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Easy Street

Easy Street: Goldman Sachs’ No Good, Very Bad Day

Heidi Moore May 12, 2011

Easy Street is Marketplace’s daily roundup of the most interesting news stories and commentary about Wall Street, Washington and the curious world of finance. You can see more of what we think are the biggest stories of the day on our News in Brief page. Every day, you can download Marketplace’s daily show on iTunes and follow us for more headlines at twitter.com/mktplaceradio. If you want to listen to Marketplace on the radio, find out [which stations carry us and what time we’re on](().

Markets

The pain of paying” is apparently why oil is up and silver and housing are down.

Banks

Goldman Sachs is having a rough week, with downgrades, an embarrassing connection to Raj Rajaratnam and more. Shares are down 4% today.

Related: The greatest hits of Lucas Van Praag, the firm’s hyperliterate spokesman and great stylist of insults.

The freakish resemblances between the actors in HBO’s Too Big to Fail and the Stewards of Capital that they are meant to represent.

Hedge Funds

They can take Raj Rajaratnam’s freedom, but they can’t take his money.

A handy list of the top 25 biggest hedge funds. Study it like you’re a prosecutor. Also, ponder the mystifying exclusion of the $13 billion, powerful hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors.

Related: Per Fortune’s Katie Benner: “Steve Cohen likes: The thrill of the trade, collecting great art. Pet peeve: Insider trading.”

The Washington Matrix

Sheila Bair is the chair of the FDIC. She is leaving in July. Until then, she is shooting out public statements with kamikaze courage. She broke with Congress today to prevent the whitewash of the mortgage crisis.

Pots & Kettles

“Facebook believes Google is doing some things in social networking that raise privacy concerns.

Related: This.

Related: A Bloomberg Businessweek profile of Sheryl Sandberg, the “adult” at Facebook. When she has cried at the office, Mark Zuckerberg offers her a hug.

Related: “The NEW tech bubble,” except not new, in the sense that no one has talked of anything else for nearly a year straight now.

Recreational Reading

Osama Bin Laden kept a journal (“Dear Diary: America is mean! I can’t wait until I get a job and don’t have to listen to them any more!”) and considered Vice President Joe Biden beneath assassinating.

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