[AnimalMuppet]

It could be viewed as No True Scotsman, but in this case I don't think it is.

Goldman talks about "reversion to the mean", which is a generally-accepted thing in the financial world. If you've got above-average returns, people tend to take note, and try to get some of those returns, and so there's more competition for those returns, and that goes on until there aren't excessive returns any longer. This is a generally-accepted thing because it's been observed a bunch of times. It's the normal functioning of a market.

So if Goldman is questioning whether this is going to happen this time, it's a recognition that the markets aren't functioning the way they normally do - which I think is financedfuture's point. (He/she is going a step further, and [EDIT]implying that either the financial firms or the government broke the system that had been working, which, if the system historically worked and now doesn't, seems like a reasonable guess.)