Sorry to disagree, but I found the article far worse than you have described it. Firstly, its premise is so old that it is boring. Substitute "Goldman Sachs" with "Jews" and you will get an EXACT copy of newspaper and "research" articles from 1930s Nazi Germany. Just look around (see no need for facts, research, logic): Jews are everywhere. They must be acting therefore in cahoots. They suck blood of good, but naive, German Christians. All miseries have come from them: the Plague, defeat in WW I, the inflation of 1920s... The author is far from original, therefore, when he begins thus:
"The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." Yeh, those blood-sucking Jews...
Well, I see that oil is everywhere; whole world was and is talking about oil all the time. It must be, therefore, that the whole crisis started by Saudi Arabia. Stupid? Of course. And yet that's what this "author" says --- only about GS, not Arabia or Kuwait. And, even more precisely. Where is JP Morgan, Credit Swiss, Societe General, etc. and the might of all other banks? Ah, those must be the good but naive "Germans" swindled by the sneaky Jews, I mean, Goldman Sacks.
[ Incidentally, you should stop reading and discard ANY article that appeals from the start to your emotions rather than mind, as this one does. In terms of using this method of propaganda, this article is NY Times on steroids.]
Here is the "proof" of the author's position: "Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything."
Just look at Jews in the prominent positions. About a quarter of Nobel laureates are Jews -- surely they have hijacked the Nobel committee, the entire physics, chemistry and medicine. The world better wake up before it's too late. Goering would be proud of this writer.
The truth is, and I wrote to this effect earlier, GS is known on Wall Street as (i) hiring the best talent and (ii) letting that talent blossom. It is therefore unsurprising that, whenever you want the best in the area, you often find them in GS. It's quite simple, really (but does cause a great deal of envy among the rest of the Wall Street banks).
Goldman proved it in this crisis, too. They were the only bank that called the turn of the market correctly. And you know how? It was a lowly analysis or trader (I don't remember now) who sounded an alarm. Unlike in other banks, that alarm was given a voice all the way to the top. In April-May of last year, the top honchos had a meeting, at which it was decided to reverse the course, i.e., reduce exposure to mortgages and buy insurance against the market decline. They still suffered, but less than others. That is the reason for their quick turnaround. But, having started badly, he gets worse:
"They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble [what does this even mean -- to position itself in a bubble?], selling investments they know are crap."
There you go. The rest of the humanity, which manages about $30 trillion are simple, Naive "Germans" swindled by the tiny in comparison but shrewd and dishonest Jews, I mean Goldman Sachs.
Do you not see the complete idiocy of this statement? Just look at the size of the California pension fund --- do you think it is managed by idiots, who simply did not know that the securities were "crap?" Just look at the $32 Billion endowment fund of Harvard --- do you think Harvard, despite having Nobel laureates in economics, hires idiots to manage that fund?
To see that his is not only an idiot but lacks basic honesty, consider this quote (from http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/22587). First, he quotes a criticism he received --- criticism that states very well the same point I made earlier:
“If my pension fund is buying [crap mortgages] from Goldman, and my pension fund loses lots of value, that’s not Goldman’s fault,” wrote one reader. “No one is forcing anyone to buy anything. The only thing Goldman is guilty of is making profits.”
His response?
"I’m not even going to go there — the psychology [how about addressing the substance of the issue rather than playing Freud?] of a human being who would take the time to actually write in a complaint like that is so bizarre that it would take more time than I have today to even begin discussing it."
Of course he will not discuss it: he has nothing to say. The man cannot reveals no knowledge of basic economics and cannot think well. He can appeal only to emotions. And take a typical pro-"people" and anti-capitalist position:
"there was an amusingly large number of people writing in impassioned defense of their right, under our American system [capitalism?] to be ripped off by large impersonal [greedy, anti-people] financial companies."
But let us continue with the description of the "Goldman scheme":
"Then they [GS] hoover up vast sums [what does that mean, to hoover up? this is a typical language of a person who know nothing about how the world operates; he knows nothing about the "American system" except that it is bad] from the middle and lower floors of society [garbage: the vast majority, if not all, of the now-problematic securities were both by financial institutions] with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state [were was the state between Cal Pension fund, say, buying a security issues by Alcoa, which GS only helped Alcoa to create? Total nonsense] that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange [which rules of exchange were rewritten?] for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage."
The idiocy is simply breathtaking.
"Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke [he must have missed billions lost by billionaires; the guy who writes and cares for the "folks" assumes, of course, that only the "poor" go broke] and starving [starving?], they begin the entire process over again [are we in the midst of another bubble? If so, he should publics such important findings in a scholarly journal and consult the government], riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest [lending? Goldman Sacks has never lent money; he simply has no clue about what GS does], selling themselves as men above greed [a lie: no commercial company pretends to be completely altruistic; they are philanthropic, but not altruistic; if he took a single course on management, he would learn that management is hired by owners of the company to make a profit], just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased."
As I expected, his shallowness had to use this old canard:
"And what caused the huge spike in oil prices? Take a wild guess. Obviously [only to him, of course] Goldman had help — there were other players in the physical-commodities market [see, I am sophisticated; I am not going to tell who they are --- 'cause I don't know] — but the root cause had almost everything to do [as evidenced by what?] with the behavior of a few powerful actors [must by them sneaky Joos, I mean, Goldman Sachs] determined to turn the once-solid market [once solid? Just look at the graph of oil prices? What does he mean by "solid"?] into a speculative casino. Goldman did it by persuading pension funds [those good but naive "Germans" again] and other large institutional investors to invest in oil futures [unlike a relatively small Goldman, those institutions are managed by outright idiots that could simply be persuaded at lunch] — agreeing to buy oil at a certain price on a fixed date [yes, this is called exchange; I go on a certain date and but a dozen eggs at a specified price. Or, does the grocer trick me into doing so?] . The push transformed oil from a physical commodity [oil is no longer physical? it is a subliminal spirit?], rigidly subject to supply and demand [wrong: oil is not subject to market forces --- the PRICE of oil is], into something to bet on [is it different from buying anything else? If I hope to buy eggs tomorrow at half the price, I would certainly wait for a day; we speculate every time we buy something], like a stock. Between 2003 and 2008, the amount of speculative money in commodities grew from $13 billion to $317 billion, an increase of 2,300 percent. By 2008, a barrel of oil was traded 27 times, on average, before it was actually delivered and consumed."
As for the ending, observe first that this aggregate statistics has nothing to do with GS. Investment banks do not persuade you to buy what already exists (secondary market). They structure and underwrite new securities (primary market). It is certainly not in business of trading futures.
Secondly, the trade in futures did indeed increase. But this is largely because NONfinancial companies tried to offset risk associated with oil rising. And not only oil. A cereal maker (Nabisco) routinely buys futures to ensure the stability of its cost of wheat (a futures contract allows you to buy three months from now, say, a bushel of wheat at a specified price). This is insurance, just like house insurance (with insurance, YOUR value of a $200,000 house is still $200,000 after it burns down, because the insurance company will pay that money to you). Understanding of futures as insurance is relatively new (20 or so years), and, as more financial officers of companies like Alcoa, Nabisco, GM became aware of it, more and more companies engaged in buying them. And not only oil.
Most importantly --- and you hear this nonsense all the time from conspiracy theorist --- there is no speculator that has sufficient capital to drive the price of oil from $11 to %150 in a decade. It takes the demand of China and India combined to do that.
I simply have to stop here. I have written this much out of respect to your request: the article does not deserve to be read beyond the first two paragraphs.
You can see now why I disagree with your assessment. Personally, I would not accept such an essay from an undergraduate. I would gladly overlook an occasional laps of logic. But not the lack of integrity: this man does not even attempt to justify what he says with facts. There is not a single fact about GS, and every fact he mentions concerns the economy as a whole, not the company. One can try and fail to provide a justification in a difficult matter. But not to try is preposterous.
You will be well advised to glance through his autobiography on Wikipedia. You will learn that he is a charlatan who never did anything continually for more than a year or two. You will learn that he does not have a Master's degree, leading me to believe that he took at most one introductory course on economics. His "writing" certainly does not reveal more than familiarity with the terms, which he still manages to misrepresent and misuse. As for his moral standard, this quote I find revealing:
"[He] then joined Mark Ames in 1997 to co-edit the controversial English-language Moscow-based, bi-weekly free newspaper, The eXile. Taibbi said about that experience, "We were out of the reach of American libel law, and we had a situation where we weren’t really accountable to our advertisers. We had total freedom."[1]
Tell me, would you enjoy being freed from libel law? Would you behave any differently if there was no libel law? Probably not: a moral person does not need such law to refrain from libel.
But that's all he has done in life. Consider his "hilarious" piece "The 52 Funniest Things About The Upcoming Death of The Pope." Let's smear the Pope. Let's smear the "American system." Let's smear Goldmand Sachs.
What else can a poor, ignorant and spoiled brat to do in this world?