“Missing time” refers to a person who has a memory gap covering a certain period of time. In recent years the term has been used to describe a gap in time that the person cannot account for that under hypnosis might be attributed to an extraterrestrial encounter.

While it’s unlikely that chief executive Lloyd Blankfein or any other members of the management team at Goldman Sachs (GS) have experienced a close encounter of the third kind, perhaps a hypnotherapy session would help Goldman to have better recall of the events of the last six months so it can be grateful rather than disdainful the government rescued it from its near death experience.

Just as the short sellers were closing in on Goldman and Morgan Stanley (MS) after Lehman Brothers collapsed last September, the Federal Reserve called an emergency meeting Sunday evening September 21 to allow the two investment banks to become bank holding companies. The next day the Justice Department waived the five day antitrust waiting period. Even though Goldman and Morgan do not function like a commercial bank and have no intention of doing so, their newfound status gave them access to the same government programs as the commercial banks.

When Goldman reported first quarter earnings on April 14, it marked the six month anniversary of receiving a $10 billion equity injection from the TARP. Goldman chose to mark the occasion by raising $5 billion in a secondary offering in order to fulfill what CFO David Viniar describes as their “patriotic duty” to return the $10 billion TARP money to the Treasury.

Now that Goldman is convinced the government would never allow it to fail, Blankfein and Viniar have developed their own version of missing time. Goldman has received billions of dollars in benefits courtesy of US taxpayers beyond the $10 billion TARP. Since Bear Stearns collapsed in March 2008, Goldman has had access to the Fed’s discount window.