Why not a sort of divestment campaign aimed at Goldman Sachs? I think progressively minded pension plans are uniquely positioned to strike a blow for justice in the present instance.
We have a firm being endlessly subsidized by direct bailout, indirect bailout (via AIG), and artificially low treasury rates that allow "banks" such as Goldman rebuild their balance sheets without any real risk. Meanwhile, taxpayers had to pay directly for the first two and are paying indirectly for the third in foregone interest on their savings.
Having been complicit in the inflation and subsequent detonation of equity markets, Goldman seemed to escape without many scratches (witness recent mega-profits). On the other hand you have etirees and pension benificiaries who had to take forced withdrawls from plans were irreparably harmed by selling assets at panic-fueled lows, thus hurting future accumulations and increasing the real risk of outliving their retirement funds.
All this says nothing of gross misbehavior, be it selling unnecessary interest rate swaps to unsophisticated pension funds and municipalitie or trading against clients without disclosure.
As dirty laundry is aired and the prospect of a criminal indictment appears, we really should be asking why any right-thinking fiduciary should have anything to do with a firm that has squandered whatever trust it once deserved and may well have engaged in outright criminality.
Pensions trustees should reject any advisory overtures from the Goldman, and refuse to provide the firm any financing (they are quite dependent on low-cost short term financing in the form of repos, unsecured borrowings, and hybrids). I would also urge that plan trustees make similar demands of the managements of other corporations when voting proxies.
The immiseration of real individuals can be directly traced back to Goldman Sachs' questionable - possibly criminal - conduct these past several years.
Boycott Goldman Sachs.