"Certain things in life are certain," moans the Countess du Ruel, "like death, taxes and Goldman Sachs' greed." Rolling Stone magazine took the bull by the horns last summer when it described "Golden Stacks" as a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." Goldman doesn't mind what people say. These Harvard Business alums are smart enough to know that if they keep their heads down during the hail storm of abuse, things will eventually get back to bonuses as usual.

Knight Frank, the top-end estate agent, has announced that sales of £5 million houses are soaring, mostly to Goldman Sachs employees. This, along with the fact that luxury goods are selling out and champagne bars and swanky restaurants are packed, makes us wonder: did the banking crisis really happen?

This week Goldman, who had led the cast of banking penitents (pilgrim repenters), forgot all about its recent public mea culpa and announced that its 31,700 staff would share a bonus pool of $16.7 billion for their work over the past nine months. This works out at £430,000 per employee. (And, saints that they are, they announce they'll give to charitable causes. What public spirit! Do they really think they are fooling anyone?) This actually boils down to a few thousand for secretaries and tens of millions for the "big swinging dicks".

Richard Gnoddle, a co-chief executive of Goldman Sachs International, explained it this way: "In our industry, our compensation is our principal and overwhelming significant operating expense. (I love the way he makes compensation a corporate expense!) We're not paying for big steel furnaces or car manufacturing facilities. It's our people – that's our expense. It's not as if it's easy to make this money. It's a tough, competitive world." 

It's certainly tough for the rest of us to make money. But does this man really believe his own mantra? None of us believe it. These crocodile-skinned vampires are impervious to criticism. As they say, with saints like this, who needs the devil? There should be a new film, The Devil Joins Goldman.

Is this bank too clever and too greedy? Is there anything that will stop it? Is it totally shameless? One exec justified the return of the big bonus at Goldman on these grounds: Goldman is adequately capitalised, its return in the last quarter was a hefty 21.4%, and its compensations are structured in the "right way". Excuse me while I am sick.

And after all £2 billion will go to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

It really looks like these paragons of virtue and spawn of Harvard Business School, where most of them were suckled, really don't get it: that they have become symbols of self-interest, greed, social indifference, and what's wrong with the world. I can't imagine any child saying, "my father works for Goldman Sachs," without blushing with shame. Or any young man shaking hands with a big smile saying, "I work for Goldman Sachs." Most Europeans think that employees of Goldman should be in the stockade...if not the Bastille."

One wonders if there is an initiation ceremony at Goldman when they actually sell their souls in return for pieces of silver. I think of Signorelli's Judgement Day painted on the chapel ceiling of the Duomo in Orvieto. On the right the angels are welcoming souls into Heaven, and on the left the sinners are being ushered by devils into Hell. I wonder if these Masters of the Universe ever look beyond their champagne corks toward their ultimate future? 

After all it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.