Goldman's Bailout Fee : The king of Wall Street thrives in an era of symbolic reform.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Maybe the best way to think about the $550 million is as Goldman's bailout fee—a political reckoning for the assistance Goldman received during the financial crisis. The cash that poured into Goldman from AIG after the government took over the insurer in September 2008 came at a crucial time as the panic was building. The firm was also able to transform itself into a commercial bank holding company over a weekend and thus avail itself of the Federal Reserve in order to survive the panic. In that sense, $550 million and a legal slap on the wrist are a too-big-to-fail bargain. (Mid-size finance companies in Cleveland should not try this at home.)

In a symbolic sense, then, the Goldman case is something of a prototype of the relationship between Washington and Wall Street we are likely to see even more of in a Dodd-Frank world. More mutually dependent than ever, neither side wants to see the other be too humiliated, much less to fail. Goldman lives to prosper again, as long as Washington gets its cut. Now that the SEC's symbolic legal threat has been removed, the king of Wall Street is ready to thrive in an era of symbolic reform.