April, 29, 2010

Last week, White House officials quietly approached leading financial firms seeking formal letters of support for a Congressional overhaul of financial regulations, Eric Lichtblau and Eric Dash report in The New York Times. One Wall Street powerhouse was left off the list: Goldman Sachs.Given the government’s lawsuit against Goldman, “the message,” said a financial industry executive involved in the discussions about the White House solicitation, “was that Goldman’s opinion doesn’t matter and that it would be negative if Goldman was supportive of what we were doing.”

Goldman Sachs employs perhaps the country’s most well-connected stable of Washington lobbyists, and it spent $2.8 million last year to bend the ear of federal officials and lawmakers. But the pounding the investment firm has taken in recent days has left it sidelined — at least in public — as Congress moves toward a decision that could reshape the very industry it rules.