"The End of Goldman Sachs"

According to George Soros, the world renown investor and philanthropist and one of the richest dudes on the planet, if President Obama’s proposed banking regulations go through, it will mean the “end of Goldman Sachs as we know it.”

Of course, Goldman and the rest of Wall Street will not go down without putting up a very good fight, which includes throwing the Prez and other government leaders a bone, such as this one tossed out this past weekend: Goldman decided to cap compensation across the ocean, restricting salary and bonus packages to $1.6 million per year for its London bankers (some select big-swinging traders may bank more than that).

In addition to Goldman, Wall Street banks like JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley are also attempting to allay the hate coming from Main Street for still making their employees millionaires after the taxpayer bailout helped them get back on their feet.

But the big problem, says Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, isn’t the size of the bonuses but the size of the assets. In a Q&A with The Atlantic, Simon echoes what many others have been saying for some time (including President Obama): The only way to reduce huge risk taking on Wall Street (and thus prevent financial crises in the future) is to reduce the size of the ‘Too big to fail’ banks.