The New York Times is reporting that all though the bailout process, Hank Paulson was consulting daily, and in some cases hourly, with Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, despite ethics requirements, and promises to Congress during his confirmation hearing, that would mandate that he keep the firm at arm’s length.

What’s more, he did not have similar conversations with any of the other investment firms.

It should be noted that many of these conversations were during the initial resolution of the AIG crisis, where the decision to honor what were clearly fraudulent credit default swap (CDS) contracts kept Goldman, and the rest of the Wall Street solvent, and out of government hands, protecting their high paying jobs.

Seriously, whether or not you want to go after Bush and His Evil Minions^™ for things like torture, which we should, this is garden variety corruption, and not criminalizing policy, and should be pursued to the fullest extent of the law.

H/T The Big Picture.