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.

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 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.”

Goldman Sachs is one of the U.S.’s most profitable companies, making, in the last three years, profits of $13.9 billion, $8.5 billion, and $4.4 billion, even as the country grappled with the effects of the Great Recession. But despite these sky-high profits, the state of Utah is still seeing fit to give the mega-bank tens of millions of dollars to create jobs:

Goldman will receive an estimated $47.3 million from Utah over a 20-year period in the form of a 30 percent tax rebate, according to Governor’s Office of Economic Development.

In exchange, the bank agreed to maintain at least 1,065 employees in Salt Lake City and pay them at least 150 percent of the average local county salary.

State legislatures can’t seem to help themselves when it comes to doling out tax breaks in order to create or preserve jobs, but the history of such policy should act as a warning. For instance, Illinois doled out millions in subsidies to Sears, only to have the retailer layoff 100 workers last month. Boeing not only received a slew of tax credits from Wichita, Kansas, but had Kansas lawmakers lobby for it to receive billions in federal contracts: the company will leave Wichita at the end of 2013, costing thousands of jobs.

And the list goes on and on. The Des Moines Register found that “15 [Iowa] companies enjoying tax credit dollars given to them by the state have defaulted on the job-creation requirements tied to those credits.” Louisiana doles out hundreds of millions in tax credits to businesses, with no clue as to whether or not they create jobs.

As Citizens for Tax Justice noted, “the reasons for these failures should be obvious. When the economy is weak, businesses generally can’t sell as much of their product as they used to. You can throw money at them and ask them to hire more people, but ultimately it doesn’t make sense for a company to bring on more employees unless there’s some new, unmet demand that needs to be filled.” But states continue to try this failed strategy, with Utah giving a humongous investment bank millions of dollars in the hopes that it will bring some of “god’s work” to the Beehive State. (HT: Jess Kutch)

The Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York City more than three weeks ago have now spread across the country. The choice of Wall Street as the focal point for the protests — as even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said — makes sense due to the big bank malfeasance that led to the Great Recession.

While the Dodd-Frank financial reform law did a lot to ensure that a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis won’t occur — through regulation of derivatives, a new consumer protection agency, and new powers for the government to dismantle failing banks — the biggest banks still have a firm grip on the financial system, even more so than before the 2008 financial crisis. Here are eleven facts that you need to know about the nation’s biggest banks:

– Bank profits are highest since before the recession…: According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., bank profits in the first quarter of this year were “the best for the industry since the $36.8 billion earned in the second quarter of 2007.” JP Morgan Chase is currently pulling in record profits.

– …even as the banks plan thousands of layoffs: Banks, including Bank of America, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and Credit Suisse, are planning to lay off tens of thousands of workers.

– Banks make nearly one-third of total corporate profits: The financial sector accounts for about 30 percent of total corporate profits, which is actually down from before the financial crisis, when they made closer to 40 percent.

– Since 2008, the biggest banks have gotten bigger: Due to the failure of small competitors and mergers facilitated during the 2008 crisis, the nation’s biggest banks — including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo — are now bigger than they were pre-recession. Pre-crisis, the four biggest banks held 32 percent of total deposits; now they hold nearly 40 percent.

– The four biggest banks issue 50 percent of mortgages and 66 percent of credit cards: Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup issue one out of every two mortgages and nearly two out of every three credit cards in America.

– The 10 biggest banks hold 60 percent of bank assets: In the 1980s, the 10 biggest banks controlled 22 percent of total bank assets. Today, they control 60 percent.

– The six biggest banks hold assets equal to 63 percent of the country’s GDP: In 1995, the six biggest banks in the country held assets equal to about 17 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. Now their assets equal 63 percent of GDP.

– The five biggest banks hold 95 percent of derivatives: Nearly the entire market in derivatives — the credit instruments that helped blow up some of the nation’s biggest banks as well as mega-insurer AIG — is dominated by just five firms: JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo.

– Banks cost households nearly $20 trillion in wealth: Almost $20 trillion in wealth was destroyed by the Great Recession, and total family wealth is still down “$12.8 trillion (in 2011 dollars) from June 2007 — its last peak.”

– Big banks don’t lend to small businesses: The New Rules Project notes that the country’s 20 biggest banks “devote only 18 percent of their commercial loan portfolios to small business.”

– Big banks paid 5,000 bonuses of at least $1 million in 2008: According to the New York Attorney General’s office, “nine of the financial firms that were among the largest recipients of federal bailout money paid about 5,000 of their traders and bankers bonuses of more than $1 million apiece for 2008.”

In the last few decades, regulations on the biggest banks have been systematically eliminated, while those banks engineered more and more ways to both rip off customers and turn ever-more complex trading instruments into ever-higher profits. It makes perfect sense, then, that a movement calling for an economy that works for everyone would center its efforts on an industry that exemplifies the opposite.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein

Wall Street is planning to lay off thousands of workers in a supposedly underperforming quarter, and Goldman Sachs is no exception, saying that it plans to cut $1.2 billion in costs by laying off 1,000 people, roughly 3 percent of its workforce. The mega-bank is also going after small savings by downsizing its drinking cups.

Even plants aren’t safe from the bank’s tightened budget. The London office removed potted plants, reportedly causing “disquiet” among employees and led “to a stand-off between the plant pickers and staff.” Morgan Stanley has also cut back on office foliage, while Bank of America skipped an annual field day.

However, the real measure of whether Wall Street is serious about cutting costs will be if bonuses go down during lean times. And so far, the chances do not look good. The New York Times’ Dealbook reports that banks, including Goldman, have set aside $65.69 billion for bonuses at the end year, an 8 percent increase over last year:

Wall Street executives are also preparing their staffs for smaller year-end bonuses, although the change is not yet reflected in the expenses. During the first six months of the year Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America set aside $65.69 billion to cover compensation and benefits, up 8 percent from a year ago, according to data provided by Nomura. But financial firms tend to wait until the fourth quarter to make the call on the annual payouts.

Unless Goldman and other banks follow up a tough season by handing out smaller bonuses later this year, its cost-saving initaitves are only superficial. A group of shareholders challenged the Goldman board of directors for showing “scant regard” for their interests, having handed out billions in bonuses the same year it received federal aid. Goldman won a dismissal of the case yesterday.

The bonuses may have been a part of “God’s work,” which Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein claimed to be doing in 2009, but if Goldman practiced the same austerity toward bonuses that it did toward office plants, it could afford to keep both its employees and its 12 ounce cups.

– Rebecca Leber