Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs.There is a line of thinking that nothing can be done purely selflessly, because even charity inspires a positive self-image.  Anyone who believes that will be giddy to learn that Goldman Sachs is considering getting into philanthropy.  Nothing like charity designed to misdirect attention away from the stuff that inspires people to become pitchfork wielding mobs, which is the express purpose according to a senior level executive:

Goldman fears a public and political backlash when it awards what may be record bonuses this year. It is searching for ways to mute the outcry from those who believe it is inappropriate for a firm that received billions in taxpayer support to pay its employees tens of billions in bonuses.

It's been a bad year for Goldman publicity, what with the whole "vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money" thing, but this just feels like a token.  They want to donate 10-15% of their bonus pool to charity, yet that amounts to $1 billion dollars of a $23 billion dollar payroll, or less that 5% of total payroll.  Their biggest worry, though, is that money given to charity will actually hurt the firm's taxes:

Goldman has a very low tax rate, thanks to its brilliant accountants.  It is unlikely to be able to acheive much value by making a tax-deductable charitable donation, particularly if the donation goes to a charitable foundation Goldman controls.  When asked if they realized that this sounded a bit silly, the former Goldman executive said that not giving away value was a point of pride for Goldman.

The executives are concerned that because they are so good at dodging their taxes a non-profit has a higher tax rate than Goldman!  Considering that Goldman paid $18 million in taxes last year, that isn't so surprising, but it does paint their publicity stunt charitable foundation in a new light.  I suppose it's better than nothing, like when the king let's you eat his leftovers after he killed your cow to make the dinner in the first place.  I don't think that Goldman actually believes the public is going to change their minds about the company at this point, so their only goal is to placate people just enough that tough new financial rules don't happen.  In that at least, this is probably going to be a smashing success.