Goldman Sachs

By Megan Murphy, Justin Baer, Francesco Guerrera, Patrick Jenkins, Jeremy Grant, Martin Arnold and Sam Jones

Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- There's one glaring weakness in Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's plan to save the U.S. financial system: We know what the plan is. Any other problems with it are mere details.

Much like the credo of Brad Pitt's character in the 1999 movie ``Fight Club,'' the first rule of market manipulation is you don't talk about market manipulation.

Few things stir the blood more than Wall Street firms getting into a good old scrap. Put aside the internecine squabbling at Morgan Stanley - they don't come much better than the current dust-up between Citigroup (metals "super cycle") and Goldman Sachs (oil "super spike"), and Merrill Lynch - whose chief equity strategist, David Bowers, on Monday poured water on the idea of what he described as a resources bubble.

In the highly unlikely event that Goldman Sachs loses $500m in its fourth quarter, which closes this week, it is sobering to think that it would still make record profits this year. Despite mediocre market conditions, a mild slowdown in the fixed-income markets, and the failure of the equities and merger and acquisitions businesses to recover, Goldman Sachs made more money in the first nine months than in any previous year.

Eric Mindich, a former star Goldman Sachs trader, has succeeded in launching a hedge fund of more than $3bn (€2.3bn), one of the largest start-up funds on record. The successful start of Eton Park Capital comes despite heavy fees and other difficult terms for potential investors, according to The Wall Street Journal. James Hedges, president of LJH Global Investments, which invests in hedge funds and advises clients told The Wall Street Journal: "This is certainly the largest new fund I've seen in the last 15 years.