Six months after accepting a financial lifeline from Washington, a newly profitable Goldman Sachs is pushing to return the billions of taxpayer dollars that it received in an effort to extricate itself from heightened government control.
Goldman, which rode out the final, tumultuous months of 2008 with the help of a federal rescue, reported strong quarterly profits on Monday and said that it would seek to raise money in the capital markets to repay the government.
If successful, Goldman would become the first major bank to return funds received under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Such a step would probably enable Goldman — long one of the most lucrative places to work on Wall Street — to free itself from government-imposed restrictions on compensation.
This narrative of poor widdle financial institutions desperately trying to get out from under the horrible onerous government restrictions is repeated daily. So stupid.