Goldman Sachs to Blame for Every Market Crash in the Last Decade?

A Rolling Stone magazine expose has recently declared Goldman Sachs to blame for every market crash since 1920.

Matt Taibbi, author of the article “The Great American Bubble Machine: How Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression,” holds nothing back from his opinion of the investment bank. “The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” he says.

Taibbi maintains that the 140-year old company has helped to create the five major asset bubbles in recent history–including the Wall Street debacle that led to the Great Depression–and is working on another.

Other “bubbles” that Taibbi cites include the technology stock crash of the late 1990s, the housing crisis of the past decade, last summer’s oil inflation, and the bank bailout of last year.

Taibbi has spawned a great deal of controversy with his research. Goldman Sachs is naturally in an uproar, calling the piece “an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories.” If Taibbi is wrong, it obviously is quite a claim to make; however, should he be right, the company would surely issue an identical statement, as Taibbi has made it out to be quite a master of deception.

The recent bank bailout, for example, can be attributed to strategically-placed Goldman Sachs people inside the government, orchestrating a massive conspiracy, or “rigging the bailout,” according to Taibbi.

After reading Taibbi’s article, many points do seem quite plausible. Is he, or could he be, right in his claims? Or is Matt Taibbi just another voice in a long line of conspiracy theorists?