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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.

From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they're about to do it again 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. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who...

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...

'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...