Rolling Stone magazine is the kind of place where you are more likely to read about the on- and off-stage antics of Crosby Stills Nash and Young than a stirring 12-page attack on the world’s leading investment bank. But this month the magazine’s contributing editor Matt Taibbi has produced a savage indictment of Goldman Sachs, which has tongues wagging from Wall Street to Canary Wharf.

I’d love to be able to provide a link to the whole piece but it isn’t available online yet. Those old rock hacks still want you to buy the paper version for some real money. But you’ll get an idea of the tone from the first line. '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.'

And that’s one of the politer bits. Taibbi is effectively claiming that Goldman has got the whole game very nicely sorted in its favour. The article goes through a string of conspiracy theories surrounding Goldman's amazing knack of striking pay-dirt in both good times and bad, highlighting its supposed role in several past bubbles - including last year's run-up in oil prices, the tech-sector boom and bust at the turn of the century, and the current mortgage crisis.

Taibbi has obviously researched his subject long and hard, and he makes some stark claims: 'What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain - an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy… The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth - pure profit for rich individuals.' There's plenty more where this came from, but you get the picture.

Needless to say Goldman Sachs is not at all happy about this wave of bile. They like to be allowed to get on with making their oceans of cash behind closed doors in piece and quiet. You’re lucky if you get your call returned if you ever ring for information. But Rolling Stone has got them seriously riled, and they’re actually saying something in their defence.

The bank's spokesman, Lucas Van Praag, protested in an email: '[Taibbi's] story is an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories. Notable ones missing are Goldman Sachs as the third shooter [in JFK's assassination] and faking the first lunar landing.' (Being ironic is another first for an organisation not normally big on jokes, because they divert attention from the most important thing in life, i.e. boot-filling.) 'We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance in being a force for good,' Van Praag added.

Incidentally, today we hear that Goldman is on course to pay bonuses of $20bn (£12.2bn) this year, or a record £430,000 per employee. Plus ca change.

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Judgement Day for Arnie as California suffers 'fiscal emergency'
Editor's blog: Goldman Sachs, the 'great vampire squid'
PM seeks Brownie points with hi-tech fund
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