Second discussion of the Goldman Sachs Mafia article (more pissed off)

[JurisDoctorOfDoom]

Okay, the other thread is going to focus on the tax/accounting issues. This one is going to focus more on how pissed we are and related issues:

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  . . . 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 . . .

Full article:


http://seekingalpha.com/article/145484-goldman-sachs-the-wall-street-bubble-mafia

http://greenlightadvisor.com/glablog/2009/06/26/goldman-sachs-engineering-every-major-market-manipulation-since-the-great-depression

At Matt's blog, this is just unbelievable:

After my Rolling Stone piece about Goldman, Sachs hit the newsstands last week (unfortunately the piece is not yet up on the magazine’s web site, so I can’t link to it yet — but it is out in print), I started to get a lot of mail. Most of it was thoughtful and respectful criticism, although there was an amusingly large number of people writing in impassioned defense of their right, under our American system, to be ripped off by large impersonal financial companies. "If my pension fund is buying [crap mortgages] from Goldman, and my pension fund loses lots of value, that’s not Goldman’s fault," wrote one reader. "No one is forcing anyone to buy anything. The only thing Goldman is guilty of is making profits."

I’m not even going to go there — the psychology of a human being who would take the time to actually write in a complaint like that is so bizarre that it would take more time than I have today to even begin discussing it.

A bit later, about what happened when he tried to contact GS to get their "side of the story":

. . . here is the response that we got:

"Your questions are couched in such a way that presupposes the conclusions and suggests the people you spoke with have an agenda or do not fully understand the issues.”

You have to have swallowed half a lifetime of carefully-worded p.r. statements to see the message written between the lines here. That this is a non-denial denial is obvious, but what’s more notable here is that they didn’t stop with just a flat “no comment,” which they easily could have done. No, they had to go a little further than that and — and this is pure Goldman, just outstanding stuff — make it clear that both I and my sources are simply not as smart as they are and don’t understand what we’re talking about. So the rough translation here is, “No comment, but if you were as smart as us, you wouldn’t be asking these questions.”

Source: http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/06/30/on-giving-goldman-a-chance/

[StrangeFire]

Thank you JDD! Man that article was rage-inducing. I had to go pace the floor to cool off after I read it.

[JurisDoctorOfDoom]

Anybody show it to anybody else in meatspace? Somebody told me its been all over the talk radio locally but I hadn't heard.

[jock]

“No comment, but if you were as smart as us, you wouldn’t be asking these questions.”

Hmm What happened to the last lot who thought they were "the smartest guys in the room"?

[JB]

What is there to say about income tax in the US and in numerous jurisdictions around the world for that matter...

The system is essentially currently rigged (though the legal ability of corporations to do some income shifting to subsidiaries located in fiscal paradises) in such a way that the poor and middle class physical income tax payers (the rich use expensive lawyers and accountants to shift income to fiscal paradises) essentially pay for almost all the revenues of the state...

The situation has been getting worse since the end of WWII...

It is not likely to change soon, unless something big happens, like WWIII...

JB

What is much more interesting to discuss is whether Matt Savinar shares the analysis of Matt Taibbi concerning the cause of the June 2008 oil price signal. Was it speculation as Taibbi is suggesting in the closing part of his Rolling Stone article or was it oil demand hitting the barrier of limited Peak Oil supply? Taibbi seems to be hinting that the Peak Oil syndrome was either invented by Goldman Sachs or at the very least used by it to further plunder the system...

[dermot]

What is much more interesting to discuss is whether Matt Savinar shares the analysis of Matt Taibbi concerning the cause of the June 2008 oil price signal. Was it speculation as Taibbi is suggesting in the closing part of his Rolling Stone article or was it oil demand hitting the barrier of limited Peak Oil supply? Taibbi seems to be hinting that the Peak Oil syndrome was either invented by Goldman Sachs or at the very least used by it to further plunder the system...

If they did invent it, then they'd have a very long list of people on their payroll. Deffeyes, Goodstein, Campbell, Heinberg, etc. I don't buy it.

Taibbi's great, but like many he probably hasn't looked deeply enough into PO.

US oil production peaked in 1970. World discovery peaked in 1963/4. That was a LONG time ago... I wonder does he know this?

[Saltypuppy]

We just finished watching a FRONTLINE video called "Breaking the Bank".  Interesting to see who got 'thrown under the bus' and NO MENTION, of which institution came out unscathed (GS).  The CEO of Bank of America says he was basically forced to buy Merryl (by Henry Paulson) which then lead to B of A's financial woes.  The whole thing really smells stinky after watching this documentary:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/breakingthebank/view/

[wiccawench]

I am with Strangefire here

I read that she read it...... and was enraged and punching stuff......so out of curiosity read it.


I am absolutly gobsmacked. I totally dont know HOW to feel about it.....am still in a cloud of rage would be about the right word.....

sorry i am not much more use..... but geeezus.... in the end... this is about resources. You were right all along Matt but the more i know the worse it gets.....its starting to get positively creepy about how engineered it all is. I think that the PTB have actually been totally aware from a lot EARLIER than i gave them credit for. Thats the worst thing.

They might actually NOT be stupid.

[I_Heart_Petrobilia]

Yep, it's all about resources.  Oil is the lifeblood of the global corporate economy, so peak oil is going to determine the direction gov moves in.  Gov has been in the pockets of Wall Street and big oil for awhile now. I'm just resigned to it. 

[Saltypuppy]

Hey was trying to show the article to my hubby but it was 'taken down due to copyright infringement'.  Luckily, I found another on-line version here:

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/06/goldman-sachs-engineering-every-major.html

In case some of you haven't had a chance to read it yet . . . 

[DimLightbulb]

So it's obvious that Goldman is an agent for the government.  Now where does JP Morgan fit into the picture ?
The House of Morgan was top dog since before the Great Depression.  Was there a power grab or do they play different roles in this banker cartel ?

I personally find this fascinating since I read Creature from Jekyll Island.  The dots are right there to be connected; nothing is hidden just not advertised.

[Doomerific]

There is a place called Hell and a thing called Karma. 

[LuckyLarry]

Corporate America is run by front seat jockeys. These are the people who have only one purpose in life. That is to do anything necessary to rise up in the chain of command. This requires they spend all their time securing that end and no time at all being concerned about the welfare of the company that pays them. Anyone who has been part of this game knows that this is the way it is. So in the referenced Front-Line video presentation we see what happens when there is a room full of these jocks who have been one upped by one of them who has the power of government behind him – one who has attained the ultimate front seat.
No tears need be shed for any of them who received their just desserts at the hands of the master of the game. Greedy ambition and narcissism blind-siding basic business judgment, led Ken Lewis and BOA to the edge of the financial abyss. John Thain comes off as seriously brain damaged as evidenced by his stewardship of Merril Lynch and then getting worked over by Lewis and Paulson.
At the end of the day, it all appears very much like the case made by Tabbi in his GS Maffia article. That GS comes out of all this on top of the game, and we now see Paulson as the evil hand inside a government glove, one has to wonder if the entire Lehman episode was the opening gambit in the GS government assisted rise to the pinnacle of power it now enjoys.

However it all leaves a basic issue unspoken. Namely, the totally vapid, unresponsive congressional membership. So while the wall street masters of the universe destroyed the financial universe, government played along – as the best government that money can buy.

Now that the government is in charge of Wall Street, it gives new meaning to the activities of The Plunge Protection Team. There is no limit to market manipulation at this point. When it comes to investing (playing with some one else’s loaded dice) there is no better rule to observe than caveat emptor!

[lynnie]

This to me was the most striking thing of all:

(Lehman’s) were dumb enough to hold their mortgage paper and be sunk by it, Goldman shorted their own crap, which means (and I know I’m repeating myself here) they knew that what they were selling was a loser.

They underwrite 59 billion in subprime crap, they know it is crap, so they short it (a short is a bet that the value of some financial entity will go down).

Reminds me of reading Sherlock Holmes about Moriarity, the brilliant mind devoted to crime.

My cousin's daughter went to Princeton and became a "financial engineer" and married one ( brilliant guy from NYC). Lots of math. The Ivy league schools train these people how to scam the nation. Incredible.

[Jeromie]

If you check the popular writings of all those geologists they simply refer to oil  peaking or  having been peaked.  They leave out one word from everything and you have the basis for a peak oil hysteria. Their professional work readers  understand via trade jargon that oil that has peaked is crude oil with an API number greater than 20 and extracted only by primary and secondary means.   In fairness   though, they did here and there mention " light sweet crude" which  would be taken by the trade as  conventional oil.   

 At the same time , oil production numbers show oil extracted by  primary, secondary and tertiary methods, plus heavy oils.   Taibbi quotes  numbers that show there was no physical shortage. Those numbers included all oils extracted. 

Consequently Taibbi should be correct on the manipulation by GS and others.