...of the article is this one:

Asked if Goldman Sachs would be the first financial institution to return funds granted by the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program, Mr. Cohn said he didn't know, adding that he couldn't speak for the other banks that had accepted TARP money. He also said he would be surprised if any institution repaid TARP funds "until ... stress tests and first-quarter earnings are out of the way."

Mr. Cohn also said Goldman wouldn't have lost money had insurer American International Group been allowed to fail. He said the firm's greatest exposure at any one time was about $2.5 billion and that Goldman's credit-default swaps and collateral would have covered those sums in the event of default. "We would have been 100% fine," he said.

Fund manager George Soros dismissed many of the proposals discussed at the conference as "tinkering." Mr. Soros sought a thorough overhaul of regulation of the markets. "The idea that the markets are self-correcting has been proven false. ... The market, rather than reflecting the underlying reality, is always distorting it."

1. It turns out that there are things that are too big to NOT let fail.

2. Soros is correct on that point.

3. The WSJ has a quaint addiction to pointilist portraiture. Do they think it makes them look less dorky?

...screen my comedians with a fine-toothed comb for detailed factuality, you see. I'm more interested in whether they made me laugh.