This is a great piece by New York Times reporter Gretchen Morgenson. It shows that then Treasury secretary and former Goldman Sachs  CEO, Henry Paulson, contacted his successor at Goldman Sachs, Lloyd C. Blankfein, over a dozen times in the week that A.I.G. was rescued. Thirteen billion of the $ 85 bln aid for A.I.G. went straight to Goldman Sachs, which had already pressed A.I.G. for an a$ 7 billion worth of collateral in the weeks before the rescue operation, prompting the insurer’s fall. If A.I.G. had not been rescued in September 2008, Goldman Sachs probably would not have been around either.

A week ago the director of communications of the New York Fed went out of his way to convince me that there had been no meeting between Paulson and Blankfein or Geithner (then governor of the New York Fed) and Blankfein to discuss the A.I.G. rescue. He sure won’t like today’s report in The New York Times.

The article also confirms that Goldman Sachs was in deep trouble in September 2008. After all, the reason that Henry Paulson received a waiver was not the A.I.G. bailout but the possible bailout of Goldman Sachs.