Sounds a lot like crony socialism. Not a formula for national prosperity, in any case.