Would Goldman Sachs have crumbled if AIG were allowed to default? The company claims it was properly hedged, but it stretches credibility to believe this given (1) its massive exposure to AIG and (2) the state of the financial markets at the time.
This is true, not just for GS, but for almost any other financial firm and bank in the United States. In that sense, we all, including end consumers, enjoyed the benefits of TARP bailouts - assuming that without them and policies related to them, the entire financial system would collapse and drop the US to something like the great depression or worse.
GS practically set up AIG to collapse. You might say that's just business, but you have got to be kidding me if you think GS didn't see major ramifications for the economy and predict some kind of governmental assistance. (Normally, if AIG was less entangled with all of the Street and had failed on its own, GS would have have simply lost a bundle on all of its credit default swaps).