tagged w/ Goldman Sachs
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Listening to members of the Senate subcommittee on investigations interrogate Goldman Sachs executives, I couldn't help but think, "chicken." And then, "where's the beef?"
Not because the executives parried, ducked, and even drew out their syllables (much to Sen. Susan Collins's frustration) during their ten-hour grilling. But because the white shoe investment bank and securities firm has, in recent years, entered the messy world of global agribusiness.
That's right: Goldman Sachs is in the business of factory farming. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised: in the late 18th century, the area around Wall Street housed slaughterhouses and tanneries. The word capitalism itself is rooted in the trade of (live)stock measured by head (Latin: capita) of cattle. Nonetheless, the parallels between the killings made on Wall Street then and now are not only eerie, but consequential. Just as the securitized debt deals Goldman was hawking may be, in Warren Buffett's words, "financial weapons of mass destruction," putting the whole economic system at risk of collapse, factory farming carries a parallel risk -- of environmental destruction and exploitation of resources, prospects for food security, and animals, all on a mass scale.
Unfortunately, the Senate inquiry into Goldman's alleged malfeasance is unlikely to question why the company in 2008 decided to acquire ten intensive poultry farms in China's Hunan and Fujian provinces for $300 million. While Goldman isn't running the farms itself (that's outsourced) it retains control over the prices. "So for the record, that's: U.S. mortgages = bad . . . Asian livestock = good," is how the website Business Insider described the deal.
This isn't the firm's first foray into this arena. Goldman is also principal owner of Burger King, joining Bain and Texas Pacific in 2002 in a $2.26 billion takeover of the fast food giant. Labor activists have criticized Goldman for the poverty wages earned by full-time Burger King workers, even as the firm continues to pay out billions in bonuses, including during the great recession.
China Syndrome
In China, Goldman may well be producing chicken for its own restaurants, since Burger King has 25 Chinese outlets. In recent decades, both fast food and U.S.-style factory farms that house thousands of animals in tiny cages or stalls in indoor sheds have become increasingly common in China. But such facilities, like the ones Goldman now owns, forfeit any semblance of animal welfare and have immense environmental and social costs.
Why would Goldman want to own factory farms? Obviously, it sees an opportunity to make money, no matter the consequences. Meat consumption in China is rising rapidly; since 1980, it's quadrupled. Tyson, Smithfield, and other leading "protein producers" are active in the country, seeking new sources of profit by putting the proverbial chicken in 1.3 billion Chinese pots. Goldman must have wanted a piece of that pot, too.
Goldman's poultry purchase could be labeled with the epithet Sen. Carl Levin used repeatedly at the hearings riffing on a Goldman employee's email description of one of the firm's securities schemes (a "shitty deal").
Filthy Lucre
According to Wu Weixiang, an associate professor at China's Zhejiang University's Agriculture College, "Domestic animal and poultry waste has become a major source of environmental pollution." Indeed, China's billions of farmed animals produce an estimated 2.7 billion tons of manure a year--three-and-a-half times industrial solid waste levels--and runoff from livestock facilities has led to a significant "dead zone" in the South China Sea, akin to that in the Gulf of Mexico, which is also the result of agriculture.
The poultry deal also contradicts a Goldman business principle. "Our responsibility for environmental stewardship does not fluctuate with changing economic conditions," the firm's 2008 Environmental Report states. "We hope our work continues to inspire action and creative market-based solutions that can help our environment endure and thrive.
Only three percent of China's large and medium-sized livestock operations have facilities to treat animal wastes, according to Xu Cheng, a professor at China Agricultural University. Do Goldman's?
Just a year and a half ago, Goldman was kept afloat by billions of dollars in U.S. government funds. Does that mean U.S. taxpayer dollars subsidized cruel, polluting, climate-heating factory farms in China? Even if the connection isn't direct, what are we to make of an elite private equity firm like Goldman helping expand industrial-scale animal facilities?
cont.Listening to members of the Senate subcommittee on investigations interrogate Goldman... more
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Former President Bill Clinton says it is "time to lower the rhetoric and talk about the facts," in reference to the government's scrutiny of Wall Street.
In an exclusive interview with Maria Bartiromo, Clinton noted that while many financial firms are being questioned by the Securities and Exchange Commission, he does not believe that Goldman Sachs or CEO Lloyd Blankfein did anything illegal, based on what he's seeing.
The SEC has been probing the mortgage operations of major banks, but so far has only charged Goldman with civil fraud. The firm has said it will fight the charges and has vigorously denied any wrongdoing.
Clinton says "what we ought to do is have an honest conversation about what really happened, how to fix it, and how to get what's best about vital capital markets."
more at link...
An "honest conversation about what really happened" just came out of the mouth of Bill Clinton, a guy who made his career by being the best liar in the business. I guess Ponzi schemes and financial terrorism is standard practice. How about raping and pillaging? Obviously treason is legal; how else are all the same cast of Benedict Arnolds still walking around, making billions by stealing our money.
It was under Bill Clinton in 1999 when his cronies, Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which is the most important Post-Depression safeguard and protector of the citizen's cash. From that point forward, the floodgates were opened for the banking oligarchs to further bankrupt this nation.
Who's running the Obama white house from behind the scenes? Rahm Emanuel and Larry Summers with his puppet, little Timmy Geithner. Even Elena Kagan, Supreme Court nominee, worked for Goldman Sachs as a top adviser, where she gave "expert advice to clients." Also, she was at Harvard with Larry Summers. Are you kidding me?
End the Fed...its a private, banking cartel that is purposefully tanking our currency b/c its leaders want a New World Order and a corporate-fascist dictatorship across the globe. Bill Clinton and everyone else in Washington works for Goldman Sachs b/c they have a monopoly on the issuance of currency via the mafioso institution known as the Federal Reserve.Former President Bill Clinton says it is "time to lower the rhetoric and talk... more
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Everyone knows the casino always wins. It’s a mathematical certainty. Goldman Sachs (GS) made money on their trading desks every single day last quarter. So, is Goldman Sachs the “house” for global markets?
Yesterday, Zero Hedge eloquently noted that this is “Unfuckingbelievable.” It is. Goldman’s achievement is as rare as a major league baseball player batting 1000%. Unless the game is rigged, it’s statistically impossible. Zero Hedge adds:
If you ever wanted to see what monopoly looks like in chart form, here it is:
http://wallstcheatsheet.com/breaking-news/is-goldman-sachs-trading-desk-a-statistical-casino/?p=11115/Everyone knows the casino always wins. It’s a mathematical certainty. Goldman... more
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Just days before the president is expected to announce his choice for the Supreme Court, the perceived front-runner for that post is being plagued by a story that actually broke in March 2009.
On Friday, a slew of inquiries was made to the White House and Justice Department about a minor post Solicitor General Elena Kagan once held at Goldman Sachs, the investment bank under fire over controversial mortgage securities transactions. Kagan served on a Goldman advisory council between 2005 and 2008, with the task of providing expert "analysis and advice to Goldman Sachs and its clients." For her work she earned a $10,000 stipend.
This was actually old news. Kagan disclosed this information during her first confirmation hearings for the post of Solicitor General. On March 24, 2009, the New York Times mentioned the position and payment in an article on whether White House employees should be allowed to keep the bonuses they earned from their time in private industry.
In mid-April 2010, Goldman was charged by the SEC with fraud in its dealing with the subprime mortgage market and immediately became a toxic name within the political world. With Kagan ascending to the short list of potential Supreme Court nominees shortly thereafter, USA Today revisited the matter on April 27 -- albeit in a much different context than the Times.
Since then, however, the issue has remained largely on the back burner. That is until Friday, when White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was asked about the Goldman connection during a briefing with reporters. Gibbs stressed that the panel "had absolutely nothing to do with decisions Goldman is being investigated for" and stressed that her position with the bank would have "no" impact on her potential nomination.
The Justice Department, likewise, downplayed the findings in statements issued to inquiring reporters. "This advisory group was comprised of leaders from various sectors including academia, the media, business, and other industry," said spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler. "They met once a year for a daylong conference organized around public policy matters. The group was not involved in making any investment decisions for the company."
But concern nevertheless mounted in the progressive community (already skittish on Kagan's credentials) that the connection could be used to harm her during confirmation hearings -- should she be nominated.Just days before the president is expected to announce his choice for the Supreme... more
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Several thousand demonstrators marched through the New York financial district this past week in a protest led by labor unions. They said Wall Street's biggest banks must account for record profits while average Americans still suffer financially.Several thousand demonstrators marched through the New York financial district this... more
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There is growing evidence that fraud was at the heart of the current financial crisis. But so far, no high-level bank executives have been hauled off to jail. One of the reasons may be that key bank regulators, who are counted on to root out fraud from the companies they regulate, have largely left it to the banks to report suspicious activity themselves. In this story one veteran bank regulator and a fed-up Senator try to answer the question many have pondered since the beginning of the crisis: why haven't more bank bosses been held responsible for this mess?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR-8uVu4lPIThere is growing evidence that fraud was at the heart of the current financial crisis.... more
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By Grant Lawrence
Bodhi Thunder
Goldman evidently is fantastic at betting on disasters. As most everybody knows, Goldman Sucks sold clients bets that the housing market would boom while they themselves bet against the housing market.
The result–Their bet paid off big time. They got the gold and America got the shaft.
Now the joke is that they bet against the Gulf of Mexico and oil rigs.
“One oil rig goes down and we’re going to be rolling in dough,” Mr. Tourre wrote in one email. “Suck it, fishies and birdies!”
Maybe the are betting against nuke plants right now. Oops, watch out for another 3 Mile Island.
Perhaps Goldman is also setting up bets on the survival of humanity. I am sure they are smart betters and are betting against our survival. The coming collapse of the eco-system and the massive die off should give them a big payoff. But even if they lose the bet, the American taxpayer will be there with a help up of several trillions.
Banksters don’t get handouts, they get a help up.
But you know that.
They are not like those unemployed food stamp, welfare bums trying to survive on nothing. Banksters are doing ‘God’s Work’ as the Jackass Goldman CEO Lloyd ‘Blankmind’ once said. Goldman’s CEO also goes by Darth Vader or the Prince of Darkness.
I guess God is into destroying America, wrecking the world’s economy, and making narcissist, psychopaths super rich.By Grant Lawrence
Bodhi Thunder
Goldman evidently is fantastic at betting on... more
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The Securities and Exchange Commission filed securities fraud charges against Goldman, Sachs & Co. ("GS&Co") and a GS&Co employee, Fabrice Tourre ("Tourre"), for making material misstatements and omissions in connection with a synthetic collateralized debt obligation ("CDO") GS&Co structured and marketed to investors.The Securities and Exchange Commission filed securities fraud charges against Goldman,... more
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If there is a universal political sentiment in this country it's that there are far too many lobbyists. Some might quibble (primarily politicians and the lobbyists themselves) that lobbyists are a good thing. However, most everyone else sees them as carbuncles on the ass of society.If there is a universal political sentiment in this country it's that there are... more
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The US justice department has reportedly opened an investigation into the investment bank Goldman Sachs over mortgage deals it allegedly finalised with knowledge of their high risk. The criminal investigation was begun in New York on Thursday raising the prospect of the firm or some of its employees being charged, the Wall Street Journal newspaper reported.
The investigation follows the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing civil fraud charges against Goldman and one of its traders two weeks ago.
"Given the recent focus on the firm, we are not surprised by the report of an inquiry," a spokesman from Goldman said.
"We would fully co-operate with any requests for information."
The justice department's investigation reportedly stems from a referral from the SEC.
Information about mortgage-related securities was said by the SEC to have been hidden by the bank in transactions in 2006 and 2007.
'Investors misled'
The SEC said that the firm misled investors by not telling them that the securities had been selected by Paulson and Co, a Goldman hedge fund client, who was betting that the investments would fail.
Goldman and Fabrice Tourre, the trader said to be involved, deny the charges and have said that they will contest them in court.
Lloyd Blackfein, the CEO, and other Goldman employees were also questioned by a US senate subcommittee in Washington DC over trading the mortgage-related products when the US housing market broke down in 2007.
Congress is attempting to provide legislation to clean up and regulate the financial industry, after widespread criticism over banks' role in the global economic crisis.
The panel accused Goldman of inflating the housing bubble in the past ten years and then profiting from its collapse in 2007, highlighting the alleged incidents that surrounding complex mortgage deals that brought the SEC charges.
It also said the Wall Street giant helped to package toxic mortgages into bonds for fees from 2004 to 2007, and then repackaged those bonds into complex securities known as collateralised debt obligations, magnifying the risk from the mortgages.The US justice department has reportedly opened an investigation into the investment... more
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The Goldman Sachs (GS) hearing was frustrating because at times the Senators tripped over their questions and got nowhere when really, the Senators could have “won” the debate.
It’s our thinking that Goldman shouldn’t have been questioned so intensely about say, their taking $2.5 billion of AIG’s bailout dollars or how Sparks “got comfortable” with trading positions. Language like getting “comfortable” is vague and confusing.
What Sparks did is precise and sketchy: A client asked him, what’s Goldman’s position on this trade? Sparks answered: We’re long. Really though, they were also short.
Assuming there were no parameters around what they could and could not ask…
http://wallstcheatsheet.com/breaking-news/10-burning-questions-the-senators-should-have-asked-goldman-sachs/?p=10340/The Goldman Sachs (GS) hearing was frustrating because at times the Senators tripped... more
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At last the voters' voices are being heard. Kudos to our elected officials, whose quotation of expletives at least begins to reflect the anger of Americans.
If you caught any of the testimony from the Goldman Sachs hearings, it should be obvious that Wall Street is picking nits with what is Law, versus what is RIGHT. Any criticism directed at members of the subcommittee for use of foul language is laughable. I think most of us would have used far worse language having to face these immoral greedy jackasses.
There shouldn't have to be a law when basic trust issues are the subject. Where is the sense of right for these so-called business people? Senator McCain nailed it when he said that the financial meltdown has hurt and continues to hurt so many Americans, while Goldman Sachs seemed to have done quite well.
Thank-you Senator McCain.At last the voters' voices are being heard. Kudos to our elected officials,... more
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The masters of the universe were forced down to earth on Tuesday.
Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, the head of the most powerful investment bank in the world, faced a blistering cross-examination from U.S. lawmakers about the company's ethics and behavior toward its clients.
Blankfein, who said late last year he was "doing God's work," was asked time and time again whether he felt it was morally correct for the bank to sell its clients securities while at the same time the firm was betting against them.
In an interrogation by Senator Carl Levin, Blankfein was constantly interrupted, told to answer the question and stick to the point. He often squinted as if puzzled by the questions.
"You're going short against the very security (you're selling) ... many of which are described as crap by your own sales force internally." said Levin, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
"How do you expect to deserve the trust of your clients, and is there not an inherent conflict here?"
Blankfein was the last in a parade of Goldman Sachs Group Inc current and former executives who tried to fend off accusations they helping inflate the housing bubble and then made billions off the market's collapse.
Sworn in over seven hours after the hearing started, Blankfein said, as a market maker, it was not Goldman's responsibility to tell customers how to trade or invest.
Clients "are not coming to us to represent what our views are, they probably wouldn't care what our views are. They shouldn't care," he said.
The hearing comes less than two weeks after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil fraud suit against Goldman, charging that it hid vital information from investors about a mortgage-related security.
more @ link
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63Q35320100427The masters of the universe were forced down to earth on Tuesday.
Goldman Sachs... more
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Sen. Blanche Lincoln, under fire for keeping a $4,500 contribution from Goldman Sachs’s political action committee, has canceled a fundraising lunch with Goldman executives that was scheduled for Monday and would have netted many times that amount for the Arkansas senator’s reelection campaign.
The cancelled fundraiser, which was to have been held at Goldman’s Lower Manhattan headquarters, is emblematic of the investment bank’s swift fall from well-connected fundraising powerhouse to political pariah – a fate sealed Friday when the Securities and Exchange Commission charged the firm with defrauding investors.
“In light of the S.E.C. lawsuit against Goldman Sachs, Sen. Lincoln will schedule no future campaign-related events with the firm and will accept no further contributions from the firm's political action committee or its employees,” Lincoln’s campaign spokeswoman Katie Laning Niebaum said in a statement to POLITICO.
READ MORE AT LINKSen. Blanche Lincoln, under fire for keeping a $4,500 contribution from Goldman... more
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4/19/2010 On Monday, April 19, 2010, Congressman Paul was interviewed on Fox Business’ “Varney & Co.” concerning financial regulatory reform legislation and how the Federal Reserve and our current regulatory system encourage corruption in our economy.4/19/2010 On Monday, April 19, 2010, Congressman Paul was interviewed on Fox... more
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by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed fraud charges against Goldman Sachs and underscored what most Americans have believed for some time: Wall Street has rigged the economy in its own favor, and will stop at nothing—not even outright theft—to boost its profits. What’s worse, Goldman’s scam could have been completely prevented by better regulations and law enforcement.
Goldman’s heist
Let’s be clear. “Financial fraud” means “theft.” Goldman Sachs sold investors securities that were stocked with subprime mortgages and had been cherry-picked by a hedge fund manager named John Paulson. Paulson believed these mortgages were about to go bust, so he helped Goldman Sachs concoct the securities so that he could bet against them himself.
Goldman Sachs, like Paulson, also bet against the securities. But when Goldman sold the securities to investors, it didn’t tell them that Paulson had devised the securities, or that he was betting on their failure. By withholding crucial information from investors, Goldman directly profited from the scam at the expense of its own clients. If ordinary citizens did what the SEC’s alleges Goldman did, we’d call it stealing.
As Nick Baumann emphasizes for Mother Jones, the SEC’s suit against Goldman is just the tip of the iceberg. During the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s, literally thousands of bankers were jailed for financial fraud. Today’s crisis was much larger in scope, yet the Goldman allegations are among the first serious charges of legal wrongdoing to emerge (other complaints have been filed against Regions Bank and former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo). If the SEC or the FBI are doing their jobs, we should see many more of these cases.
Bust ‘em up.
How do banks get away with these kinds of shenanigans and still secure epic taxpayer bailouts? It’s all about their political clout, as Robert Reich notes for The American Prospect. So long as banks are so enormous that they can ruin the economy with their collapse, the institutions will always carry tremendous political clout.
Even in the case of Goldman Sachs, which is too-big-to-fail by any reasonable standard, the SEC’s fraud case is being filed three years after the company’s alleged offense. That’s well after the company rode to safety on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the AIG bailout and billions more in other indirect assistance—and only after multiple journalists made Goldman’s offensive transactions general public knowledge.
If we don’t break up the big banks, politically connected Wall Street titans will make sure they get bailed out when the next crisis hits, regardless of whatever laws we have on the books.
Fix the derivatives casino
If Congress doesn’t soon pass a bill to break up behemoth banks, it will be neglecting the gravest problem in our financial system today. But several other reforms are needed if Wall Street is ever going to serve a useful economic function again.
As Nomi Prins emphasizes for AlterNet, much of the Wall Street profit machine has been divorced from the economy that the rest of us live in. These days, banks make most of their money from securities trades and derivatives deals. Their actual lending business is taking a beating. That means big banks have very little incentive to promote economic well-being for every day citizens. We need to create these incentives by banning economically essential banks from engaging in securities trades, and make sure all derivatives transactions are conducted on open, transparent exchanges, just like ordinary stocks and bonds.
Better derivatives regulations could help protect against fraud. If Goldman Sachs’ sketchy subprime deal had been subject to market scrutiny on an exchange, it’s very unlikely that any investor would have bought into it. Goldman Sachs almost got away with it because the deal was secretive and beyond the scope of most regulatory oversight.
Protect whistleblowers
The Goldman case also raises significant questions about the government’s enforcement of existing financial fraud laws. Bradley Birkenfeld, a banker for Swiss financial giant UBS, helped the Department of Justice bring the largest tax fraud case in history against his company, which was helping rich Americans hide money from the IRS in offshore bank accounts.
For his cooperation, Birkenfeld was rewarded with a four-year prison sentence, even though nobody else at UBS—nobody—has been sentenced to prison over the scam. As Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman emphasize for Democracy Now!, Birkenfeld’s imprisonment could have something to with who exactly is hiding money with UBS.
Gonzalez discusses an interview with Birkenfeld, in which the former banker notes that the bank had a special office to handle the accounts of “politically exposed persons”— American politicians. Moreover, the top brass at UBS includes key advisors to top politicians in both parties. This is exactly the kind of influence smuggling that breaking up the banks would help fix. UBS is a multi-trillion-dollar institution with no less than 27 U.S. subsidiaries.
But protecting Birkenfeld would accomplish still more—by jailing him, the Justice Department is actively discouraging others from coming forward, and making it more difficult for regulators to enforce the law.
Greenspan’s failure
It’s abundantly clear that almost every major regulatory agency charged with curtailing financial excess failed to prevent the Crash of 2008. But that failure doesn’t mean that effective regulation is impossible—it only shows that the regulators in power failed. The top bank regulator in the U.S., John Dugan, was a former bank lobbyist.
As Christopher Hayes demonstrates for The Nation, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has never had any interest in regulation whatsoever. After the crash, Greenspan insisted that nobody could have seen it coming. But as Hayes notes, many people did—Greenspan simply didn’t listen to them. These days, Greenspan is revising his story, claiming that he did in fact see the crisis coming, but that nobody could have prevented it. That is simply not credible.
Hayes draws a useful parallel Hurricane Katrina, a problem sparked by a natural event that became a catastrophe when regulators failed to take the necessary precautions. The lesson from both Katrina and the financial crash is not that government always screws up—we have plenty of examples of government preventing floods and economic calamity. The lesson we should learn is that people who don’t believe in government will never do a good job governing. As Hayes notes:
If Greenspan couldn’t figure things out, that doesn’t mean others can’t. In fact, developing systems for doing just that is called—quite simply—progress, and Alan Greenspan continues to be one of its enemies.
That is exactly the task that now presents itself before Congress: Developing a system to prevent and constrain economic destruction wielded by Wall Street. The U.S. had a system that did exactly this for more than fifty years. For the last thrity years, it has been systematically dismantled. How well Congress lives up to that challenge will define much of our economic future for decades to come.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Last week, the Securities and Exchange... more
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Last week the Securities and Exchange Commission accused the Gucci-loafer guys at Goldman Sachs of engaging in what amounts to white-collar looting.
What we’re now seeing are accusations of a third form of fraud.
We’ve known for some time that Goldman Sachs and other firms marketed mortgage-backed securities even as they sought to make profits by betting that such securities would plunge in value. This practice, however, while arguably reprehensible, wasn’t illegal.
But now the S.E.C. is charging that Goldman created and marketed securities that were deliberately designed to fail, so that an important client could make money off that failure.
That’s what I would call looting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/opinion/19krugman.html?hpLast week the Securities and Exchange Commission accused the Gucci-loafer guys at... more
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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/;kw=[3351,11459]
A really great article from Rolling Stone that details Goldman Sachs' involvement in financial crises since the Great Depression.
" ... any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.
The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pump-and-dump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses, and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere — high gas prices, rising consumer credit rates, half-eaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to pay off bailouts. All that money that you're losing, it's going somewhere, and in both a literal and a figurative sense, Goldman Sachs is where it's going: The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth — pure profit for rich individuals.
They achieve this using the same playbook over and o212; and in order to understand that, you need to understand what Goldman has already gotten away with. It is a history exactly five bubbles long — including last year's strange and seemingly inexplicable spike in the price of oil. There were a lot of losers in each of those bubbles, and in the bailout that followed. But Goldman wasn't one of them."
full story at the link:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/;kw=[3351,11459]http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/;kw=[3351,11459]
A really great article... more
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When under investigation for fraud in the US, many are shocked at Goldman Sachs resent roll of £3.5 billion bonus payouts to London staff after a stated 3 months of work.
The Guardian reports the fraud charges relate to accusations that the company used 'misleading mortgage investment deal' to get $1bn out of its clients. According to the paper one man named in the case is still working for Goldman Sachs in London.
Recently, both Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel have spoken out against the Goldman Sachs on bonuses and the charges of fraud.
"Gordon Brown ordered a special investigation into Goldman, accusing the bank of "moral bankruptcy". He threatened to block multimillion-pound bonus payouts if the firm is found guilty of wrongdoing.
In Berlin, Angela Merkel's government said it had sought information from the US Securities and Exchange Commission with a view to evaluating "legal steps" against Goldman."-The Guardian.When under investigation for fraud in the US, many are shocked at Goldman Sachs resent... more
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