How Goldmann Sachs stole your money—again, and again and again
Would you guess one company is to blame for the housing bubble, the internet bubble, high gas prices last year?
Matt Taibbi wrote that it all leads back to Goldman Sachs. His great article starts:
"The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
If you don't feel like reading the whole article, you can watch this 4 part interview that sums of some of its arguments:
Click over to youtube to watch the 3 remaining parts.
So why is the greatest investigative journalist a writer for a rock and roll magazine? I don't know, but that's pretty rock and roll.
Other excellent excerpts from Taibbi's article:
"organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy"
"The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest . . ."
"As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street."
"After the oil bubble collapsed last fall, there was no new bubble to keep things humming — this time, the money seems to be really gone, like worldwide-depression gone. So the financial safari has moved elsewhere, and the big game in the hunt has become the only remaining pool of dumb, unguarded capital left to feed upon: taxpayer money. Here, in the biggest bailout in history, is where Goldman Sachs really started to flex its muscle."
"Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers — one of Goldman's last real competitors — collapse without intervention."
"Fast-forward to today. It's early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs — its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign — sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs."
". . . the next bubble, is in carbon credits — a booming trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade."
Matt Taibbi wrote that it all leads back to Goldman Sachs. His great article starts:
"The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
If you don't feel like reading the whole article, you can watch this 4 part interview that sums of some of its arguments:
Click over to youtube to watch the 3 remaining parts.
So why is the greatest investigative journalist a writer for a rock and roll magazine? I don't know, but that's pretty rock and roll.
Other excellent excerpts from Taibbi's article:
"organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy"
"The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest . . ."
"As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street."
"After the oil bubble collapsed last fall, there was no new bubble to keep things humming — this time, the money seems to be really gone, like worldwide-depression gone. So the financial safari has moved elsewhere, and the big game in the hunt has become the only remaining pool of dumb, unguarded capital left to feed upon: taxpayer money. Here, in the biggest bailout in history, is where Goldman Sachs really started to flex its muscle."
"Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers — one of Goldman's last real competitors — collapse without intervention."
"Fast-forward to today. It's early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs — its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign — sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs."
". . . the next bubble, is in carbon credits — a booming trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade."
Kill the scapegoat! Then all of the money I poorly spent will magically return.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just money poorly spent, it's money invested for retirement, college funds, etc. Unless people who save money are making a poor investment (it could be argued).
ReplyDeleteAnd they're not so much a scapegoat as the troll under the bridge.
But I love your sense of humor.
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