With Jon Corzine losing the governorship of New Jersey yesterday, it was yet another bad day for former heads of Goldman Sachs. It’s worth running down the list, since the venerable pairing of John Weinberg and John Whitehead came to an end in 1990.

First up there was the pairing of Robert Rubin and Stephen Friedman. Both of them attempted to become venerable eminences grises, but neither succeeded, in the end. Friedman became chairman of the New York Fed, where he helped to put together the deal under which AIG’s CDS counterparties, foremost among them Goldman Sachs, got paid out at 100 cents on the dollar. He was also involved in approving Goldman’s request to become a bank holding company. He then inexplicably bought tens of thousands of shares Goldman shares...