Tag: Goldman Sachs

Here is the wheel of fortune of our times  

This map represents the connections and relationships of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Goldman Sachs International, Goldman Sachs Japan, Goldman Sachs Europe Limited, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Goldman Sachs Hedge Fund Strategies LLC, Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Goldman Sachs (Asia) LLC

Below I will post a link to the interactive version where you can click on each of the boxes with a + sign and get more information and see even further connections. I will also post a list of all these many connections. I posted a smaller version of this wheel last night in Badabing’s diary, Matt Taibbi Pulls the Rug Out on Goldman Sachs – AGAIN… and am flushing it out for you all by request. Consider this a reference. I hope others will add to it.

The New York Stock Exchange let it be known last week that it would no longer require companies to report all of their program trading–an outrage that enables large investment banks, particularly Goldman Sachs, to shield themselves from public scrutiny.  

Matt Tiabbi  . . .

This is quiet obviously a move designed to make it even more impossible to track what’s going on in the NYSE and shield, in particular, Goldman Sachs.  The move is designed to protect investment banks from bloggers who are exposing the companies’ stock market manipulations.  Goldman Sachs is singled out because the investment bank’s share of principal NYSE trading has gone from 27 percent at the end of 2008 to fully 50 percent of trades in recent months.

For some bizarre reason, Danps at FDL seems to think that Goldman Sachs taking over the Obama Administration and Wall Street and God only knows what else might not be a good development.  He’s asking Is the Left Being Too Easy on the President? . . .

Maybe some of the president’s supporters prefer to turn a blind eye towards a scathing indictment of a company whose employees have lavishly funded the president and with whom he appears to enjoy a warm relationship.  If so it is troubling.

This is far beyond troubling.  But the response of far too many progressives is typical.  The same progressives who opposed Impeachment are blindly supporting Obama and ignoring the reeking stench of Goldman Sachs that’s hanging over Obama’s White House.  They like to call themselves “realists.”  They’ve had plenty of practice at that, it’s been their standard response every time other progressives take a stand for progressive principles and ask them why they won’t.      

Writing in the the current print issue of Rolling Stone, journalist Matt Taibbi exposes Goldman Sachs, the “world’s most powerful investment bank”, for the “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” that it truly is.

In “The Great American Bubble Machine”, Taibbi outlines how Goldman Sachs has either influenced, shaped, or simply created five market bubbles since 1929 and how now, the bankers are planning to use the greenhouse gas emissions cap-and-trade scheme as their penultimate bubble.

While I do not agree with some of the conclusions he makes, there is enough in his 9,700 word essay that can make the blood boil.

“The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere,” he begins. But, “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.”

copyright © 2009 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

Today, Timothy Geithner garners much attention.  Initially, when introduced on the national scene, people pondered; “Who is he?” The former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has an impeccable résumé.  Some said his record speaks for itself.  Average Americans might have admired his ascendancy. Taxpayers could have appreciated that a man of his age would wish to manage the complexity of the United States coffers.   Countless may have considered the enormous challenge he accepted; yet, not comprehend, for Secretary Geithner, this may have been the plan.

Early on, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner had his sights set high.  As a child, born to an affluent, and influential family, he learned that all he desired could be his.  He saw the potential for power in political prospects.  The practicality of a profitable purpose also was apparent to Tim.  When a lad, there was no reason for Timothy to reflect on the concrete pavements beneath his feet.  Geithner would not have supposed he would work as a laborer.  Nor had he likely seen himself as one among the swarms of ordinary citizens.   His personal history may have helped him to know, he would not have to pound the streets to seek pennies for his pocket.  Unconventional as his life had been, Timothy Geithner might have imagined as others did; he was destined for greatness.

One tenth of the $700 billion bailout to be footed by U.S. taxpayers is projected to go to the pay and bonuses of Wall Street bankers. The same captains of finance who sent the world into a financial meltdown are now going to be rewarded handsomely.

The Guardian has found that the Top Wall Street bankers are to receive $70 billion in pay deals.

Financial workers at Wall Street’s top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40.4bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in bonuses, for their work so far this year – despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash…

Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup will pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted widespread criticism. The government cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay will be curbed.