Does Goldman Sachs manipulate financial bubbles?

In the most recent issue of Rolling Stone, columnist Matt Taibbi has written a piece suggesting that Goldman Sachs has not only profited from the cyclic financial "bubble" phenomenon in this country, but may be actively contibuting top the creation and exacerbation of these events.

He doesn't rely on gentle persuasion:

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They've been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they're preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.

He doesn't discuss the 1920s and 1930s, focusing instead on the dot-com boom/bust, the oil price boom/bust, and the housing boom/bust, then details the degree to which Goldman Sachs (and its former employees) have influence in government positions.

Rather than continue excerpting, I'll just let you read the rest, if you're interested. I'll add that Crooks and Liars had a piece this weekend that's relevant to Taibbi's assertions:

The NYSE announced that it will no longer be releasing its weekly program trading data. This is quiet obviously a move designed to make it even more impossible to track what's going on in the NYSE and shield, in particular, Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs has said the Rolling Stone article is "an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories." I'll file this under that heading, with my tongue planted in my cheek.