Tag: Financial Bailout

 So Goldman Sacks is making big fat gobs of money off the financial crisis.

It plans to give out $23 billion, yes, that’s billion with a B, in “bonuses” (hm, we used to call that “embezzlement”) for it’s beloved employees hard work in milking a failing US economy to the ridiculous benefit of The Firm.

Last year, Goldman Sacks paid only 14 million dollars in taxes.  Worldwide.    

Okay, what is wrong with this picture ….?

And why can’t the government do something about it?

Oh right.  The government is owned by Golden Sacks.   Geithner?   Nobody can get him on the phone EXCEPT for Golden Sacks.  They call him all they want, and he calls them, too.   They’re BFF’s!

How much is $23 Billion dollars?

For one thing, it’s enough to send 460,000 full paying students to Harvard University for one year, or 115,000 for four years.

It’s enough to pay the health insurance premium for the average American family ($13,375) 1.7 million times.

It’s enough to upgrade 191 million computers to Windows 7 operating system (priced at $119.99), or to buy 115 million iPhones at $199.99 (provided the recipient was willing to sign a two-year contract).

Or, apparently, it’s enough to reward the employees of Goldman Sachs for a bonanza trading year, at a firm where average employee compensation was recently $622,000 — and likely to be greater this year.

The $23 billion figure could leave some American taxpayers woozy — the US government bailed out Goldman Sachs with a multi-billion payment last year, which the firm has since repaid.

But while Goldman is likely to pay its biggest bonuses ever to employees, the firm pays very little in taxes worldwide. In 2008, the company was said to have paid just $14 million in taxes worldwide, and paid $6 billion in 2007.

The firm’s corporate tax rate? About 1 percent. According a prominent tax lawyer, “They have taken steps to ensure that a lot of their income is earned in lower-tax jurisdictions.”

A 1 percent tax rate?  

This is the very epitome of “laughing all the way to the bank”.

I suppose it’s good to be King.   And the King of the world right now is Goldman Sachs.

They own the place.

The question which begged to be asked!

Original article, by Mick Brooks, via Socialist Appeal (UK):

Stock exchanges in Britain and the USA have been on the slide over the past few days. The reason is not hard to seek. The FTSE has been spooked by bank shares collapsing. Barclays, for instance, saw 25% of its share price shaved off in one hour last Friday (16.01.09). This was the day after the bank announced 2,100 job losses.

Original article, by Patrick Martin, via World Socialist Web Site:

Barack Obama took the occasion of his first press appearance in Washington as president-elect to declare his determination to impose policies of budgetary austerity, including the elimination of entire federal programs and cost-cutting in the entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that are of vital importance to tens of millions of elderly and poor people.

Original article, a speech by Jeremy Dear given at the Annual Conference of the Labour Representation Committee (the organising hub of the left wing within the Labour Party and among trade union activists), via Socialist Appeal (UK):

As an aside, you may be asking why we should be interested in what Jeremy Dear is giving a speech on? The answer, to me, is simple: Labour has been hijacked by the neoliberal militarists just the same as the Democrats have been. While the crisis in Britain may not be 100% the same as here in the US, it is part and parcel of the collapse of international capitalism. Our workers face the same problems as theirs. It is within this framework that I think Dear’s speech is worth a read:

Original article, a perspective from Barry Grey, via World Socialist Web Site:

The Wall Street Journal published a front-page article Friday reporting that the nine biggest US banks, which have received a combined $125 billion in taxpayer funds as part of the $700 billion bailout authored by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and passed by the Democratic Congress, owed their executives more than $40 billion for recent years’ compensation and pensions as of the end of 2000.