Goldman Sachs’ restraint on rewards is too little, too late

Goldman Sachs’ decision to restrict its annual bonus pool to $16.2bn (rather than an expected $22bn or so) on the day that Barack Obama announced a sweeping set of Glass-Steagall like reforms that strike at the heart of its business model, turns out to be too little, too late.

Goldman and other Wall Street banks, which are good at making financial bets, have been bad at making political ones. In the wake of the Democrats’ loss of Edward Kennedy’s old Senate seat in Massachusetts, attacking Wall Street is the obvious way to change the subject.