As if Goldman Sachs did not already have enough image problems as the biggest pig at the Wall Street trough, it is now the most serious contender for the 2009 Marie Antoinette Award, which recognizes singular achievements in out-of-touch condescension.

Goldman has made no secret of the fact that it has set aside some $16.7 billion to be paid out to its employees as bonuses for the year 2009.  Now, this is a pretty big pile of money to have amassed just one year after coming close to a meltdown and accepting government (i.e., taxpayer) funds.   In fact, it’s more than just pretty big, it’s obscene.

It’s big enough and obscene enough to make ordinary people who are struggling to find jobs, pay the bills, keep the house out of foreclosure, etc. want to do things to Goldman that usually only happen in chainsaw movies.  After all, these people figure, we pulled their butts out of the fire with taxpayer money and now they’re rubbing our noses in these outlandish bonuses only a year later.

These violent urges are compounded by the knowledge that Goldman’s excesses are part of what brought about the severe unemployment situation, the cratering housing market and the all but invisible credit market.

This rage is strong enough that it apparently has reached the ivory towers of the executive suites of Wall Street and caused some (minor) tremors.  What if the politicians who up to now have been in our pockets grab hold of this rage and use it to start fencing us in?  Or the more likely scenario: What if this rage becomes so strong that these politicians have no choice but to grab hold of it, even if they don’t want to leave our pockets?

In the face of this, Goldman’s CEO Lloyd Blankfein apologized, sort of.  Just recently he said, “We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret.  We apologize.”

But as we all know, words are cheap.  So Goldman decided to put some of its money where its mouth is.  It announced that it would be taking $500 million of that $16.7 billion and using it to support some 10,000 small businesses.  That is, it would take $100 million a year for 5 years to finance that support.

Do the calculation and you come up with 3% of the bonus pool.  I’m sure Goldman is hoping that this pittance will satisfy the rabble and calm them down. 

However, for a company that has no trouble whatsoever putting two and two together, it is likely that this gesture will prove to be a rather large miscalculation.  It’s hard to think of any act in the last few years that smacks more of “Let them eat cake” condescension.

And so, my friends, it is for these crumbs that Goldman is crowned the winner of the 2009 Marie Antoinette Award.  

May Goldman’s reputation for insufferable condescension live as long as the award’s namesake.  And may that reputation start to have a corrosive effect on the only place for which Goldman has any real feeling—its bottom line.

I have to admit I don’t know any sheep farmers, but even I know that it’s not customary for these folks to ask the wolf for suggestions about protecting the sheep.  Questions about fences and guard dogs are not something about which the farmer would consult with the predator.   This is not horse (or sheep) sense.  It’s just plain and simple common sense.

That is why I have to laugh whenever I read in the mainstream press about how Wall Street, meaning the big banks, is “resisting” new rules and tighter regulations in the aftermath of the catastrophic meltdown that the Street brought about.

My response to this “resistance” is quite simple: Who’s asking them what they think?  And why?

It doesn’t take an Einstein to figure out who the predators were in the events of the last few years.   And it certainly doesn’t take a genius to know who the prey was!

Yet, here we are a year after Lehman Brothers collapsed and we are no closer to tougher regulation for these predators than we were before. 

Can I understand that Wall Street would “resist” being overseen more stringently?  Of course. 

But in point of fact, the Street through its reckless machinations and “innovations” nearly brought this country’s and the global financial system to the very edge of the cliff.  The only reason all of us weren’t dragged along with Lehman was that the government pulled out all the stops to prevent it. 

Since it was the government that saved the butts of almost every major Wall Street firm and big bank, the government should be calling the shots when it comes to creating a system where these firms don’t carry us to the brink again. 

It’s a year later and here we are (in typical American fashion) marking the first anniversary of Lehman’s demise. And we’re doing it almost as a historical exercise. I fear we have already forgotten just how terrifying last September was and the stomach-churning that marked day after day of failures and bailouts.

There is yet another pocket of resistance to stricter regulation, greater consumer protection and restructuring the financial regulatory system, and that comes from the very regulators who failed us so terribly in the lead-up to September 2008.   None of these banking regulators wants to give up turf—not to another regulator or to a new agency with the express mandate of protecting consumers.   

My reaction both to Wall Street and Bernanke and Co. is ‘tough,’ a word the street knows and respects.

So I hope that President Obama is tough and means to follow through on his stern message to Wall Street on Sept. 14.  Speaking to those who “are misreading this moment” and “are choosing to ignore” the lessons of Lehman, the president said, “We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses. Those on Wall Street cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences, and expect that next time, American taxpayers will be there to break their fall.”

After what’s happened I don’t believe that firms should even have the option of “choosing to ignore” the past. Recklessness and malfeasance have to have their consequences.

Settling for anything less, and especially to placate Wall Street, is the equivalent of putting the farmer inside the fence, while the sheep are left on the outside with the wolves.

I can’t remember for a fact, but it seems to me that I’ve already used the mythic image of Sisyphus to describe the life insurance industry’s seemingly doomed challenge of getting Congress to approve an optional federal charter.  Just when the king of Corinth gets the stone almost to the top of the hill, down it goes. 

So, not to repeat ourselves, let’s turn to another myth to describe where the industry is now in what has come to be a decade-long quest.  My Webster’s gives this description of Tantalus: “a son of Zeus, doomed in the lower world to stand in water that always recedes when he tries to drink it and under branches of fruit that always remain just out of reach.”

Needless to say this is where the word tantalizing comes from.  And tantalizing is a good word for how the life business (or at least many of its companies) sees the prospect of an optional federal charter.  We’re not really sure how it’s going to work, but we know we’re going to like it. 

Actually, not knowing how it’s going to work may be part of the attraction for these companies, since they feel they are quite familiar with what they perceive as the clunkiness and annoyance of state insurance regulation.

There’s another factor going on here.  In two words: Regulatory envy. 

Life insurers are such a well-behaved bunch, but among those businesses that are financial colossi (banks, mutual funds, life insurers), they get the least respect.  This, of course, brings to mind another mythic figure: Rodney Dangerfield.

Life insurers look at banks, for instance, and are just green over the fact that banks can pick their charter and thus choose to be either federally or state regulated.  And if they choose to be federally regulated, boy oh boy, what a bag of goodies that brings with it.  Banks don’t have to be well-behaved, always minding their P’s & Q’s.  Banks can do all sorts of things that life insurers in their wildest dreams wouldn’t think of doing and their regulators will usually cheer them on or, at the very least, bite their tongues. 

Life just isn’t fair when you don’t have a federal regulator in your court.

So, what happens when-once again–the water seems to be within the reach of Tantalus?  What else?  The New York Times writes an editorial saying in effect that drinking the water is the worst thing that could happen anyway for poor old Tant and everybody else.

And so on May 21 the Times blasted the OFC bill introduced by Rep. Melissa Bean, D-Ill., and Rep. Ed Royce, R-Cal., saying, “If the bill were enacted, the race to the regulatory depths would continue, and the nation would be headed in exactly the wrong regulatory direction.”

Needless to say, those officials who have been doing the heavy lifting on this issue for years reacted with fury.  The Times “has it wrong,” said the American Council of Life Insurers.  The “editorial is misleading at best,” said a spokesman for the Financial Services Roundtable.  

Pretty strong words for organizations that usually step more gingerly when criticizing the newspaper of record.  

Then, providentially it would seem, the very next day Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., introduced his own bill that creates an Office of Insurance Information in the Treasury Department. The OII is often seen as a precursor to an OFC, a foot in the door of federal regulation, so to speak.  Life insurance officials applauded.

This bad news-good news rhythm should now be second nature to the life industry in regard to an OFC. And as every setback makes the prospect of success so much more tantalizing, the water seems more and more like nectar and the fruit positively ambrosial.