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Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein bagged a $14.6M compensation package.....including stock awards, which were also paid to other top executives. Blankfein also got a 230% bump in his base salary to $2M, up from $600,000 since 2007....excluding private jets, cars and other perks. CFO David Viniar, COO Gary Cohn and Vice Chair Michael Evans received identical boosts, with each hauling in $1.85M annually. Blankfein's pay in the halcyon days of 2007, was $67.9M. Other firms have been hiking base pay at a time when regulators are mulling new rules for Wall Street pay.

Facebook, the popular social networking site, has raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and a Russian investor in a deal that values the company at $50 billion, according to people involved in the transaction. The deal makes Facebook now worth more than companies like eBay, Yahoo and Time Warner.

Republican Congressman Ron Paul may be Julian Assange’s most loyal supporter in Congress. Visiting Fox Business’ Freedom Watch– a program on which Assange has been welcome several times– Rep. Paul went to bat for the Wikileaker in the middle of condemning the secrecy of the Federal Reserve, and made a little request of his own: “every conversation of the last ten years with the Federal Reserve people.” Chop, chop, Assange! Rep. Paul, who is also a regular guest on the program, chatted for some time with the injustices of having a “secret government” like the Federal Reserve with Judge Andrew...

A 2004 study of the results of stock trading by United States Senators during the 1990s found that that Senators on average beat the market by 12% a year. In sharp contrast, U.S. households on average underperformed the market by 1.4% a year and even corporate insiders on average beat the market by only about 6% a year during that period.

The financial-services industry has reportedly flooded the Capitol with more than 2,000 paid lobbyists; even veteran members are stunned by the intensity of the blitz. The companies with the most at stake are particularly well-connected. The lobbying campaign for Goldman Sachs, for instance, is being headed up by a former top staffer for Rep. Barney Frank, Michael Paese, who is coordinating some 14 different lobbying firms to fight on Goldman's behalf. The bank is also represented by Capitol Hill heavyweights like former House majority leader Dick Gephardt and former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein. All told, there are at...

Most probably wouldn't think of Rolling Stone magazine as a primary source for information on something like financial regulation reform. However, if you listen to some of the left-wing talking heads like Ezra Klein, Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi is in the know on major policy issues. So how do Taibbi and the other folks at Rolling Stone keep their readers interested in a topic that wouldn't suit their usual demographic? They do so with "insults" according to Taibbi. In the May 26 issue of Rolling Stone, Taibbi's article, "Wall Street War," lamented the impact lobbyists in Washington, D.C. have had...

At the Goldman Sachs annual meeting on Friday, I had an unplanned exchange with CEO Lloyd Blankfein about Goldman's support of Jesse Jackson, who was at the meeting and kept popping up to speak. Jackson was acting adversarial toward Blankfein, even though Goldman Sachs is one of Jackson’s largest financial supporters. In hopes of ending this charade, I asked Blankfein to clarify the relationship between Goldman and Jackson as that of donor and recipient. Blankfein said he didn't know if Goldman supported Jackson. I challenged him by asking, "You do not know?" and "You give Jackson's group six-figure sums and...

Had a couple of conversations/phone calls floating this idea on Wall St -- Goldman tanked the market temporarily to send the message to Obama and his posse to back off. Pretty devious as conspiracy theories go, but not too far from the realm of believable given the state of affairs. If we see the finance bill get watered down, then maybe it worked.

On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America's pre-eminent Marvel Comics supervillain, the CEO used the call to deploy his secret weapon: a pair of giant, nuclear-powered testicles. In his message, Blankfein addressed his plan to pay out gigantic year-end bonuses amid widespread controversy over Goldman's role in precipitating the global financial crisis. The bank had already set aside a tidy $16.2 billion for salaries and bonuses -- meaning that Goldman employees were each set to take home an average of $498,246, a number roughly...

'The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling...

Simon Johnson: Goldman Is About To Be Blacklisted And Possibly Banned In Europe Joe Weisenthal Feb. 15, 2010, 6:45 AM MIT professor Simon Johnson raises some provocative scenarios in regards to Goldman's participation in Greece's scheme to obfuscate its debt levels. In particular, he expects a full audit of the company, and perhaps some kind of ban: If the Federal Reserve were an effective supervisor, it would have the political will sufficient to determine that Goldman Sachs has not been acting in accordance with its banking license. But any meaningful action from this direction seems unlikely. Instead, Goldman will probably...

This looks pretty bad for both Goldman and Greece, as if things could look worse. According to a scathing piece in Der Spiegel, European statisticians in Luxembourg have had a very difficult time getting proper Greek economic and financial data for years. Worse yet, Goldman Sachs appears to have been helping Greece take advantage of a European regulatory loophole in order to understate its deficits: Der Spiegel:

... [Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's] charges are certainly creative in that they get the bank executives coming and going: "Bank of America's management intentionally failed to disclose massive losses at Merrill so that shareholders would vote to approve the merger. Once the deal was approved, Bank of America's management manipulated the federal government into saving the deal with billions in taxpayer funds by falsely claiming that they would back out of the deal without bailout funds." ... If Mr. Cuomo truly believes that BofA shareholders and executives deserve to pay the political cost of the financial crisis, perhaps a refresher...

No WAY is Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis going to be the only one to answer for the acquisition of crappy Merrill Lynch and its crappy bonuses, "a person close to Lewis's defense team" (who may or may not be Ken Lewis himself) tells Charlie Gasparino today on the Daily Beast. NO WAY will he be a scapegoat, alone, for the people who twisted his arm to go through with the Merrill deal by telling him he would be fired if he didn't. "If this thing goes to trial you can expect both Paulson and Bernanke to be on...