Today, Goldman Sachs employee Greg Smith excoriated the investment bank in a New York Times op-ed, resigning due to the banks “toxic and destructive” culture, one in which the bank’s trading profits took precedence over its customers’ financial well-being. Goldman managers allegedly called customers “muppets,” and traders routinely asked how much was being made ripping off one customer or another.

Goldman has been quick to push back on Smith’s claims, portraying him as just a disgruntled employee. Some employees told Fox Business’ Charlie Gasparino that Smith doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he “never made more than $750,000 a year.”

And of course, the financial press has begun reporting anonymous attacks on Smith, quoting “people familiar with the matter” saying that Smith was angry with the size of his bonus and his lack of promotion:

– The Wall Street Journal reported that “people familiar with the matter” said that Smith is just miffed that his bonus was small: “The circumstances of Mr. Smith’s departure aren’t entirely clear. When Goldman doled out annual bonuses earlier this year, Mr. Smith’s small payment became a point of friction, according to people familiar with the matter.”

– Forbes’ Nathan Vardi wrote that Smith is just “having a midlife crisis“: “Smith is not the first person who wants to tell his former bosses to shove it. He is also not a whistleblower.”

The financial prognosticators at CNBC decided to mock Smith, saying that he would go form a media firm with Rolling Stone writer and staunch Goldman critic Matt Taibbi and the characters from Sesame Street. CNBC also compared Smith to Tom Cruise’s character in Jerry Maguire, airing the clip of that film when Cruise asks “who’s coming with me?” repeatedly, with no one actually going with him. Fox Business, meanwhile, insinuated that Smith just left because he didn’t get a promotion and was paid a small bonus. Watch a compilation:

Bloomberg’s William Cohan, author of “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World,” said today that Smith is “now in the Witness Protection Program” due to his sure ostracism from Wall Street.

Republican presidential primary frontrunner Mitt Romney (R) is taking a break from the campaign trail a day after finishing third in the Alabama and Mississippi primaries, stopping in New York City for multiple fundraisers and a visit with campaign surrogate Donald Trump. Romney will attend three fundraisers and haul in an expected $2 million this week, bolstering a fundraising total that has already made him Wall Street’s favorite candidate.

More than any other institution on Wall Street, Romney has ties to Goldman Sachs, the firm that was slammed in a New York Times editorial this morning by a resigning executive director who decried the firm’s “toxic and destructive” culture. Romney and his wife, Ann, have investments in almost three-dozen Goldman Sachs funds valued between $17.7 million and $50.5 million, according to his personal financial disclosure forms.

No Wall Street bank has been as generous to Romney’s campaign, his leadership PAC, and the super PAC that backs him as Goldman. According to an analysis of Federal Election Commission reports, Goldman Sachs employees have given the Romney campaign more than $427,000 during the 2012 cycle, nearly twice as much as he has received from any other major Wall Street bank (Citigroup employees have given roughly $274,000 to Romney, the second-largest amount). According to OpenSecrets.org, total contributions to Romney from Goldman Sachs, its employees, and their immediate family members totals more than $521,000.

The Free And Strong America Leadership PAC, which is affiliated with the Romney campaign, has received $30,000 from Goldman Sachs employees during the 2012 cycle. Goldman employees and their spouses, meanwhile, have given $670,000 to Restore Our Future, the super PAC backing Romney.

After making billions of dollars in the run-up to the financial collapse of 2008, Goldman Sachs benefited from a federal bailout that saved Wall Street banks. The company, like other Wall Street firms, stood opposed to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act that was signed into law in 2010 and also fought regulations in contained, such as the Volcker Rule, which would prevent proprietary trading that made the bank billions but left taxpayers on the hook when it nearly collapsed. Romney has rarely missed a chance to tout his opposition to the law on the campaign trail, announcing that he’d repeal it even before he read it.

Apple raised eyebrows in January when it revealed that it was sitting on nearly $100 billion in cash, most of which it is holding overseas in order to avoid repatriation taxes it would have to pay should it bring the money back to the United States. Two months later, Apple’s stock market performance is raising eyebrows again, as Zero Hedge notes that the company is now bigger than the entire American retail sector:

A company whose value is dependent on the continued success of two key products, now has a larger market capitalization (at $542 billion), than the entire US retail sector (as defined by the S&P 500).

Apple has faced controversy about its international labor practices, including its outsourcing of jobs to other countries, and in response it issued a report early this month claiming credit for 514,000 American jobs. Though some disputed the report, Apple claimed it directly employs 47,000 Americans and estimates that the other 257,000 are employed by companies that make component parts, deliver the products, or are employed because of Apple’s effect on the economy.

Goldman Sachs executive director Greg Smith became a former Goldman Sachs executive director this morning after he penned a resignation letter in the New York Times that confirmed virtually every negative characterization of the bank. Smith slammed the “toxic and destructive” Goldman environment, in which directors referred to their clients as “muppets” and traders worried not about the interests of clients but about the size of their profits.

In the editorial, Smith described how Goldman’s thirst for profits at all costs developed:

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm…you will be promoted into a position of influence.

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

Perhaps unintentionally, Smith’s editorial made a compelling case for the Volcker Rule, an element of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act that would prohibit proprietary trading at federally-backstopped institutions. Banks like Goldman, which made billions of dollars by making “shitty deals” that sold mortgage-backed securities and other complex derivative products to unwitting customers then turned to taxpayers for a bailout when too many of those deals went sour, would no longer be able to make those trades without giving up access to the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending and the FDIC’s backing. (Remember, Goldman converted into a bank holding company at the height of the financial crisis, in order to access the Fed’s emergency lending programs.)

Predictably, the banking industry opposes the Volcker Rule and has spent the last two years trying to kill it. Bank lobbyists were able to water down the rule before it even became law and, since it passed, have attempted to make it even weaker, arguing that it will have substantial costs for the American economy.

In reality, the Volcker Rule shifts risky proprietary trading to actual investment firms, hedge funds, and other “small-enough-to-fail” institutions that, unlike banks, don’t have the backing of the federal government. That will undoubtedly make banks like Goldman Sachs smaller and less profitable. But as Smith made clear today, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Last week, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) signaled during an interview with Fox Business that he was open to reneging on the budget deal the GOP crafted with Democrats last year during the debacle over raising the nation’s debt ceiling. Though the parties agreed in that deal on a spending level for the 2013 budget, Boehner is being pushed by the more conservative members of his party to cut even deeper.

And according to Reuters, that pressure has paid off, as both Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-OH) are ready to cut below the level specified in the debt ceiling deal:

Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives are ready to break a hard-fought budget deal with Democrats as they try to quell a revolt by conservatives who are insisting on deeper spending cuts ahead of the November elections.

House Republican aides said on Tuesday that House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor were pressing for a modest $19 billion reduction of discretionary spending caps in this year’s Republican budget plan.

“I’m really disappointed that they’re considering a budget – violating the budget agreement that is now the law of this country. This was designed to avoid another government shutdown or a threat of a shutdown,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). “We had a deal last August on the budget numbers, and we expect them to live with that deal,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) has said. The end result of this standoff could be yet another impending government shutdown, as the government’s current spending authority expires on September 30.

Last year, Goldman Sachs faced a significant amount of heat when internal emails — in which, bankers described a financial product they sold to clients as a “shitty deal” — became public. Goldman trader Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre became the face of a bank that cared more about its own internal trading profits than serving the needs of its clients, as shown by an email of his stating that he didn’t even understand the “monstrosities” he was peddling.

In today’s New York Times, Goldman Sachs executive director Greg Smith confirmed this characterization of the bank, writing that he resigned from Goldman due to its “toxic and destructive” environment which included managing directors referring to their own clients as “muppets”:

Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money…It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail….These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?”

As Charles Elson, a professor of corporate governance at the University of Delaware, explained, “You make a much bigger buck on a transaction than on the long-term relationship…You have profiteers as opposed to advisers.” Goldman Sachs, of course, disputes Smith’s characterization of the bank, saying, “We disagree with the views expressed. … We will only be successful if our clients are successful.”

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has previously said that his firm is “doing God’s work.” However, it seems that the bank’s actual modus operandi is more akin to the description used by a former JP Morgan banker who lost faith in his industry: “I don’t say this lightly, but the consumer is simply an income stream and exploiting that is the purpose of the banking organization.”