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You can demonize Goldman Sachs all you want, and I'm sure there are reasons to do it. But the real pressure is all of us pressuring the companies for stock returns, and that leads to all kinds of decisions.

Goldman Sachs isn't the firm it once was when I worked for it, but it's still one of the building blocks of our capitalist society.

I've nothing against Goldman Sachs. But Goldman Sachs isn't an investment bank. Goldman Sachs is a hedge fund. It's bigger than any hedge fund. It's more leveraged, to the power of three or five, than any hedge fund.

This is America: Corporate stealing is practically the national pastime, and Goldman Sachs is far from the only company to get away with doing it.

The Justice Department needs to investigate how Goldman Sachs was able to steer things in such a manner through their former employees in the Bush administration, so that in the end Goldman's competitors have disappeared and Goldman is left standing.

I think bankers will always get away with whatever they can get away with.

The market, as we're all painfully aware in the aftermath of the banking crisis, can be an idiot. It has no perception of right or wrong, or even sensible or insane. It sees profit.

You can't have bank holding companies acting as hedge funds. You can't have them taking a million-dollar pension plan for Joe Schmo the bus driver and treat it with the same risk appetite that you treat George Soros' pocket money. It's fundamentally ridiculous.

Generally speaking, they have as many stars as other firms, but they are low-key about it, because that's not the Goldman way, but their bench is a lot deeper. I think Goldman has as many A players, but more importantly they have fewer C players. And no firm, I have noticed, has the depth anywhere like that.