Also. Businesses make bets. GS made a bet on consumer finance and on this deal in particular. You hope that every bet will work out, you know some won't and that's fine as long as you have more wins than losses. GS seems fine holistically so seems like they are taking a calculated amount of risk.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GS/goldman-sachs/n...
I would bet Apple's profits are far more resilient than Goldman's.
read here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemically_important_financi...
Just a lower level of accountability, no matter what. Compared to risks they decíde and keep.
I read that to mean they can decide the revenue/profit, but now I think you meant that they have a certain minimum amount of revenue/profit due to government subsidy, which is probably true.
Not sure your overall point but sounds like you're somehow processing the world through both "it's physically impossible for GS to lose money" and "they lost money haha" lens without realizing those things are at odds and one mustn't be true.