Goldman Sachs (GS) retains its status as the juggernaut of Wall Street. The firm this morning announced earnings of $7.01 a share which beat - again - analysts’ expectations. Not that it will earn Goldman any friends among investors: The stock declined in early trade Tuesday. A big chunk of the earnings growth came from Goldman’s investment banking unit, and it’s a reasonable bet that the deal flow will slow next year; presumably that assumption is behind Wall Street’s tepid response.

Does Goldman care? Probably not. In a stunning act of confidence, the firm is reportedly also launching a new hedge fund, with between $6 billion and $10 billion in funds; the latter figure would make it the largest hedge fund debut in history. Bloomberg got hold of the fund’s marketing material, which boasts that if the current fund “had operated since the beginning of 2004, it would have returned 18 percent a year on average through August 2007.” That’s an interesting cutoff point. As a writer at 24/7 Wall St. is rude enough to point out, the Goldman Global Alpha Fund lost 37 percent of its value through November 30.

Goldman Sachs (GS) continues to amaze. An article in The Wall Street Journal says the firm made $4 billion this past summer betting against subprime mortgages. Much has been made already of the firm’s achievement in turning in record results while its peers were taking steep losses. But Friday’s piece notes that while the decision to short subprime-related securities was made in part by finance chief David Viniar, the firm’s managers actually limited Goldman’s profits on the subprime wager by repeatedly pulling back in the name of risk management.

The piece also provides more fodder for critics who wonder about conflicts of interest at Goldman. How, these people ask, can Goldman sell clients risky debt while its own traders are reaping billions of dollars betting that the value of that debt would fall? But for now the bottom line seems to be, as Fortune’s Peter Eavis wrote in September, that Goldman has some mysterious knack for having its biggest bets work out.

Stocks staggered out of the gate Thursday as central bankers failed to ease a severe credit crunch. Interest rates on some loans stayed at a seven-year high despite Wednesday’s high-profile global liquidity booster, Bloomberg reported. Fortune’s Peter Eavis had warned that the Fed’s bid to loosen up credit markets could backfire, and other market watchers were similarly skeptical, with some dubbing the worldwide effort “global coordinated panic.“

The panic led to a stampede out of financial stocks Thursday morning, as Lehman Brothers (LEH) dropped 2 percent in spite of better-than-expected earnings and bond insurer Security Capital (SCA) plunged 26 percent on worries that it won’t be able to raise enough capital to forestall a possible ratings downgrade. Even beloved Goldman Sachs (GS) saw its shares drop, in spite of a heartwarming report in the FT that CEO Lloyd Blankfein is looking at a $70 million payday this holiday season. That leads to a question that’s clearly on everyone’s mind: What will Ben Stein say?