The timeline goes much longer, and the involvement much deeper. As for the timeline, former treasury secretaries Summers and Rubin were both at high-level positions at Goldman, Rubin actually was co-CEO. Then Friedman (his "co") who is Republican worked as chief advisor for Bush. Then Paulson, who as you said also was Goldman CEO. Now we got the Rubin people in there again, Geithner was his protege at treasury (as Rubin himself says in his autobiography) and Summers (now chief advisor to Obama) was Rubin's protege at Goldman. Note that Goldman paid out about 10 or 11 billion in 2008 for compensation, in the same year it received about the same sum officially (i.e. not counting the AIG shadow payments). Someone on a panel once said that if this same thing happened not in the US but some "developing" country, we would now hear big lectures about "crony capitalism". I used to admire Rubin and Goldman but this does not look good. This looks like Russian oligarchs, just in a richer country.