NEW YORK TIMES

Goldman Sachs has been on a shopping spree with its own money, snapping up apartments in Spain, a mall in Utah and a European ink company, all of which the bank hopes eventually to sell for a profit.

These are the sorts of investments that many, including some of the bank’s regulators, had assumed would be prohibited by one of the signature elements of the 2010 financial overhaul legislation, theVolcker Rule. MORE…