Goldman Sachs Goes To Rehab

FRIDAY: Goldman in Greece prob

WEDNESDAY UPDATE: FOLLOWING TRANSPARENCY SPEECH, GOLDMAN REFUSES TO REVEAL GREEK CDS HOLDINGS

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DON'T YOU LOVE IT. For the first time in its 140-year history, Masters of the Universe Goldman Sachs wants to go to rehab and clean up its image which has been badly tarnished of late. Matt Taibbi's shocking Rolling Stone expose last summer was only the first salvo. In it, Taibbi took apart every major investing mania over the past 100 years and showed how Goldman played the roller coaster for obscene profits on the way up, and then again on the way down. He laid out in excruciating detail how smart money Goldman has positioned itself ahead of every mega-global financial curve. In the process, Goldman has often left investors and taxpayers in the red for billions, if not trillions, of small unmarked bills. Think the fall of Goldman insurer AIG which we the taxpayers underwrote so Goldman didn't lose a dime. We can thank former Goldman CEO-turned-Treasury-Secretary Hank Paulson for that. Then think lavish bonuses during the financial meltdown and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, Goldman's competitor. But don't think too hard, and if you do, think again:

For the first 139 years it wasn't that relevant to us to explain ourselves," Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told Fortune recently. " And now it became very relevant and the press did an important thing for us, they pointed out to us that that was a deficiency in our strategy, not to reveal ourselves . . . I'm just trying to take pains, which we should have done all along, to make sure that people understand what we do in the world.

In other words, expect Goldman Sachs soon to come out smelling like a rose. It's hired Dallas Public Strategies, headed by Dan Bartlett, a confidant of George W. Bush and Karl Rove, is already on the case. Earlier this month, Goldman clients and Wall Street analysts starting filling out an exhaustive, online questionnaire seeking to pinpoint exactly what people thought of Blankfein's firm.

One question wanted survey participants to compare Goldman to other Wall Street banks -- and names rivals JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Bank of America, Citigroup and Barclays. Respondents were asked to fill in blanks from least favorable to most favorable.

Taibbi concluded his landmark piece on Goldman writing: “It’s a gangster state, running on gangster economics, and even prices can’t be trusted anymore; there are hidden taxes in every buck you pay. And maybe we can’t stop it, but at least we know where it’s all going.”

The latest fly in the ointment of Goldman's once sterling reputation is in it's shenanigans in Greece starting in the early 2000s:

In recent weeks, Goldman has faced accusations that in 2001 it helped Greece engineer sophisticated securities deals -- akin to those that destroyed energy outfit Enron -- encouraging it to gorge on debt and inflate its budget deficit, and imperil the fragile Euro zone economy.

While Goldman may soon own Greece and cause the fall of the economic dominoes in Europe, what's more important to this big investment firm is how it looks to the public.

For the first time in its history, Goldman's activities are becoming more transparent to the public. Whatever the upcoming public relations gimmicks, one things for sure, taxpayers, shareholders, bondholders and other investors are now on to it and watching like a hawk. So is the media great.

Read more: Here. Here. And here.