The Great American Bubble Machine (Goldman Sachs exposé)
sites.google.com
sites.google.com
That being said, this article -- like most of Taibbi's -- is a well-written, entertaining narrative that sews together selective elements to construct something plausible. Go one step further by looking at the environments of each "bubble" to get a less filtered context -- what other companies were doing, what economic forecasters were saying, etc -- and it falls apart quickly.
Goldman Sachs is a company comprised of smart people. Sometimes elements of the company get involved in shaddy things. That happens everywhere -- finance, government, gumball manufacturers.
Interestingly, John Galbraith's chronicle of the crash of '29, did detail perhaps the most egregious of the young company's offenses. He also said: Our political tradition sets great store by the generalized symbol of evil. This is the wrongdoer whose wrongdoing will be taken by the public to be the secret propensity of a whole community or class. We search avidly for such people, not so much because we wish to see them exposed and punished as individuals, but because we cherish the resulting political discomfort of their friends. To uncover an evil man among the friends of one's foes had long been a recognized method of advancing one's political fortunes. However, in recent times the technique has been greatly improved and refined by the added firmness with which the evil of the evildoer is now attributed to friends, acquaintances, and all who share his way of life.
http://searchyc.com/bubble+machine
Incidentally, Megan McArdle's takedown of the article is more interesting than the article itself (and I actually like Taibbi, when he's not writing about finance):
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/07/matt-tai...
In fact, when you read the article, you probably saw that she concluded it by saying that GS deserves the populist outrage (she hasn't been talking down the recent SEC suit, either). I think it's hard to argue that she's criticizing Taibbi because of ideology.
No, her problem with Taibbi is that he doesn't appear to know what he's talking about. These aren't critiques on "delivery". Taibbi's article is premised on the idea that GS orchestrates calamities to profit from them. He appears to have drawn that conclusion from the fact that GS has survived many calamities. But McArdle appears to be correct: GS survives calamities because they don't go all-in the way firms like Lehman, Bear, and (it's alleged) Merrill did.
If GS is no worse than Lehman, Merrill, Morgan, or Citi, Taibbi's argument is damaged. If GS comes out ahead of them because it acted more carefully and less irresponsibly than those banks, Taibbi's argument is more or less destroyed. The fact that Taibbi doesn't seem to know the difference between a CDO and an IRS is amusing but besides the point.