The Health Care Blog: Goldman Sachs, coming under fire but why should they care?

The Health Care Blog: Goldman Sachs, coming under fire but why should they care?: "By Matthew Holt Goldman took $13 billion of taxpayers money from AIG bailout—$13 billion which kept it alive. And it’s now back making huge profits gambling on the markets and paying out huge bonuses. This is causing notice. Matt Tabibi wrote a wonderful article in Rolling Stone blaming Goldman for the majority of the fraud (OK, legal fraud) in the dotcom stock boom, the oil price spike, the mortgage boom & the upcoming cap & trade boom. A little taster on his blog here. Paul Krugman says essentially the same thing in his column today. And for the kiss of humorous death, here’s Andy Borowitz’ column about Goldman agreeing to take over the US Treasury—after all it’s already happened." But the issue here is that incentives haven’t changed—other than the taxpayer has been told to give Goldman money and in return Goldman has been allowed to do what it always does. And regulations haven’t been written that will change that behavior. On the night when the House Ways and Means committee has voted to put more taxpayers money into the health care system, without any real change in incentives or serious regulation, the parallels are a little close.