Goldman Sachs Largesse

Ah the holiday spirit.

Overcome, no doubt, by images of Scrooge dancing in their heads, the leaders of Goldman Sachs have come forward and boldly admitted they helped in the great banking screw up. Yes, you heard it: the banks trashed the economy and Goldman was right there at the center of the foul up.

The remedy?

A generous dollop of cash for small businesses. Those would be the little people. You know the ones who don’t inhabit Wall Street.

These poor unwashed will get to benefit from a whopping $500 million being set aside by the generous folks at Goldman. Warren Buffett has been brought on board to lend his sage advice and, I imagine, some legitimacy to the whole deal.

Let me see now … Goldman sets aside $500 million for small business. And $16.71 billion for compensation for its poor employees. A quick calculation reveals that the little people are worth about 3% of the big people’s salaries and bonuses.

Oh the generosity.

Now I am all for rewarding excellence. And I am sure that the lovely folks over at Goldman are truly amazingly clever.

But.

They are only still in business because we bailed them out. That makes them somewhat less clever then they think they are. And probably not $16.71 billion clever.

However I also think they’re smart enough to make sure that the $500 million will be tax deductible. In which case their generosity is being subsidized by … the very little people the program is meant to help.

Ouch.

And these guys wonder why finance has such rotten reputation.