Relations between the banks, the US Government and the public are now in new and dangerous territory with the New York Post reporting that Goldman Sachs used police barricades and called in bomb-sniffing dogs when it announced its record $4.95 billion earnings result. So while the rest of America is struggling, Goldman Sachs continues to rake it in. And in a nice bit of public relations manipulation, Goldman Sachs departed from the industry's practice of ear-marking half its revenues for compensation and actually subtracted $5500 million from its pay pool. Given that its employees are getting a whopping $16.2 billion, it's an exercise that the public is likely to ignore.

More to the point, if the banks had heeded the warnings 12 months ago and reduced their bonuses, and instead re-directed some of their multi-billion dollar profits into loans for businesses, they wouldn't be copping a tax the Obama administration now wants to impose on them. And Goldman Sachs wouldn't need to call in the sniffer dogs.