Why the fattest of the fat cats are at Goldman Sachs

And the fact that Henry Paulson, who was treasury secretary during the first four months of the meltdown, had come straight from a stint as CEO of Goldman Sachs raised the awful prospect that billions in taxpayer money was going to favored Wall Street fat cats. Nobody has ever offered a convincing explanation for the delicate treatment Goldman received, which fuels the worst kind of speculation. Please, say it ain't so.

SHOOT: Disgusting.

clipped from seekingalpha.com Goldman Sachs (GS). Wall Street's toniest firm got $10 billion in TARP money in October 2008, along with eight other big banks that got government checks. Eight months later, Goldman was the first big bank to pay back its bailout money, with interest. Hooray for them. But Goldman also got a stealth bailout that will never be returned to taxpayers, courtesy of AIG. When the feds propped up AIG last fall, that allowed Goldman to ease its way out of nearly $6 billion worth of deals with AIG that could have been worth pennies on the dollar in a normal bankruptcy case. And later, Goldman got almost $14 billion of bailout money that went to AIG's trading partners, effectively redeeming Goldman's trading bets with AIG at 100 percent of their face value. Other banks got a 100 percent redemption out of AIG too, but Goldman got the most.