These animated creatures don't like it, and think the federal reserve is just giving Goldman Sachs money: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k
Quora says it is an auction through dealers: http://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-Fed-buy-treasury-bonds-through-Goldman-Sachs-instead-of-from-the-treasury-How-did-this-happen
Treasury bonds (of the same date and maturity) are completely fungible. One is exactly the same as the other. It doesn't matter who the Fed buys it from in the long term: there will be fewer outstanding Treasury bonds and more outstanding US dollars, and the price of a Treasury bond will be higher. If Goldman Sachs owns US treasury bonds, they will benefit from quantitative easing one way or another, simply because the value of those bonds goes up when the Fed is willing to buy them at a good price.
In the short term, banks might do things with money (like make loans and perform other investment activity) a little faster than the Treasury. (The Treasury might skip or reduce the size of future bond sales.) There is also the opportunity for a tiny amount of arbitrage between the market price of a bond and the price the Fed is willing to pay, but everyone with a big chunk of bonds is able to compete for that little bit of profit (which is why these things are called open market operations) so it's not really all that hot.
Really, people! There are far more legitimate criticisms of QE2 than Goldman Sachs participating in the treasury auction process! For starters, consider criticisms of the effects of the policy.
Of course Goldman Sacs sells the bonds to the fed without charging a commission. They are well known for their compassionate altruism. Just kidding! Of course they charge. The Federal Reserve Act specifies that the Federal Reserve buy and sell Treasury securities only in the "open market." The Federal Reserve conducts its purchases through "Primary Dealers" - usually Goldman Sacs-these btw are older securities. The new ones such as the fed has been gobbling up lately are sold at auction. This supposedly supports the central banks independence in conducting monetary policy but still doesn't seem right. But then the fact that we have a central bank at all instead of the U.S. Treasury printing the money, doesn't seem quite right either now does it?
