Last week, Goldman Sachs was calling for more government regulation of the financial industry, as they recognized that it would ultimately benefit them, as more regulation benefited Philip Morris, and more recently, the major pharmaceutical companies.

Now, Goldman Sachs has been accused of fraud by the SEC, for of all things, failure to disclose conflicts of interest. Funny how that works. This company is so tight with both major parties that they are openly contemptuous of the investigation, so certain are they that the charges won't stick. However, I think they might be in for more trouble than they realize, or at least I hope so, as the moves of this company and its former officers as recent US Treasury Secretaries helped lead the U.S. economy to the brink of collapse.

That being said, I don't see them as being affected too much by this, other than taking a temporary prestige hit, and their position as the preeminent investment bank won't change, owing to their political connections (check out donor records for U.S. Senators to get an idea of how much these guys make it rain for Senatorial campaigns). They will end up coming out ahead if the financial overhaul working its way through the Senate comes to fruition, and this SEC move might even be a calculated gambit on their part to help encourage the Senate to pass a reform bill that will ultimately benefit them more than anyone else, as the government will do the hard and expensive work of due diligence in evaluating other firms more fully that will only help Goldman make more informed investments in the end.