we'll talk to david goldman and peter morici. there is a debate. you're watching cnbc, first in business worldwide. >>> all right. fresh off s.e.c. fraud charges, goldman sachs reported huge first quarter earnings today. cnbc's michelle cabrera joins us. hello. >> three and a half billion dollars they made in profits, much better than a year ago. nearly double what they made a year ago. look at the numbers. turned out to be 5.59 per share, much better than expected. there's the chart. what the stock did today. we'll explain why it was down toward the end here. once again, the first thing we wanted to show you were the actual earnings which were much better than expected. revenue came in better than expected. nearly $13 billion in revenue. there you see the actual income. 98% better. there we see revenue. $12.8 billion. a year ago they made only $1.4 billion in revenue. the conference call always happens on the day the earnings are announced. this conference call, you can imagine, wasn't typical for goldman sachs. they had to deal with a lot of ques

this man provides clarity. >> peter morici, always a pleasure. great to have you with us tonight.nal page in my "playbook," in "psycho talk" tonight i mentioned this is our one-year anniversary of "the ed show." we kicked things up a 365 days ago with the intention of giving a voice to the working folk of america, middle-class americans. one year later we're still doing it. and i want to thank all of the folks who have made us, this show, "the ed show," a part of your viewing habits and hope you keep doing it. it's been a great year. i appreciate our team as the way we have worked to bring you what we think is the important issues of the day. i'm going to keep right on fighting for the middle class. thank you for joining us and hope you'll be back tomorrow night for "the ed show" right here on msnbc. >>> up next, now, this is a story we have to cover. these two minnesota twins are charging ten grand a pop for you to get a picture with them? boy, that's pretty pricey. even with hannity around, huh? bob shrum will be here to preview the north star state nightmare, next. her things y

let's listen to peter morici. he's an expert on a lot of this and an economist here in the washington area. >> goldman sachs is like a bookmaker. one client's always going to win, another one ils going to lose, but it's trying to work the game so that it always win. >> i'm sure goldman sachs has something to say about all of this, the way it's been posed so far, it sounds pretty bad. >> well, it's that betting analogy that seems to be getting to them. both blankfein and goldman deny that they're engaging in any type of massive bet against their clients. they deny knowing the housing market was going to collapse, though blankfein has said all along that the bank was doing what good banks do, basically exercises in risk management. the question, of course, is whether blankfein is telling the truth. and we'll see. >> all right, joe, you'll stick with us throughout the hour. also expected to testify tomorrow, goldman's fabrice tourre. he calls himself fabulous fab, i've heard. helped concoct many of these iffy investm