Goldman’s big, bad profit

“Happy days are here again,” at least at Goldman Sachs, said Henry Blodget in The Business Insider. Goldman announced a much-better-than-expected $1.7 billion profit last quarter and a “brilliantly timed” $5 billion stock offering to help it pay back the Treasury. Freed from the government’s “TARP shackles,” Goldman will be able to snap up talent and clients, and leave its competitors in “the disgraced Wall Street mud.”

Goldman should have no trouble retaining employees, said Heidi N. Moore in The Wall Street Journal, since it set aside $4.7 billion for salaries and bonuses—half of its quarterly revenue and an increase over a year ago. The pay hikes, spread among fewer employees, and the company's increasing risk-taking are “a sure way to tick off the government.”

If you’re furious at the bonus-happy banks, you can hurt them—and help yourself—by paying off debt and saving more, said David Weidner in MarketWatch. Becoming “less enslaved” to the banks cuts down on those fees they collect, and “they feel it.” If banks want to “pay off bailout cash,” fine. But there’s no need to help them “more than you already have."

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