(AP Photo/David Karp)
The cover of the most recent issue of New York magazine features
an illustration of a giant masked man holding a bag of money. The man towers over the tiny people below, who are offering up what appears to be futile resistance.
Across the middle of the page are these words: "Is Goldman Sachs Evil?"
That's the sort of question that was not being asked in polite company before the economic downturn. Back then, Goldman was seen as one of the prime drivers of capitalism, a company staffed by men whose generous compensation was justified by their role in helping power the economy to never before seen levels something that brought wealth to millions of Americans.
That was then. And
this, it seems, is now. Matt Taibbi's began his July "Rolling Stone" story on Goldman by writing that "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."
That's just the opener: Taibbi goes on to blame Goldman for essentially creating numerous economic bubbles and busts in service of the greedy ends of its "gangster" employees, who manipulated everything from tech stocks to gas prices with little concern for what effect their reckless speculation might have on the rest of us.
Taibbi's article was knocked in some quarters as naοve and reactionary "
a joke" written by "
the Sarah Palin of journalism" and some of the criticisms are legitimate. But even if one can quibble with the details, it's undeniable that Taibbi tapped into a populist rage against a company unused to such negative attention. And the fact that the story appeared in a pop-culture magazine the Jonas Brothers graced the cover meant that the negative portrayal spread well beyond the business community.
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How gold pays for 
