Goldman Sachs entered 2010 as one of the most admired and most reviled institutions in American finance simultaneously — a distinction that required a particular kind of excellence to maintain. The firm had navigated the 2008 financial crisis with its reputation for raw intelligence intact, accepted government assistance in the form of TARP funds, repaid them quickly, and then paid eye-watering bonuses to its employees in 2009 while the broader economy was still in emergency.

Matt Taibbi's famous Rolling Stone characterization of Goldman as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money" was wildly colorful and wildly popular — generating more public discussion of the firm's role in the financial crisis than any white paper or congressional testimony had managed.

The portrait that emerged from the accumulated reporting of 2009-2010 was of a firm that had genuinely brilliant people, a culture of extreme internal competition, and a business model that derived much of its value from its proximity to — and influence over — the regulatory and policy environment. Goldman alumni populated the highest levels of American financial regulation and central banking with a consistency that invited questions about whose interests those institutions ultimately served.

The SEC's fraud case against Goldman over the Abacus CDO — charging that the firm had helped a hedge fund bet against a mortgage product while selling that product to other clients — was settled in 2010 for $550 million without admission of wrongdoing. For Goldman, the settlement was approximately two weeks' revenue. For the public, it remained a symbol of accountability's limits.

Understanding Goldman Sachs meant understanding a great deal about how modern finance worked — and why so many people felt, correctly or not, that it worked primarily for those already inside it.