Disinformation » Goldman Sachs

Five More Countries For Goldman Sachs To Take Over

JacobSloan — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:00:56 +0000

Now that Goldman Sachs has achieved coups d’etats in Greece and Italy, DJ Pangburn at Death and Taxes lays out five additional countries ripe for bankdom to install leaders:

We present five other countries where Goldman Sachs could install bankers as heads of state.

Where to begin, though? Originally, I considered Ireland to be a prime candidate for some Goldman Sachs coup d’etat action, but it seems that Ireland already got the old Goldman Sachs in/out in the form of Peter Sutherland, a non-executive director of Goldman Sachs, as well as a non-executive at BP. Here are five countries that could use a little Goldman Sachs in/out.

Spain: With concerns in Italy lessening amidst the installation of ex-Goldman man Mario Monti as PM, bankers and investors in the eurozone and abroad are looking to Spain, which the BBC is calling the “weaker link in the eurozone chain.”

This is obviously the first country that requires a Goldman Sachs premiership. Get on it boys.

Read the rest from DJ Pangburn at Death and Taxes

Bankers Undemocratically Installed As Heads Of Italy And Greece

JacobSloan — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:50:45 +0000

In case you missed it, over the past eight days, the prime ministers of two major European nations stepped down. The newly appointed, not elected, leaders of Italy and Greece will be Mario Monti (formerly of Goldman Sachs) and Lucas Papademos (formerly head of the Central Bank of Greece). A signal that marriage between capitalism and democracy is coming to an end? The Independent writes:

The ascension of Mario Monti to the Italian prime ministership is remarkable for more reasons than it is possible to count. By replacing the scandal-surfing Silvio Berlusconi, Italy has dislodged the undislodgeable. By imposing rule by unelected technocrats, it has suspended the normal rules of democracy, and maybe democracy itself. And by putting a senior adviser at Goldman Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic.

This is the most remarkable thing of all: a giant leap forward for, or perhaps even the successful culmination of, the Goldman Sachs Project.

Simon Johnson, the former International Monetary Fund economist, in his book 13 Bankers, argued that Goldman Sachs and the other large banks had become so close to government in the run-up to the financial crisis that the US was effectively an oligarchy. At least European politicians aren’t “bought and paid for” by corporations, as in the US, he says. “Instead what you have in Europe is a shared world-view among the policy elite and the bankers, a shared set of goals and mutual reinforcement of illusions.”

Read the rest at The Independent

Bank Bailouts Explained

JacobSloan — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:26:38 +0000

Confused about what has unfolded since 2008? The sublime absurdity of bank bailouts and what we have(n’t) gotten in return, laid out in adorable animated form:

Chris Hedges’ Speech in Front of Goldman Sachs Leads to Arrest

DrLechter — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 07:29:06 +0000

Photo Courtesy of Chris Hedges

Via Nation of Change:

Chris Hedges made this statement in New York City’s Zuccotti Park on Thursday morning during the People’s Hearing on Goldman Sachs, which he chaired with Dr. Cornel West. The activist and Truthdig columnist then joined a march of several hundred protesters to the nearby corporate headquarters of Goldman Sachs, where he was arrested with 16 others.

Goldman Sachs, which received more subsidies and bailout-related funds than any other investment bank because the Federal Reserve permitted it to become a bank holding company under its “emergency situation,” has used billions in taxpayer money to enrich itself and reward its top executives. It handed its senior employees a staggering $18 billion in 2009, $16 billion in 2010 and $10 billion in 2011 in mega-bonuses. This massive transfer of wealth upwards by the Bush and Obama administrations, now estimated at $13 trillion to $14 trillion, went into the pockets of those who carried out fraud and criminal activity rather than the victims who lost their jobs, their savings and often their homes.

Goldman Sachs’ commodities index is the most heavily traded in the world. Goldman Sachs hoards rice, wheat, corn, sugar and livestock and jacks up commodity prices around the globe so that poor families can no longer afford basic staples and literally starve. Goldman Sachs is able to carry out its malfeasance at home and in global markets because it has former officials filtered throughout the government and lavishly funds compliant politicians—including Barack Obama, who received $1 million from employees at Goldman Sachs in 2008 when he ran for president …

More: Nation of Change

Goldman Sachs Rules The World

majestic — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:31:56 +0000

The trader who went on BBC News and admitted that banks rule the world, not governments, appears to have the media reeling, not sure whether or not to believe this brazen bit of truth-telling.

New York Magazine’s Daily Intel summarizes the confusion:

A trader by the name of Alessio Rastani told a shocked BBC News reporter yesterday, “The governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world.” He warned, “The savings of millions of people are going to vanish,” and said viewers should “get prepared” because the “economic crisis is like a cancer, if you just wait and wait thinking this will go away, just like a cancer it’s going to grow and it’s going to be too late.” He added, “I have a confession: I go to bed every night and I dream of another recession, I dream of another moment like this.” Such frank (psychopathic?) language earned Rastani attention from news outlets like theHuffington Post, the Guardian, and the Daily Mail, but the chatter on Twitter is crying hoax. (Update: It appears to be legit! See below for more info.)

BBC Business Editor Robert Peston wrote this morning on Twitter, “BBC (& I) may have been hoaxed by YesMen,” referring to the culture jamming group that touts itself as, “impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Our targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else.” Peston and the Internet’s doubters pointed to this Yes Men stunt, which features a fake Dow Chemical spokesman who bears some resemblance to Rastani, the trader.

Peston has since defended the BBC guest: “We spoke to the trader again this morning, & as far as we can tell he is a genuine independent trader, not a member of YesMen.”

Wrangling The Giant Vampire Squid

James Curcio — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 06:48:07 +0000

Matt Taibbi has been waiting to watch Goldman Sachs executives go to jail for a while–at least since 2009 when he called Goldman the “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Released today, the latest installment of Taibbi’s manifesto against all things Goldman sets up a pretty simple proposition based on the recently released 650-page report from Senator Carl Levin’s Subcommittee on Investigations, detailing the collapse of the American financial system. Taibbi wastes no time with whodunnit paragraphs, instead setting the smoking gun on the doorstep of the Department of Justice. Like a rewriting of the Senate investigator’s above quote, Taibbi declares, “Everything’s fucked up, and it’s time for Goldman Sachs to go to jail. You don’t even have to investigate because the Senate did it for you. Just issue those subpoenas.” (The Atlantic Wire)

Apparently the vampire squid also has an appetite for metal. Goldman Sachs is making an estimated $165 million per year though Detroit warehouses jam-packed with more than a million tons of industrial metal aluminum or about a “quarter of global reported inventories,” reports Reuters. The news service’s fascinating investigation finds that by simply storing the metals in its warehouses, the investment bank reaps tens of millions of dollars in rental revenues every year. The warehousing business takes advantage of a regulation imposed by the London Metal Exchange that allows warehouses to release “only a tiny fraction of their inventories per day, much less than the metal that is regularly taken in for storage.” (The Atlantic Wire)

Chris Hedges’s Endgame Strategy: Why The Revolution Must Start In America

BananaFamine — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 07:59:13 +0000

Synopsis via The Raw Story:

Pulitzer-winning author and former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges has a revolutionary worldview. In the video below, his recent “Endgame Strategy” piece for AdBusters is read aloud by George Atherton. His conclusions are chilling, but not entirely hopeless. “We will have to take care of ourselves,” he wrote. “We will have to rapidly create small, monastic communities where we can sustain and feed ourselves. It will be up to us to keep alive the intellectual, moral and cultural values the corporate state has attempted to snuff out. It is either that or become drones and serfs in a global corporate dystopia. It is not much of a choice. But at least we still have one.

Here’s Chris Hedges’ article in AdBusters:

The unrest in the Middle East, the convulsions in Ivory Coast, the hunger sweeping across failed states such as Somalia, the freak weather patterns and the systematic unraveling of the American empire do not signal a lurch toward freedom and democracy but the catastrophic breakdown of globalization. The world as we know it is coming to an end. And what will follow will not be pleasant or easy.

The bankrupt corporate power elite, who continue to serve the dead ideas of unfettered corporate capitalism, globalization, profligate consumption and an economy dependent on fossil fuels, as well as endless war, have proven incapable of radically shifting course or responding to our altered reality. They react to the great unraveling by pretending it is not happening. They are desperately trying to maintain a doomed system of corporate capitalism. And the worse it gets the more they embrace, and seek to make us embrace, magical thinking …

Piece continues at AdBusters.

The Case Against Goldman Sachs

JacobSloan — Wed, 11 May 2011 22:21:55 +0000

In his usual clear, profane manner, Matt Taibbi lays out why Goldman Sachs’s executives must face criminal charges as soon as possible. Via Rolling Stone:

America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn’t leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.

To date, there has been only one successful prosecution of a financial big fish from the mortgage bubble, and that was Lee Farkas, a Florida lender who was just convicted on a smorgasbord of fraud charges and now faces life in prison. But Farkas, sadly, is just an exception proving the rule: Like Bernie Madoff, his comically excessive crime spree (which involved such lunacies as kiting checks to his own bank and selling loans that didn’t exist) was almost completely unconnected to the systematic corruption that led to the crisis.

But Goldman, as the Levin report makes clear, remains an ascendant company precisely because it used its canny perception of an upcoming disaster (one which it helped create, incidentally) as an opportunity to enrich itself, not only at the expense of clients but ultimately, through the bailouts and the collateral damage of the wrecked economy, at the expense of society. The bank seemed to count on the unwillingness or inability of federal regulators to stop them — and when called to Washington last year to explain their behavior, Goldman executives brazenly misled Congress, apparently confident that their perjury would carry no serious consequences.

Defenders of Goldman have been quick to insist that while the bank may have had a few ethical slips here and there, its only real offense was being too good at making money. We now know, unequivocally, that this is bullshit. If the evidence in the Levin report is ignored, then Goldman will have achieved a kind of corrupt-enterprise nirvana. Caught, but still free: above the law.

In 2004, in an extraordinary sequence of regulatory rollbacks that helped pave the way for the financial crisis, the top five investment banks — Goldman, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns — persuaded the government to create a new, voluntary approach to regulation called Consolidated Supervised Entities. CSE was the soft touch to end all soft touches. Here is how the SEC’s inspector general described the program’s regulatory army: “The Office of CSE Inspections has only two staff in Washington and five staff in the New York regional office.”

Among the bankers who helped convince the SEC to go for this ludicrous program was Hank Paulson, Goldman’s CEO at the time. And in exchange for “submitting” to this new, voluntary regime of law enforcement, Goldman and other banks won the right to lend in virtually unlimited amounts, regardless of their cash reserves — a move that fueled the catastrophe of 2008, when banks like Bear and Merrill were lending out 35 dollars for every one in their vaults.

In 2004, in an extraordinary sequence of regulatory rollbacks that helped pave the way for the financial crisis, the top five investment banks — Goldman, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns — persuaded the government to create a new, voluntary approach to regulation called Consolidated Supervised Entities. CSE was the soft touch to end all soft touches. Here is how the SEC’s inspector general described the program’s regulatory army: “The Office of CSE Inspections has only two staff in Washington and five staff in the New York regional office.”

Among the bankers who helped convince the SEC to go for this ludicrous program was Hank Paulson, Goldman’s CEO at the time. And in exchange for “submitting” to this new, voluntary regime of law enforcement, Goldman and other banks won the right to lend in virtually unlimited amounts, regardless of their cash reserves — a move that fueled the catastrophe of 2008, when banks like Bear and Merrill were lending out 35 dollars for every one in their vaults.

Read the rest at Rolling Stone.

Finance Capitalism is Causing Starvation

Good German — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 01:46:21 +0000

We all know Soviet-style communism causes starvation. Looks like American-style capitalism does the same thing in a different way. Johann Hari in the Independent, from this past July:

It starts with an apparent mystery. At the end of 2006, food prices across the world started to rise, suddenly and stratospherically. Within a year, the price of wheat had shot up by 80 per cent, maize by 90 per cent, rice by 320 per cent. In a global jolt of hunger, 200 million people — mostly children — couldn’t afford to get food any more, and sank into malnutrition or starvation. There were riots in more than 30 countries, and at least one government was violently overthrown. Then, in spring 2008, prices just as mysteriously fell back to their previous level. Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, calls it “a silent mass murder”, entirely due to “man-made actions.”

Earlier this year I was in Ethiopia, one of the worst-hit countries, and people there remember the food crisis as if they had been struck by a tsunami. “My children stopped growing,” a woman my age called Abiba Getaneh, told me. “I felt like battery acid had been poured into my stomach as I starved. I took my two daughters out of school and got into debt. If it had gone on much longer, I think my baby would have died.”

Most of the explanations we were given at the time have turned out to be false. It didn’t happen because supply fell: the International Grain Council says global production of wheat actually increased during that period, for example. It isn’t because demand grew either: as Professor Jayati Ghosh of the Centre for Economic Studies in New Delhi has shown, demand actually fell by 3 per cent. Other factors — like the rise of biofuels, and the spike in the oil price — made a contribution, but they aren’t enough on their own to explain such a violent shift.

To understand the biggest cause, you have to plough through some concepts that will make your head ache — but not half as much as they made the poor world’s stomachs ache.

Who Owns Facebook?

JacobSloan — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:20:15 +0000

Business Insider charts who will be getting filthy rich when Facebook goes public in a year. Somehow, the answer is just what you most feared/suspected: Mark Zuckerberg, Goldman Sachs, and, somehow, Bono.

The Demise Of Facebook

majestic — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 14:37:35 +0000

Douglas Rushkoff called the impending doom of AOL when it’s hapless merger with Time Warner was announced. Now he says Facebook is cashing out and it’s the beginning of its demise, in an opinion piece at CNN:

All signs for Facebook appear to be pointing up.

Mark Zuckerberg is Time’s Man of the Year, the movie about him seems likely to be an Oscar winner, and now Goldman Sachs is raising $1.5 billion from its favorite investors on behalf of the social networking company.

At the very same moment, Facebook’s only real competitor –NewsCorps’ waning social networking site, MySpace — is shedding employees and expenses, most likely in hopes of a fire sale.

But appearances can be deceiving. In fact, as I read the situation, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of Facebook. These aren’t the symptoms of a company that is winning, but one that is cashing out.

Indeed, 11 years ago this week, when AOL announced its $350 billion merger with Time Warner, I was asked to write an OpEd for the New York Times explaining what the deal between old and new media companies really meant. I said that AOL was cashing in its over-valued dotcom stock in order to purchase a stake in a “real” media company with movie studios, theme parks and even cable. In short, the deal meant AOL knew their reign was over.

The Times didn’t run the piece. Of course, the merger turned out to be a disaster: AOL’s revenue stream was reduced to a trickle as net users ventured out onto the Web directly…

[continues at at CNN]

Goldman CEO Dodges Boxing Match With Journalist

majestic — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:31:02 +0000

Goldman Sachs bankers are the deserved target of a lot of Wall Street bashing by regular Americans whose jobs have been lost and homes foreclosed due to the many crimes (yes, crimes) perpetrated by the banks, insurance companies and ratings agencies. New York Post columnist John Crudele has challenged Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein to go up against him in a Wall Street boxing match:

Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman of Goldman Sachs, would probably like to see me hurt. And I’d like to see him investigated for insider trading.

So I figured a boxing match was in order. The only hitch, I can’t seem to get Blankfein to do it.

Let me tell you anyway how I almost became a pugilist.

A few weeks ago someone from a gym downtown was looking for some publicity and mentioned that there is a charity boxing match with Wall Street types going against each other scheduled for Dec. 10.

It’s for an excellent cause — to help women who are trapped in the sex trade industry. It’s at Cipriani Wall Street, an expensive joint that is only accustomed to sweat when customers get the check.

One of us — and I can’t imagine it was me — suggested that I might want to participate.

Without really giving it a lot of thought I agreed — but only if my opponent was Blankfein, the 56-year old Bronx-born, Brooklyn-bred gazzillionaire who leads a merry gang of other gazzillionaires at the Wall Street firm. I figured, why waste punches on someone who doesn’t deserve them.

I’ve been investigating Goldman and Blankfein for years and — yes — I think he should get a smack or two…

[read the rest in the New York Post]

Would Henry I Have Castrated Goldman Sachs?

Liam McGonagle — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 22:01:27 +0000

Bad money drives out the good” – Gresham’s Law

Even primitive medieval economies understood the importance of guaranteeing the integrity of currency; Henry I of England imposed the penalty of castration on counterfeiters.

Gresham’s Law is the formal name economists give the common sense notion that counterfeiting is a bad thing and should not be encouraged. The upshot is that the phony money undermines your confidence in all the money in circulation, even if the bogus bucks are a relatively small portion of the total ‘dollars’ in circulation.

You need to KNOW for a fact just how much real, tangible value you can expect to receive in exchange for those ‘dollars’, and that’s entirely independent of any action on your part. At least in the short term that’s entirely dependent on how your fellow market participants perceive the value of that currency. Even if you accept some shiny beads as payment in a real estate deal, you shouldn’t really be shocked when you’re evicted for offering the same as a rental payment to your new landlord the following month.

Not exactly a super-complimicated egghead theory fresh out of some high powered thinktank. This is, and has been since time immemorial, just basic, fundamental stuff. Christ, Gresham could see it and he grew up before the invention of toilet paper.

So why can’t Paul Ryan (R-WI) and the other Republican’ts see it? Why do they seem so oblivious to the Wall Street counterfeiting operation that’s hamstringing the economy?

Continued at Dystopia Diaries

Supreme Court Aids Corporate Fraudsters

majestic — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:28:03 +0000

Is this really the time to give a “get-out-of-jail-free” card to corporate chiefs who can’t resist fraudulently dipping into the honey pot of riches that they have access to? I mean we’re still unraveling (and paying for) the massive frauds perpetrated by the banksters at AIG, Goldman Sachs and their Wall Street cronies and shills in Washington. I suppose it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that the Supreme Court is in on it too, but the timing shows a particularly callous disregard for public sentiment. Report from the Los Angeles Times:

A Supreme Court ruling Thursday dealt a severe blow to legislation meant to fight public corruption and also could affect the recent convictions of former Enron chief Jeffrey Skilling and former newspaper magnate Conrad Black.

In ruling on “honest-services fraud,” the justices said Skilling and Black were wrongly convicted on that charge. All nine justices agreed that such fraud was too vague to constitute a crime unless a bribe or kickback was involved. But both men were convicted on other charges, and the Supreme Court sent their cases back to lower courts for further proceedings .

Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich currently is being tried on multiple charges of corruption, including depriving the public of honest services.

Over the last two decades, the law against honest-services fraud has been used routinely in cases in which public officials or corporate executives have been accused of secretly scheming to benefit themselves at the expense of the public or their stockholders.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking for the court, said the law “criminalizes only schemes to defraud that involve bribes or kickbacks.” It does not cover, for example, the case of public official who fails to disclose a possible conflict of interest.

In the cases of Skilling and Black, “we express no opinion on the question of whether the error” in their trials “was ultimately harmless but leave that matter for consideration on remand,” Ginsburg said.

Although the majority of justices agreed to narrow the law to cover only schemes where a public official or corporate executive enriched himself or herself at the expense of the public or the shareholders, Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas would have gone further and struck down the law entirely, even when bribes or kickbacks were involved…

[continues in the Los Angeles Times]

Vatican Official Tied To BP, Goldman Sachs And Media Censorship In The Oil Fiasco…

phunkychic666 — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 19:44:32 +0000

[disinformation ed's note: we're not sure whether to consider this so crazy that you can't make it up, or that actually you can - what do you think?] By Sherri Kane and Leonard G. Horowitz for rense.com:

News unfolding from the oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico has linked media censorship to investment bankers at Goldman Sachs (GS) stewarding the Vatican’s wealth, and increasing evidence that the explosion was intended.

A near total news blackout from independent sources, and arrests of anyone caught photographing and filming the devastation, show the Halliburton-British Petroleum (BP) oil crisis is being criminally controlled, implicating some of Wall Street’s heaviest hitters.

According to a report issued by frightened, yet faithful, documentary filmmaker, James Fox, interviewed from the Gulf’s Grand Isles by Mel Fabregas on the Internet’s Veritas Radio Show, “There is a complete media blackout” on news coverage broadcast from the region.

“They are arresting people with cameras and anyone off camera that is caught talking to a reporter,” Fox testified.

Another reporter told Fox,”You call this a free country? Right here, in the United States of America, there’s no freedom of press. There’s no freedom of speech. They’re closing down the airspace above the oil spill, so reporter’s can’t fly over to determine how bad these oil plumes really are.”

Suspicious pieces of this deadly puzzle feature Halliburton, the world’s second largest oil field services company, headquartered in Houston and Dubai, whose negligence is blamed for the timely and profitable explosion.

Three weeks before the “natural gas leak,” the George Bush/Dick Cheney 9-11-linked Halliburton company negotiated the purchase of the world’s largest oil-spill cleanup firm (Boots & Coots) at the exact time keen observers on Wall Street–financial intelligence agents at Goldman Sachs (GS; often called “Government Sachs”)–unloaded 44% of their stock in BP.

These facts parallel the shorting of airline stocks by those in the know prior to the World Trade Center (WTC) 9-11 attacks that new scientific evidence proves were followed by building demolitions, given the red thermite incendiary powder found everywhere around ground zero…

[continues at rense.com]

Worst CEO 2010: Goldman’s Blankfein vs. BP’s Hayward

majestic — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 19:40:17 +0000

Who gets your vote for most heinous CEO of the year? From Marketwatch:

Tony Hayward is Lloyd Blankfein’s new best friend. For months, Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has been the CEO ALTH (America Loves To Hate). He’s been defiant before Congress, unapologetic, a defender of ruthless Wall Street practices, invoking God and bare-knuckle capitalism in the same breath.

His firm has been accused of betting against clients, masking Greece’s debt problems, taking backdoor bailouts through American International Group Inc. and good, old-fashioned fraud.

Enter Hayward, the bumbling, stumbling chief executive of BP PLC, and the man ultimately responsible for the disaster that began April 20 on Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico.

Hayward’s BP is blamed for 11 dead workers, an environmental catastrophe, a slow and inadequate response and insensitivity to the havoc his company has sprung upon nature and the livelihood of those on the Gulf Coast.

In his own way, he’s supplanted Blankfein as the nation’s, and perhaps the world’s, most hated CEO. But that’s the impression. To get scientific results we need a “tale of the tape” to measure just which CEO is really the biggest jerk.

Who’s the biggest jerk CEO?

[continues at Marketwatch]

Will Anyone At The Most Powerful Investment Bank Go To Jail?

Danny Schechter — Mon, 03 May 2010 19:02:53 +0000

Will Goldman survive the assault? Will the threat of criminal charges being pursued against the world’s leading investment bank spill over onto others on Wall Street? Is the criminalization of the crisis underway, or is all this just a maneuver?

For the last two years, I have felt lonely and isolated with my calls for a jail-out, and insistence that theft, fraud and crime are at the heart of our economic disaster. I have written two books documenting my contention and just released the film Plunder The Crime of Our Time treating the economy as crime scene.

There are a few other voices out there making a similar claim: Former bank regulator Bill Black; U.S. Senator Ted Kauffman; and even billionaire investor Jim Chanos, among them. Most politicians of both parties and media pundits have dismissed the suggestion, preferring to believe that virtually everyone was to blame and, hence, no one was to blame. “What me prosecute?”, is the mantra.

Most say finance professionals, considered the “smartest men in the room,” committed unintended “mistakes” because of economic trends no one could have anticipated.

Never mind that 1000 plus bankers went to prison after the S&L crisis. That was then, and this is now, nearly ten years after the financial services industry pulled off a costly legislative coup through lobbying and campaign contributions to erode regulations and decriminalize the playing field. With a major advertising campaign in a complicit media, they packaged their agendas in the language of modernization and innovation. They got laws gutted and prosecutors de-funded.

As their profits rose and the bubble boomed, they seemed to do no wrong until small blemishes like the Enron and WorldCom scandals tarnished their image.

Over the years, Goldman was riding high, raking in major profits and paying themselves obscenely well. That is until the SEC filed a civil complaint alleging a fraudulent transaction that deceived investors. That was followed by turbulent hearings on the Hill where Senator Carl Levin kept repeating an internal reference to “Shitty” deals the firm is said to have pedaled and then bet against.

Goldman looked bad, especially when protesters in the back of the room dressed in old-fashioned black and white prison garb protested. Part of the company’s defense was that “everyone” on the Street was doing what they were doing. Hmmmm.

Even after all of the drama, Goldman was still one of the biggest earners in town. Billionaire Warren Buffet who helped them stay solvent is now singing their praises again. The “oracle of Omaha” says they are being misunderstood.

But not in the public eye. Goldman has quickly descended from being Wall Street’s hero to a zero,

According to financial blogger Larry Doyle, “Goldman’s close, if not incestuous, relationships with Washington, many hedge funds, and major clients has positioned the firm as the centerpiece of America’s outrage toward Wall Street.”

The giant firm is now also being ridiculed, even though no charges have yet been proven, and they are “lawyered up” to the gills. Leslie Griffith calls their confrontation on the Hill a Marie Antoinette moment on Reader Supported News because most onlookers wanted to cut off their heads. She writes:

“A modern day financial monarchy, Goldman acts with the impunity once reserved for kings. Controlling legislators. Electing Presidents. Filling the Executive Branch with well-heeled lackeys, manipulating world markets and betting against the welfare of its own clients … the American people. When their equivalent of “tax time” came, they squeezed the peasants for billions of bail-out bucks.

Marie would be proud.”

When writer Matt Taibbi compared Goldman to a “vampire squid” many rushed to their defense. But that was not happening this time. Instead the Justice Department one-upped the SEC by asking for a criminal investigation.

Just the idea of it led to a $21 billion dollar loss in the value of Goldman’s shares. Some analysts downgraded the firm the way they downgraded Greece earlier in the week. CEO Chief Exec Lloyd C. Blankfein who said he had been “humbled” by the hearings must be pissed because in just a few days, he personally lost $81 million dollars on his 2,023, 364 shares which were worth about $373 million. There was little public sympathy for his fall from grace.

So what now? Will there really be a criminal prosecution or all this just smoke to create a sense of urgency for an already heavily compromised financial reform package? Will anyone go to jail? Unless there are more smoking guns and shocking revelations, some settlement of the civil charges is more likely as The Atlantic explained:

“… the standard for a criminal case is much higher. The DOJ must present very compelling evidence that a jury would be able to understand well enough to find that, beyond doubt, Goldman and/or some of its bankers are guilty of fraud. Given that there are many people questioning whether even the civil case can succeed under a weaker standard of guilt, it’s relatively doubtful that the criminal charges would stick. Yet, the public doesn’t have all of the information, so it’s too soon to know the fate of a criminal case for sure.”

Also, it seems as if only one lower level banker, Fabrice Tourre, a/k/a “Fab,” is at risk. His defense has already been laid out in his congressional testimony. As NPR’s Planet Money noted, “Tourre’s public statements make it less likely that he could change his story later and negotiate a lesser penalty with the SEC in return for information that could be damaging to the firm or other executives, the person said.”

Now, says Doyle, there is “little doubt as to why the Goldman Sachs execs were reticent in their answering questions this past Tuesday knowing full well that a criminal investigation was potentially close to being launched.”

The criminal issue is hardly underway. As one lawyer said to Bloomberg News, “In order to proceed criminally in a case, you need to have very clear evidence of lying, cheating and stealing.” Robert Hockett, a law professor at Cornell University, downplayed the crime angle. “It’s really not a big deal,’’ says Hockett. “It isn’t uncommon for the SEC to refer a case to the U.S. Attorney. It doesn’t present a new legal development. It’s a procedural development.”

The bottom line: don’t get your hopes up. The government has not declared war on Wall Street even after Wall Street declared war on Main Street. The Goldman gang is still at large.

Meanwhile, our media is soft-soaping the criminal practice in which the firm, for one thing, deliberately re-engineered mortgages to fail, a charge that it earlier admitted to. Where are the editorials calling for perp-walks?

Can we trust a media that just last week mostly blacked out a march by 15,000 workers on Wall Street. I was there and couldn’t find anyone who didn’t believe crimes were committed.

Wall Street has hardly been humbled. It is still spending a fortune on PR with 25 lobbyists pressuring every member of Congress. Its arrogance is evident in an email the Financial Times reports is now “pinging around” trading desks. It reads in part:

“We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable… Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours.

… We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive.”

The gauntlet has been thrown down.

Filmmaker and News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org.

For more on his film, visit plunderthecrimeofourtime.com.

Let’s Give Goldman Sachs Their Own “Shitty Deal” (On Twitter)

ralph — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 05:51:50 +0000

In celebration of this paragon of capitalism, Goldman Sachs, on April 30th we’ll be giving away copies of Danny Schechter’s latest documentary on Wall Street fraud, Plunder: The Crime of Our Time (available now on DVD and iTunes) for those who Tweet the following:

Let’s Give Goldman Sachs Their Own “Shitty Deal” #Plunder #GoldmanSucks #FreeFriday http://bit.ly/cuUXky

(If you haven’t heard of the “shitty deal” yet read here.)

As always the more you Tweet the above phrase, the greater your chances of receiving a copy of Plunder on DVD. Here’s the trailer:

Goldman Sachs, In Their Own Words, Offered Investors A “Shitty Deal” (Video)

ralph — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:31:05 +0000

Goldman Sucks, I mean Sachs, this is priceless. Did you really have to destroy the U.S. economy to make C-SPAN this entertaining? Next time, instead of handing the potential investor a prospectus, why not just have them bend over? Via Countdown With Keith Olbermann:

Will Goldman Sachs Prove Greed is God?

ralph — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 20:52:26 +0000

These A-holes are no longer happy with the “Greed is Good” mantra? Kicking it up to the Almighty now? Great job ducking those questions from Congress today. Matt Taibbi, who’s been excellent on speaking the truth behind the so-called financial “crisis,” writes in the Guardian:

The investment bank’s cult of self-interest is on trial against the whole idea of civilisation — the collective decision by all of us not to screw each other over even if we can.

So Goldman Sachs, the world’s greatest and smuggest investment bank, has been sued for fraud by the American Securities and Exchange Commission. Legally, the case hangs on a technicality.

Morally, however, the Goldman Sachs case may turn into a final referendum on the greed-is-good ethos that conquered America sometime in the 80s – and in the years since has aped other horrifying American trends such as boybands and reality shows in spreading across the western world like a venereal disease.

When Britain and other countries were engulfed in the flood of defaults and derivative losses that emerged from the collapse of the American housing bubble two years ago, few people understood that the crash had its roots in the lunatic greed-centered objectivist religion, fostered back in the 50s and 60s by ponderous emigre novelist Ayn Rand.

Read More of Matt Taibbi in the Guardian

The Financial Crisis As Crime Story

majestic — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:43:12 +0000

Plunder director Danny Schechter writing for the Nation:

The case has not even been heard in court and the company denies all the allegations. Almost every business publication has carried commentaries by insiders who say the government may have a hard time prevailing, and dismissing all the Sturm and Drang.

And yet the public seems to be delighted if not outraged by the SEC’s charges against Goldman Sachs, the opulent investment bank that many Americans see as the poster child of those causing the financial crisis. Even in the world of business where dislike of government crackdowns is dominant, a new poll shows that a majority believe Goldman is getting what it deserves.

Argyle Executive Forum conducted the survey electronically among its senior corporate leadership community.

The precise wording of the survey question was:

As Goldman Sachs Group is currently at the center of a legal maelstrom triggered by the SEC’s fraud charge last week, we want to ask you how you currently feel about the charges. Please select one of the below:

• I feel the firm is innocent

• I feel the firm is guilty

• I am currently unsure

The result:

• 55.2 percent of business leaders feel Goldman Sachs is guilty

• 20.7 percent of business leaders feel Goldman Sachs is innocent,
and

• 24.1 percent of business leaders are currently unsure”

An earlier poll of the citizenry found that 82 percent in our highly polarized country wanted a “crackdown” on Wall Street. A public that seems to oppose bailouts has a different attitude towards a jailout.

Writing on Greanville Post, Patrick O’Connor and Barry Grey argue that Goldman’s actions are criminal even though the SEC brought only a civil complaint against what seemed to be an arcane practice, alleging a failure to disclose key information. They write:

The public marketing and secret short-selling of junk assets was a common practice carried out by virtually every major Wall Street firm. It was part of a colossal fraud perpetrated on the American people. The banks lured people into taking out mortgages they knew the purchasers could not afford. They then packaged these toxic loans into securities–collateralised debt obligations–and made billions in profits by selling them to investors around the world, including pension funds, 401(k) plans, insurance companies and private investors. Those involved knew very well they were running the equivalent of a giant Ponzi scheme–a fraud far more massive and destructive than the criminal
operation headed by Bernard Madoff.

Madoff’s sins preceded the meltdown by years diverting attention from how Wall Street itself had become a far more sophisticated crime scene, not of lone con men but of institutions that had successfully lobbied to loosen laws and regulations and build an industry on a bedrock of fraud and deception.

This environment was promoted through the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars for lobbying legislators and campaign contributions. There was extensive collusion between the financial services industry
and politicians of both parties.

Cutbacks in government monitoring of financial practices became the norm, with fines and “settlements” in (with some exceptions) replacing vigilant oversight and the prosecution of wrongdoers at the federal and state level. Fraudsters were primarily punished with fines businesses paid as a cost of doing business.

These practices, aided and abetted by cutbacks in the budgets of agencies that monitored and enforced laws, meant that an open season on homeowners and investors had been declared. In 2004, the FBI warned of an epidemic of mortgage fraud, but also acknowledged their own white-collar crime squads had been downsized when fighting “the war on terror” became the priority.

[continues in the Nation]

Jon Stewart Explains the Goldman Sachs Fraud Charges Better Than The Rest of the Media (Video)

ralph — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:25:12 +0000

Once again, The Daily Show does the job the mainstream media should be doing:

Goldman Sucks!

majestic — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:46:23 +0000

News Dissector Danny Schechter explains why Goldman Sachs deserves criminal, not just civil fraud charges. As he says, “Goldman has not been sacked”:

Going After Goldman: A Crackdown On Financial Crime Or A Kabuki Play Maneuver To Avoid Bringing Criminal Charges?

Danny Schechter — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:06:39 +0000

Fox Business News was engrossed in interviewing a blonder than thou reality TV bimbo when the news that the Securities And Exchange Commission was filing fraud charges against Goldman Sachs broke on Friday afternoon.

The breaking news bulletins were already flying through cyberspace before the Fox Means Business network got around to moving from a snickering interview with a starlet confessing to commodifying and monetizing her appeal to the biggest story in months on the Street beat. Corporate fraud allegations seem to make free market boosters nervous.

At last, the mightiest of investment bank, described as a “giant squid on the face of humanity” by Matt Taibbi in a much-read diatribe, appeared to be in deep trouble. Taibbi himself was not convinced that the Government has the goods on Goldman.

He commented, “…What’s interesting is that I heard whiffs of this story going back as far as a year and you know I’m one of the harshest critics of Goldman Sachs and I actually backed off the story because I didn’t really believe it. I thought it was too outlandish. So that tells you exactly how crazy this story is coming out now.”

The Timing

The timing of the story was suspicious, he said. “This story has been out there for awhile. The [NEW YORK] Times first broke it really in December. So why are they doing this now? Cleary it could have been because this bill is about to hit, crucial period in Washington, this financial regulatory reform bill, maybe this, you can look at this as a shot across Wall St’s bow during that period.”

Federal prosecutions of white-collar criminals has not been a growth industry, or very successful, in recent years.

AP predicts there will be a flood of lawsuits to come and that “the fraud charges against Goldman Sachs & Co. that rocked financial markets Friday are no slam dunk, as hazy evidence and strategic pitfalls could easily trip up government lawyers”. A former dot.com millionaire told me that Goldman has the best lawyers and would most likely beat the rap. Publicly Goldman denied all charges and vowed to restore their “reputation.

The Republicans who know about how to politicize everything were quick to point out that Goldman and its employees had been among President Obama’s biggest backers. At the same time, Politico reported out that taking on Goldman gives the White House a big propaganda asset in the coming fight over financial reform.

“Charges of fraud against one of the most storied firms on Wall Street come at a time when the Obama administration is seeking to pass significant new regulation of the financial sector. A reform bill is expected to hit the Senate floor next week, and observers said Friday that the Goldman charges would likely give new momentum to the administration’s efforts to put tougher regulations on the banking sector.”

Already Obama’s Organizing For America has produced online ads citing the Goldman case as an argument for financial reform.

The Legal Issue

The Volatility website, explains, “The case centers on Goldman’s 2007 ABACUS CDO, which it manufactured at the behest of hedge fund predator John Paulson. The scam was for Paulson to cobble together a toxic mess of MBS he expected would blow up, find suckers to buy this CDO, and then short it. Goldman’s role was to launder the CDO …

(Barry Ritholz compares it to The Producers, who try to defraud their investors by putting on a crappy play they expect to quickly close while embezzling much of the loot.)

Typical of this feckless government, it’s only a civil and not a criminal indictment. Even if the SEC is serious this time (which I won’t assume until I see it), Goldman would still get off easy for capital fraud.”

It now turns out that Goldman was notified in advance about the government’s complaint. Business Week revealed. “Sources now say that Goldman Sachs was warned about a pending civil suit months ago and failed to disclose its legal problems—despite the standard practice of revealing legal issues like regulatory probes in quarterly and annual reports. Websites like Ml-Implode insisted, “Other Major Banks Did Deals Similar to Goldman.”

Financial journalist Gary Weiss disagrees, suggesting that, if successful, this could bring the firm down. “This is devastating. The Wall Street Journal says “Goldman Sachs, which in a statement called the accusations ‘completely unfounded in law and fact,’ could face steep fines and be on the hook to repay nearly $1 billion of investor losses.” MIT’s Simon Johnson calls the SEC’s action a “Pecora Moment,“ invoking the memory of FDR’s long gone investigation of depression-era corporate larceny.

Is This Complaint More Bread and Circuses?

I am not so sure. Could this all be a well-orchestrated Kabuki play intended for public consumption and political advantage. Could Goldman even be playing along here to buy time for reforms even as they have taken losses? Financial Analyst Tyler Durden thinks so, arguing, “This has many wondering if the whole SEC action against Goldman (which some have already pointed out is a rather weak case) is nothing but smoke and mirrors to distract the broader public for a few weeks until anger once again dies down.”

Beating down this high profile suit would restore the firm’s credibility, and leave enough time to pass some financial reforms before it even goes to Court where it could be thrown out. Hedge fund mastermind John Paulson was not even named in the charges which is a civil complain, not a criminal charge,

One of my angry readers, despite writing in All Caps and misspelling Tim Geithner’s name, smells a rat,

“THE CRIME IS STILL GOING ON DANNY. HUNDREDS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN DERIVATIVE POSITIONS ARE STILL BEING CREATED BY WALL STREET GANGSTERS AND RECENTLY DURING A CONGRESSIONAL SUB COMMITTEE HEARING ENCOURAGED BY WILLIAM GITNER AND BARNIE FRANK. THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SUPPORTS THE USE OF DERIVATIVES SO ONE OF THE MAIN CULPRITS IN THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SUBPRIME HOUSING MARKET IS ALIVE AND WELL THANKS TO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND HIS STOOGES LIKE GITNER, BARNIE FRANK AND MANY OTHER SOCIALIST MARXIST CONGRESSMAN DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS. THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS A PUPPET OF THE WALL STREET GANGSTERS.”

Was It A Crime–Or Should It be?

This may become the Tea Party view. A deeper question is: is this civil suit a substitute for or a maneuver to avoid bringing criminal charges? There are even progressive writers like James Kwak of Baseline Scenario.com who doesn’t believe crimes have been committed.

“One of the things I say now and then that most annoys people is that the financial crisis was not caused by criminal behavior. (Note: The “Prayer for the Relief” at the end of the complaint only asks for civil penalties, but I suppose this does not preclude a criminal action — someone who’s a real lawyer could answer that.) My general line is that I’m sure there was some bad behavior that rose to the level of criminal liability — like lying in disclosure documents — but that it wasn’t necessary for the crisis, and we could have had the crisis without any criminal activity at all.”

The problem with this thinking is that it defines financial crime very narrowly, and in terms of securities laws that exist only to protect investors. It forgets that the most harshly abused victims of the crisis occurred on the consumer side of the equation in the rip off of citizens as workers and homeowners.

In my film Plunder: The Crime of our Time I report on a finding in Massachusetts that Goldman deliberately designed thousands of mortgages to fail. They settled, paying the state $60 million without admitting guilt.

Those who argue these abuses were legal rarely admit that the financial institutions spent nearly a billion dollars to erode regulations and change rules. They used their ill-gotten gains to buy up ‘politricians’ who passed one-sided and unjust laws to allow them to get away with whatever benefited their bottom lines no matter who was hurt.

This well-documented history of political manipulation qualifies them as avaricious manipulators, not law biding companies. Their legal and moral defense is bogus. The Congress and the Courts have been “captured” by Wall Street for years.

Unjust Laws?

Why won’t the financial media cop to this blatant immorality as they treat “the law” as sacrosanct? Would they have recognized lynching and racism as legal because Deep South legislatures passed laws allowing segregation? How are the laws bought by Wall Street any different?

The housing bubble was built on bedrock of deception and fraud linking shady subprime brokers and appraisers to a whole industry that structured financial products and then resold them with misrepresented values with the complicity of unethical ratings agencies.

The FBI has been denouncing, investigating and indicting those what they call a “fraud epidemic.” The selling and reselling of worthless asset-backed securities is a centerpiece of the larger crime, as was the practice of overleveraging these schemes, insuring and even betting against them by companies like AIG with swaps, CDO’s etc. etc.

We are not talking about a handful of executives like the 25 people Time Magazine listed as responsible for the crisis. We are dealing with a criminal enterprise of tens of thousands who benefited.

Martin Wolf of the Financial Times explained that three industries came together with thousands of employees to run the FIRE economy—Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. Their infrastructure was big, ““In between the ultimate borrowers and the risk takers were loan originators, designers and packagers of securitized assts, ratings agencies, sales staff, managers of banks and SIVs (structured investment vehicles) and managers of pension and other funds”

They all worked together like a cabal to perpetuate what I call the crime of our time.

Will these people ever face justice?

Filmmaker and News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org.

For more on his film, visit plunderthecrimeofourtime.com.

Government Brings Fraud Charges Against Goldman Sachs

majestic — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:50:43 +0000

Finally! Despite the cozy relationship between the Obama administration’s financial team of Geithner, Summers, et al with their brethren on Wall Street, the SEC reveals that it has the balls to go up against Goldman Sachs. I fear for the job security of senior SEC staffers, but meanwhile they are hurting Goldman where it counts – the firm’s stock price dropped 10% on the announcement, as reported by NPR:

The government has accused Goldman Sachs & Co. of defrauding investors by failing to disclose conflicts of interest in mortgage investments it sold as the housing market was faltering.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Friday civil fraud charges against the Wall Street powerhouse and one of its vice presidents. The agency alleges Goldman failed to disclose that one of its clients helped create — and then bet against — subprime mortgage securities that Goldman sold to investors.

Investors in the mortgage securities are alleged to have lost more than $1 billion, the SEC noted.

“The product was new and complex but the deception and conflicts are old and simple,” Robert Khuzami, the SEC’s director enforcement, said in a statement. “Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio, while telling other investors that the securities were selected by an independent, objective third party.”

Read The Charges

SEC Press Release

SEC Complaint

The Goldman client implicated in the fraud is one of the world’s largest hedge funds, Paulson & Co., which paid Goldman roughly $15 million for structuring the deals in 2007.

Goldman Sachs shares fell more than 10 percent after the SEC announcement.

The civil lawsuit filed by the SEC in federal court in Manhattan was the government’s most significant legal action related to the mortgage meltdown that ignited the financial crisis and helped plunge the country into recession…

[continues at NPR]

Goldman Sachs Responds To Critics

majestic — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 16:38:23 +0000

It’s good to know that the banksters at Goldman realize that their lucrative franchise is in peril, but do they really think the arguments in their letter to shareholders will put off calls for criminal action against them? As reported in the New York Post/WSJ:

The year 2009 was one that some Goldman Sachs executives would like to forget, yet the firm was reliving some of its biggest controversies in its longest-ever annual letter to shareholders, released Wednesday.

The eight-page note presented Goldman’s point of view directly to shareholders ahead of the firm’s May 7 annual meeting. Criticized for putting the bank’s own interests ahead of customers, Goldman Chairman and Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and President Gary Cohn said in the letter that clients are at the top of the pecking order.

The two executives used the words “client” or “clients” a total of 56 times, up from 17 in their 2008 shareholder letter.

“The firm’s focus on staying close to our clients and helping them to navigate uncertainty and achieve their objectives is largely responsible for what proved to be a year of resiliency across our businesses, and by extension, a strong performance for Goldman Sachs,” they wrote.

Goldman reiterated that it did not “bet against” clients using short positions it took on before the residential real estate market crashed. Goldman was one of the first Wall Street firms to reduce its real estate exposure, even as some clients were sticking with their bullish bets.

The short positions “served to offset our long positions,” the letter said. “Our goal was, and is, to be in a position to make markets for our clients while managing our risk within prescribed limits.”

It included explanations of its payouts to employees and trading relationship with insurer American International Group (AIG)…

[continues in the New York Post/WSJ]

Goldman Sachs CEO’s Giant, Nuclear-Powered Testicles

majestic — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:32:51 +0000

As described by the inimitable Matt Taibbi, for Rolling Stone:

On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America’s pre-eminent Marvel Comics supervillain, the CEO used the call to deploy his secret weapon: a pair of giant, nuclear-powered testicles. In his message, Blankfein addressed his plan to pay out gigantic year-end bonuses amid widespread controversy over Goldman’s role in precipitating the global financial crisis.

The bank had already set aside a tidy $16.2 billion for salaries and bonuses — meaning that Goldman employees were each set to take home an average of $498,246, a number roughly commensurate with what they received during the bubble years. Still, the troops were worried: There were rumors that Dr. Ballsachs, bowing to political pressure, might be forced to scale the number back. After all, the country was broke, 14.8 million Americans were stranded on the unemployment line, and Barack Obama and the Democrats were trying to recover the populist high ground after their bitch-whipping in Massachusetts by calling for a “bailout tax” on banks. Maybe this wasn’t the right time for Goldman to be throwing its annual Roman bonus orgy.

Not to worry, Blankfein reassured employees. “In a year that proved to have no shortage of story lines,” he said, “I believe very strongly that performance is the ultimate narrative.”

Translation: We made a shitload of money last year because we’re so amazing at our jobs, so fuck all those people who want us to reduce our bonuses.

Goldman wasn’t alone. The nation’s six largest banks — all committed to this balls-out, I drink your milkshake! strategy of flagrantly gorging themselves as America goes hungry — set aside a whopping $140 billion for executive compensation last year, a sum only slightly less than the $164 billion they paid themselves in the pre-crash year of 2007. In a gesture of self-sacrifice, Blankfein himself took a humiliatingly low bonus of $9 million, less than the 2009 pay of elephantine New York Knicks washout Eddy Curry. But in reality, not much had changed. “What is the state of our moral being when Lloyd Blankfein taking a $9 million bonus is viewed as this great act of contrition, when every penny of it was a direct transfer from the taxpayer?” asks Eliot Spitzer, who tried to hold Wall Street accountable during his own ill-fated stint as governor of New York.

Beyond a few such bleats of outrage, however, the huge payout was met, by and large, with a collective sigh of resignation. Because beneath America’s populist veneer, on a more subtle strata of the national psyche, there remains a strong temptation to not really give a shit…

[continues at Rolling Stone]

Goldman Sachs Staff Buying Guns ‘To Defend Themselves Against Public Uprising’

disinfogreg — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:15:02 +0000

Via Bloomberg:

“I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.

I called Goldman Sachs spokesman Lucas van Praag to ask whether it’s true that Goldman partners feel they need handguns to protect themselves from the angry proletariat. He didn’t call me back. The New York Police Department has told me that “as a preliminary matter” it believes some of the bankers I inquired about do have pistol permits. The NYPD also said it will be a while before it can name names.

While we wait, Goldman has wrapped itself in the flag of Warren Buffett, with whom it will jointly donate $500 million, part of an effort to burnish its image — and gain new Goldman clients. Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein also reversed himself after having previously called Goldman’s greed “God’s work” and apologized earlier this month for having participated in things that were “clearly wrong.”

Has it really come to this? Imagine what emotions must be billowing through the halls of Goldman Sachs to provoke the firm into an apology. Talk that Goldman bankers might have armed themselves in self-defense would sound ludicrous, were it not so apt a metaphor for the way that the most successful people on Wall Street have become a target for public rage.

The Great Foreclosure Robbery Of The 21st Century

Robert Singer — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:23:38 +0000

By Robert Singer

The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that there have now been 1,000,000 foreclosures filed so far in 2009 and the group expects the foreclosure number to double before the end of the year.

U.S. Home Vacancies Hit 18.7 Million on Bank Seizures (Update2) [1]

Thanks to our controlled and uncontrolled media, we know when you take the derivative of the foreclosure crisis you get those greedy predatory lenders at AIG, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America plotting to steal our tacky (I mean tract-y) houses.

Conventional wisdumb and the media always blame the usual suspects and FOX News wraps it up: “It’s the age-old Wall Street vs. Main Street smackdown again”

Is this foreclosure for profit?

Read the rest at the Marketoracle

The Great U.S. Housing Market Foreclosure Robbery Of The 21st Century

I’m doing ‘God’s work’. Meet Mr Goldman Sachs

majestic — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:32:35 +0000

Can you believe this guy? The Sunday Times gains unprecedented access to the world’s most powerful, and most secretive, investment bank:

“Aha! You catch us plotting in real time,” says Lloyd Blankfein, breaking away from a cabal of senior executives discussing his trip to Washington the previous day. Blankfein, 55, Goldman’s chairman and chief executive, is wearing a grey suit with a jaunty Hermès tie with little red bicycles on it. In his hand, he’s carrying one of those cups of coffee that look bigger than the human stomach. Maybe it’s the caffeine, maybe it’s the tie — a birthday present from his daughter — but he’s in a remarkably jolly mood for a man everyone seems to hate. “It’s like a safari here,” he jokes. “You’ve come in to look at the animals.”

Blankfein may be Wall Street’s Sun God, but, with the economic outlook stormy, he doesn’t want to advertise it, so the merest hint of a status symbol or — horror! — ostentation is airbrushed out of his life, publicly, at least. Take his office on the 30th floor. The chairs are the same ones that were there when he became CEO three years ago. There are none of the $87,000 handmade rugs or $5,000 wastepaper baskets of Wall Street lore. There’s no sign of irrational exuberance. Only coffee, which arrives cold. It sets just the right tone for the job in hand. The grand wizard of Wall Street is steeling himself for the hardest sell of his life: he’s here to argue for good ol’ capitalism, for investment banks and for Goldman Sachs…

[continues in the Sunday Times]