Mnuchin Said to Be Top Treasury Pick Among Trump's Advisers
Bloomberg-Nov 14, 2016
Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. partner Steven Mnuchin has been ... a failed bank, IndyMac, with billionaires including John Paulson.
Why is Goldman Sachs funding the violent, racist Jewish settlers of ...
www.haaretz.com › Opinion
Apr 11, 2016 - In 2012 the Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund granted $18,000 to one ... Hebron settlers are also known to attack Israeli soldiers on the rare ...
Haaretz
John Paulson Added To Goldman Sachs Suit - Business Insider
www.businessinsider.com/john-paulson-added-to-goldman-sachs-suit-20...
Jan 2, 2013 - According to court filings, bond insurer ACA Financial is asking to revise its complaint against Goldman Sachs to include hedge fund manager ...
SEC Charges Goldman Sachs With Fraud in Structuring and ...
https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-59.htm
9/11 Zionist Goldman Sachs Jew Steven Mnuchin To Head Donald Trump U.S. Treasury
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/12/the-vampire-squid-diaries-goldman-sachs-exec-to-he.html
Trump has decided to name a member of Wall Street as his Treasury Secretary: Goldman Sachs Group executive Steven Mnuchin. As you might remember, Sachs had a major hand in almost sinking the world back in 2008. They have been richly rewarded for their greed and sociopathy.
Our economic system favors them, Obama cherishes them, Team Clinton worshipped them, and now Donald Trump pays homage. This is the latest of those prizes. To quote Bloomberg Markets, “If Mnuchin becomes Treasury secretary, he’ll be the third Goldman Sachs alum in three decades to get the job.” Sachs, who Matt Taibbi famously called a “Vampire Squid,” is welcome at Trump’s table.
According to Business Insider, the usual suspects were not pleased:
“During the campaign, Donald Trump
told the American people that he was going to change Washington by
taking on Wall Street,” Sanders and Warren said in a rare joint
statement. “Donald Trump’s choice for Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin,
is just another Wall Street insider. That is not the type of change
that Donald Trump promised to bring to Washington – that is hypocrisy at
its worst.”
The Orangeman’s deep draw from the smiling-son-of-a-bitch pool is
a nice indicator of what’s to come. This won’t come as a shock to those
of you who paid close attention to Donald. His principles bend, and so
do his knees. The financial industry has drained more than its fair
share of the life-energy of the Republic for two hundred years. However, they’ve really taken off in the last decades, drinking up fat times like a poison mushroom. Trump spoke of draining the swamp, but in reality, the man will do nothing but fill the bog full of debauched bankers and billionaires. Why wouldn’t he? He’s not a President; even when he becomes President—he’s a pile of iron shavings which flicks itself at the strongest magnet in the neighborhood. That magnet currently resides at 200 West Street in the city of New York.
Supporters of the Donald were quick to offer contrary takes: Mnuchin, they insisted, was a longtime friend of Trump. The Orange Nation pointed out, nervously, that Trump and Mnuchin were bros—and even megabros—from yesteryear on. Mnuchin’s pa was Robert Mnuchin, who toiled in the Sachs mills, working the institutional equity angle for thirty-plus years. Steven became the firm’s Chief Info Officer back in ‘99. He collaborated with the bogeyman himself, George Soros, and financed Hollywood movies.
I suppose Mnuchin’s tie-in with another showbiz billionaire makes sense. There are plenty of marks against Steven, including that he managed mortgage-backed securities trading.
But let’s be honest: he’s from Goldman Sachs. Does it matter precisely what kind of Dracula he is?
It didn’t help Trump’s cause that this happened right after the embarrassing dinner with Romney, where the stalwart man of the people was seen deep in secret cahoots with the country club set, the very same people his entire campaign had been so dead-set in opposing. Was this the Marmalade-Colored Revolution we’d been promised?...................................................
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http://letsrollforums.com//goldman-scam-and-john-t20839.html?s=2d74bb064184d648760cec2f36f60bd8&
The Goldman Scam And John Paulson's Links To 9-11!
The Goldman Scam & John Paulson's Links to 9-11
April 20, 2010
The latest news about the fraud at Goldman Sachs confirms what I have been saying all along about the financial "meltdown" and government bail-outs of 2008-2009 - it was a massive Zionist fraud, which I called the Fleecing of America. Will Hutton of Britain's Observer reported on 18 April 2010 in an article entitled "Now we know the truth. The financial meltdown wasn't a mistake – IT WAS A CON" -
The global financial crisis, it is now clear, was caused not just by the bankers' colossal mismanagement. No, it was due also to the new financial complexity offering up the opportunity for widespread, systemic fraud...
Beneath the complexity, the charges are all rooted in the same phenomenon – deception. Somebody, somewhere, was knowingly fooled by banks and bankers – sometimes governments over tax, sometimes regulators and investors over the probity of balance sheets and profits and sometimes, as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says in Goldman's case, by creating a scheme to enrich one favoured investor at the expense of others – including, via RBS, the British [and U.S.] taxpayer.
The man at the center of this particular scam is a man named John Alfred Paulson and his company. The New York Timesreports that Paulson personally made an estimated $3.7 billion in 2007 as a result of his hedge fund’s performance, and another $2 billion in 2008. The charge is that Goldman's vice-president Fabrice Tourre created a dud financial instrument packed with valueless sub-prime mortgages at the instruction of hedge fund client Paulson, sold it to investors knowing it was valueless, and then allowed Paulson to profit from the dud financial instrument........................
..................
http://politicalandsciencerhymes.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-goldman-sachs-scam-and-john.html
Israel,Goldman Sachs Scam And John Paulson's Links To 9-11! Let's Roll Christopher Bollyn
9 Wall Street Execs Who Cashed In on the Crisis | Mother Jones
www.motherjones.com/.../01/wall-street-bailout-executive-compensation
After Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley announced hefty profits ... Joseph Cassano, AIG Financial Products Executive, 1987-2008 ... Said he'd return $1 million in past earnings, but still gets a $53 million pension. ... QUOTE: Told Congress, "If you gave me no bonus in the best year, I would still be here ...
Mother Jones
Goldman Sachs | Office Locations
www.goldmansachs.com/who-we-are/locations/
Israel Tel Aviv Goldman Sachs Israel LLC Museum Tower 4 Berkowitz Street 16th Floor Tel Aviv 64238. Israel Within: (03) 564 1600. International: +972 3 564 ...
Goldman Sachs
Why is Goldman Sachs funding the violent, racist Jewish settlers of ...
www.haaretz.com › Opinion
Apr 11, 2016 - In 2012 the Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund granted $18,000 to one ... Hebron settlers are also known to attack Israeli soldiers on the rare ...
Haaretz
Goldman Sachs is funding Hebron settlers – Mondoweiss
mondoweiss.net/2016/04/goldman-sachs-is-funding-hebron-settlers/
Apr 13, 2016 - Haaretz reports that Goldman Sachs has a clear pattern of giving to Israeli settler and rightwing groups through their Charitable Gift Fund.
Mondoweiss
Bernie Sanders Surrogate Danny DeVito Rips Into Hillary on Israel ...
www.thedailybeast.com/.../danny-devito-who-s-feeling-the-bern-rips-i...
Apr 15, 2016 - Bernie Sanders Surrogate Danny DeVito Rips Into Hillary on Israel and Goldman Sachs. The eminently likable acting icon—and Bernie ...
The Daily Beast
Goldman Sachs Leads $35 Million Investment Round in Israeli ... - U.S.
blogs.wsj.com/.../goldman-sachs-leads-35m-investment-round...
May 21, 2014 - Clarizen, an Israeli software-as-a-service company closed a $35 million venture-
The Wall Street Journal
Goldman Sachs Betrayal Of America | Real Jew News
www.realjewnews.com/?p=645
Goldman Sachs Betrayal Of America ... And: Want A Job At Goldman Sachs? .... Various patriot groups are actually Zionist sympathizers who are Pro-Israel ...Goldman Sachs Israel LLC: Private Company Information ... - Bloomberg
www.bloomberg.com/Research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?...
Goldman Sachs Israel LLC company research & investing information. Find executives and the latest company news.
Bloomberg L.P.
http://letsrollforums.com//goldman-scam-and-john-t20839.html?s=2d74bb064184d648760cec2f36f60bd8&
The Goldman Scam And John Paulson's Links To 9-11!
The Goldman Scam & John Paulson's Links to 9-11
April 20, 2010
The latest news about the fraud at Goldman Sachs confirms what I have been saying all along about the financial "meltdown" and government bail-outs of 2008-2009 - it was a massive Zionist fraud, which I called the Fleecing of America. Will Hutton of Britain's Observer reported on 18 April 2010 in an article entitled "Now we know the truth. The financial meltdown wasn't a mistake – IT WAS A CON" -
The global financial crisis, it is now clear, was caused not just by the bankers' colossal mismanagement. No, it was due also to the new financial complexity offering up the opportunity for widespread, systemic fraud...
Beneath the complexity, the charges are all rooted in the same phenomenon – deception. Somebody, somewhere, was knowingly fooled by banks and bankers – sometimes governments over tax, sometimes regulators and investors over the probity of balance sheets and profits and sometimes, as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says in Goldman's case, by creating a scheme to enrich one favoured investor at the expense of others – including, via RBS, the British [and U.S.] taxpayer.
The man at the center of this particular scam is a man named John Alfred Paulson and his company. The New York Timesreports that Paulson personally made an estimated $3.7 billion in 2007 as a result of his hedge fund’s performance, and another $2 billion in 2008. The charge is that Goldman's vice-president Fabrice Tourre created a dud financial instrument packed with valueless sub-prime mortgages at the instruction of hedge fund client Paulson, sold it to investors knowing it was valueless, and then allowed Paulson to profit from the dud financial instrument.
John Alfred Paulson
John Paulson and Stephen Berger joined Odyssey Partners in 1982, the year it was founded by Jack Nash (left) and Leon Levy (right).
The late Jack Nash (in 1995) was a devoted Zionist supporter and chairman of the American Friends of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem (AFIM). His wife Helen is currently a vice president of the Zionist organization, of which the Baroness Nadine de Rothschild is the Honorary President and Jo Carole Lauder, the wife of Ronald Lauder, is an executive committee board member.
Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress and close friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, looks pretty miserable for a multi-millionaire Zionist in his mid-60s (even with his secretive Israeli girlfriend/Mossad handler/art dealer Daniella Luxembourg). Lauder was the driving force behind the privatization of the World Trade Center, a key part of the 9-11 plot. Guilt destroys a person up from inside. There is no escape, Ron.
Lauder's full-time Mossad handler Daniella Luxembourg and "contemporary art specialist" Amalia Dayan, both of Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg. Dayan is the grand-daughter of Moshe Dayan. The world of Zionist terrorism is small and based on certain family ties. The Zionist terrorist regime of Israel today is very much like the Sicarii Zealots of the First Century. The Sicarii were Jewish robbers and terrorists who killed other Jews to further their extremist ends. Facing the power of the Roman army, the Sicarii wound up killing hundreds of Jews in the massacre of Masada. The Israeli terrorist regime of Netanyahu and Barak uses Jews as human shields, which endangers all Jews, Zionist and non-Zionist, in the same way as the Sicarii of Masada in the First Century. Israel today is becoming more and more like one huge Masada.
Stephen Berger
Stephen Berger was executive director of the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (1985-1990), the owner of the
World Trade Center, when Atwell Security, a Mossad company, received
the security contract in 1987. The Israel's Mossad attempt to obtain the
security contract for the Port Authority in 1987 involved Mossad
intelligence chief-cum-art dealer Peter Zvi Malkin. Michael Chertoff's mother, Livia Eisen, was also a Mossadnik art dealer in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Sources and Recommended Reading:
"Now we know the truth. The financial meltdown wasn't a mistake – it was a con," by Will Hutton, The Observer (U.K.), April 18, 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...-civil-charges
The Architecture of Terror: Mapping the Network Behind 9-11
http://www.bollyn.com/the-architectu...rk-behind-9-11
Bollyn, Christopher, “The Fleecing of America: 9-11 and the Crisis on Wall Street,” Chapter XI of Solving 9-11: The Deception that Changed the World
http://www.bollyn.com/the-fleecing-o...on-wall-street
By Michael Snyder, on December 30th, 2009
Investment
banking giant Goldman Sachs has become perhaps the most prominent
symbol for everything that is wrong with the U.S. financial system, but
most Americans cannot even begin to explain what they do or how they
have made tens of billions of dollars from the economic collapse of
America. The truth is that what Goldman Sachs did was fairly simple,
and there may not have even been anything “illegal” about
it (although they are now being investigated by the SEC among others).
April 20, 2010
The latest news about the fraud at Goldman Sachs confirms what I have been saying all along about the financial "meltdown" and government bail-outs of 2008-2009 - it was a massive Zionist fraud, which I called the Fleecing of America. Will Hutton of Britain's Observer reported on 18 April 2010 in an article entitled "Now we know the truth. The financial meltdown wasn't a mistake – IT WAS A CON" -
The global financial crisis, it is now clear, was caused not just by the bankers' colossal mismanagement. No, it was due also to the new financial complexity offering up the opportunity for widespread, systemic fraud...
Beneath the complexity, the charges are all rooted in the same phenomenon – deception. Somebody, somewhere, was knowingly fooled by banks and bankers – sometimes governments over tax, sometimes regulators and investors over the probity of balance sheets and profits and sometimes, as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says in Goldman's case, by creating a scheme to enrich one favoured investor at the expense of others – including, via RBS, the British [and U.S.] taxpayer.
The man at the center of this particular scam is a man named John Alfred Paulson and his company. The New York Timesreports that Paulson personally made an estimated $3.7 billion in 2007 as a result of his hedge fund’s performance, and another $2 billion in 2008. The charge is that Goldman's vice-president Fabrice Tourre created a dud financial instrument packed with valueless sub-prime mortgages at the instruction of hedge fund client Paulson, sold it to investors knowing it was valueless, and then allowed Paulson to profit from the dud financial instrument.
John Alfred Paulson
As the Observer reported on April 18:
The reality was that Paulson was frantically buying credit default swaps in the CDO that would go up in price the more valueless it became – a trade that would make more than $1 billion. Worse, Paulson had identified some of the dud sub-prime mortgages that he wanted Tourre to put into the CDO. If the SEC case is true, this was a scam – nothing more, nothing less.
PAULSON'S CONNECTION TO STEPHEN BERGER
Following Harvard Business School, Paulson
began his career working as a Management Consultant at Boston Consulting
Group from 1980 to 1982 (where Benjamin Netanyahu began his career in
1976) and as an Associate at Odyssey Partners from 1982 to 1984.
Paulson's career at Odyssey Partners brought him into a small circle of
Zionist finance scoundrels comprised of Stephen Berger, Leon Levy, and
Jack Nash.The reality was that Paulson was frantically buying credit default swaps in the CDO that would go up in price the more valueless it became – a trade that would make more than $1 billion. Worse, Paulson had identified some of the dud sub-prime mortgages that he wanted Tourre to put into the CDO. If the SEC case is true, this was a scam – nothing more, nothing less.
PAULSON'S CONNECTION TO STEPHEN BERGER
John Paulson and Stephen Berger joined Odyssey Partners in 1982, the year it was founded by Jack Nash (left) and Leon Levy (right).
The late Jack Nash (in 1995) was a devoted Zionist supporter and chairman of the American Friends of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem (AFIM). His wife Helen is currently a vice president of the Zionist organization, of which the Baroness Nadine de Rothschild is the Honorary President and Jo Carole Lauder, the wife of Ronald Lauder, is an executive committee board member.
Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress and close friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, looks pretty miserable for a multi-millionaire Zionist in his mid-60s (even with his secretive Israeli girlfriend/Mossad handler/art dealer Daniella Luxembourg). Lauder was the driving force behind the privatization of the World Trade Center, a key part of the 9-11 plot. Guilt destroys a person up from inside. There is no escape, Ron.
Lauder's full-time Mossad handler Daniella Luxembourg and "contemporary art specialist" Amalia Dayan, both of Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg. Dayan is the grand-daughter of Moshe Dayan. The world of Zionist terrorism is small and based on certain family ties. The Zionist terrorist regime of Israel today is very much like the Sicarii Zealots of the First Century. The Sicarii were Jewish robbers and terrorists who killed other Jews to further their extremist ends. Facing the power of the Roman army, the Sicarii wound up killing hundreds of Jews in the massacre of Masada. The Israeli terrorist regime of Netanyahu and Barak uses Jews as human shields, which endangers all Jews, Zionist and non-Zionist, in the same way as the Sicarii of Masada in the First Century. Israel today is becoming more and more like one huge Masada.
...AND 9-11
Stephen BergerSources and Recommended Reading:
"Now we know the truth. The financial meltdown wasn't a mistake – it was a con," by Will Hutton, The Observer (U.K.), April 18, 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...-civil-charges
The Architecture of Terror: Mapping the Network Behind 9-11
http://www.bollyn.com/the-architectu...rk-behind-9-11
Bollyn, Christopher, “The Fleecing of America: 9-11 and the Crisis on Wall Street,” Chapter XI of Solving 9-11: The Deception that Changed the World
http://www.bollyn.com/the-fleecing-o...on-wall-street
How Goldman Sachs Made Tens Of Billions Of Dollars From The ...
theeconomiccollapseblog.com/.../how-goldman-sachs-made-tens-of-billions-of-dollar...
Dec 30, 2009 - On November 17th, 2008 Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein even ... They only hire “the best and the brightest” and Ivy League .... Step 4: Collect the profits – Goldman Sachs is having their “most successful year” and will ...How Goldman Sachs Made Tens Of Billions Of Dollars From The Economic Collapse Of America In Four Easy Steps
By Michael Snyder, on December 30th, 2009Investment
banking giant Goldman Sachs has become perhaps the most prominent
symbol for everything that is wrong with the U.S. financial system, but
most Americans cannot even begin to explain what they do or how they
have made tens of billions of dollars from the economic collapse of
America. The truth is that what Goldman Sachs did was fairly simple,
and there may not have even been anything “illegal” about
it (although they are now being investigated by the SEC among others).
The following is how Goldman Sachs made tens of billions of dollars from the economic collapse of America in four easy steps….
Step 1: Sell mortgage-related securities that are absolute junk to trusting clients at vastly overinflated prices.
Step 2: Bet against those same mortgage-related securities and make
massive bets against the U.S. housing market so that your firm will make
massive profits when the U.S. economy collapses.
Step 3: Have ex-Goldman executives in key positions of power in the U.S.
government so that bailout money can be funneled to entities such as
AIG that Goldman has made these bets with so that they can get
paid after they win their bets.
Step 4: Collect the profits – Goldman Sachs is having their “most
successful year” and will end up reporting approximately $50 billion
in revenue for 2009.
So is it right for the biggest fish on Wall Street to make tens of
billions of dollars by betting that the U.S. housing market will
collapse?
You see, when you are talking about a financial giant the size of
Goldman Sachs, the line between “betting that something will happen” and
“making something happen” gets blurred very quickly.
Not that Goldman Sachs was the only one betting against the housing market.
According to the New York Times, firms like Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley also created mortgage-related securities and then bet that they would fail…..
Goldman was not the only firm that peddled these complex
securities — known as synthetic collateralized debt obligations, or
C.D.O.’s — and then made financial bets against them, called selling
short in Wall Street parlance. Others that created similar securities
and then bet they would fail, according to Wall Street traders, include
Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley, as well as smaller firms like Tricadia
Inc.
But certainly Goldman Sachs was the most prominent financial player involved in this type of activity.
In fact, without mentioning specifics, Goldman has even admitted
publicly to wrongdoing. On November 17th, 2008 Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd
Blankfein even issued a public apology….
“We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret.”
But complicated financial transactions are something that most Americans
simply do not understand, so the public outrage towards Goldman Sachs
and others has been somewhat limited. But that does not change the very
serious nature of the activities that Goldman was involved in….
“The simultaneous selling of securities to customers and
shorting them because they believed they were going to default is the
most cynical use of credit information that I have ever seen,” Sylvain Raynes, an expert in structured finance at R & R Consulting in New York, recently told The New York Times. “When
you buy protection against an event that you have a hand in causing,
you are buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and then
committing arson.”
But the sad thing is that many Americans do not even understand what
Goldman Sachs is. Goldman Sachs was founded in 1869 and has forged a
reputation as one of the elite financial institutions in the entire
world. They only hire “the best and the brightest” and Ivy League
graduates flock to the firm. Of the five major investment banks that
dominated Wall Street before the crash, only Goldman Sachs and Morgan
Stanley have survived. Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns were severely
damaged by the crash and ended up being purchased by retail banks and
Lehman Brothers ended up folding.
There are persistent rumors that Goldman played a major role in the
collapse of Bear Stearns and that ex-Goldman CEO Hank Paulson could
have done much more to bail out Lehman Brothers, but perhaps nobody will
ever know the full truth. All we do know is that at the end of the
crash several of Goldman’s competitors were destroyed and Goldman found
itself in a more dominant position than ever.
The truth is that Goldman is a financial shark and they do not apologize for it.
An article in Rolling Stone recently put it this way….
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.
So how did Goldman Sachs prosper so greatly in an environment that destroyed their competitors?
The following is an extended breakdown of just how Goldman Sachs was
able to reap tens of billions of dollars in profits from the collapse of
the U.S. housing market….
Step 1: Sell mortgage-related securities that are absolute junk to trusting clients at vastly overinflated prices.
In late 2006, Goldman Sachs made some fundamental changes in the way that they were approaching the U.S. housing market. According to a McClatchy report, Goldman
spokesman Michael DuVally said that the firm decided at that time to
reduce its mortgage risks by selling off subprime mortgage-related
securities and by purchasing credit-default swaps to hedge against a
serious downturn in the U.S. housing market.
The key moment came in December 2006. After “10 straight days of losses” in Goldman’s mortgage business, Chief Financial Officer David Viniar called a meeting of key Goldman personnel.
Vanity Fair described the results of that meeting this way….
After a now famous meeting in David Viniar’s office on December
14, 2006, Goldman’s traders began to protect the firm against further
declines in the market. Just as you can short the S&P 500, the
traders took short positions in an index that tracked the price of
mortgage-backed securities. They also either sold assets they owned to
others at losses or dramatically marked down the price on their own
books. In the aftermath of the crisis, criticism erupted that Goldman
had continued to sell mortgage-backed securities to its clients while
betting against those very securities for its own account. Clearly, in
the simplest terms possible, this is true: while Goldman was never the
biggest underwriter of C.D.O.’s (collateralized debt obligations—Wall
Street’s vehicle of choice for mortgage-backed securities), the firm did
remain in the top five until the summer of 2007, when the market
crashed to a halt.
So Goldman Sachs proceeded to sell approxmiately $39 billion of its own
mortgage securities in 2006 and 2007 and they sold at least $17 billion
more mortgage securities for others, but they never told the buyers of
those securities that Goldman was secretly betting that a significant
drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those mortgage
securities plummeting.
These sales and the massive clandestine wagers placed by Goldman enabled
the firm to pass most of its potential losses on to others prior to the
collapse of the U.S. housing market.
But many of the investors who got the short end of the stick were not
pleased. When they discovered that what Goldman had promoted as
triple-A rated investments were actually a bunch of garbage, many of
them were absolutely furious.
“The Securities and Exchange Commission should be very
interested in any financial company that secretly decides a financial
product is a loser and then goes out and actively markets that product
or very similar products to unsuspecting customers without disclosing
its true opinion,” said Boston University economics professor Laurence Kotlikoff. “This is fraud and should be prosecuted.”
One of the victims of this fraud was the state of Mississippi….
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, whose state has lost $5
million of the $6 million it invested in Goldman’s subprime
mortgage-backed bonds in 2006, said the state’s funds are likely to lose
“hundreds of millions of dollars” on those and similar bonds.
Another one of the victims of this fraud was California’s retirement system for public employees….
California’s huge public employees’ retirement system, known as
CALPERS, purchased $64.4 million in subprime mortgage-backed bonds from
Goldman on March 1, 2007. While that represented a tiny percentage of
the fund’s holdings, in July CALPERS listed the bonds’ value at $16.6
million, a drop of nearly 75 percent, according to documents obtained
through a state public records request.
So who is left holding the bag in cases such as these?
The taxpayers.
And that is just fine with Goldman Sachs. Just as long as they keep raking in huge profits.
Vanity Fair was even more blunt regarding this injustice….
“Goldman’s management team was almost flawless in its execution.
But how many people needed government help because of the things
Goldman sold them?”
The truth is that a lot of people needed help because of the things
Goldman sold them, but up until now Goldman has completely gotten away
with it.
Step 2: Bet against those same mortgage-related securities and
make massive bets against the U.S. housing market so that your firm will
make massive profits when the U.S. economy collapses.
Not only did Goldman sell mortgage-related securities that were absolute
junk to investors at vastly overinflated prices, they also placed
massive bets that the U.S. housing market would absolutely collapse.
The New York Times recently described how Goldman used a new index known as the ABX to make many of these bets….
A handful of investors and Wall Street traders, however,
anticipated the crisis. In 2006, Wall Street had introduced a new index,
called the ABX, that became a way to invest in the direction of
mortgage securities. The index allowed traders to bet on or against
pools of mortgages with different risk characteristics, just as stock
indexes enable traders to bet on whether the overall stock market, or
technology stocks or bank stocks, will go up or down.
Goldman, among others on Wall Street, has said since the
collapse that it made big money by using the ABX to bet against the
housing market. Worried about a housing bubble, top Goldman executives
decided in December 2006 to change the firm’s overall stance on the
mortgage market, from positive to negative, though it did not disclose
that publicly.
These bets would only make money for Goldman Sachs if the U.S. housing market declined.
So if the biggest giant on Wall Street has a huge financial incentive to
see the U.S. housing market fail, what do you think the odds are that
they are going to do anything to support it?
Step 3: Have ex-Goldman executives in key positions of power in
the U.S. government so that bailout money can be funneled to
entities such as AIG that Goldman has made these bets with so that they
could get paid.
For years, Goldman Sachs has encouraged executives to serve in U.S.
government positions. Now they are world famous for the amount of
influence their former employees have over government policy.
For example, according to the New York Times, Treasury
Secretary Hank Paulson (also a former Goldman CEO) spoke with the
current CEO of Goldman Sachs about two dozen times during the week of
the bailout, although Paulson says that he obtained an “ethics waiver”
before doing so.
So does an “ethics waiver” make everything okay?
But the sad thing is that is not an isolated example.
It turns out that Goldman benefited greatly from a number of decisions
made by their former CEO while he was Treasury Secretary….
*Goldman greatly benefited when Paulson elected not to save rival Lehman
Brothers from collapse. Paulson certainly stepped in to help Fannie
Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG, but apparently had no problem with letting
Lehman Brothers fall apart.
*Under Paulson’s direction, Goldman ended up receiving bailout money
(which they may or may not have needed) from the U.S. government and has
since paid back much of that money with interest. So why didn’t Bear
Stearns or Lehman Brothers get the bailout funds that they needed?
*Goldman greatly benefitted when Paulson organized a massive rescue of
American International Group while in constant telephone contact with
Goldman CEO Blankfein. AIG ultimately ended up using $12.9 billion
taxpayer dollars to pay off every single penny that it owed to Goldman.
But it is not just Paulson who has had significant influence in Washington.
On October 16th, Adam Storch, a Goldman Sachs vice president, was named
managing executive of the SEC’s enforcement division. What do you think
the odds are that he will crack down hard on Goldman?
In addition, former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson is the chief of staff for current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
In fact, ex-Goldman employees are seemingly everywhere. According to Vanity Fair, at
one G-7 meeting an anonymous source identified at least 24 out of 32
finance officials in attendance as ex-Goldman employees.
The influence of Goldman Sachs even reaches to the White House. Goldman
was Barack Obama’s number one campaign donor, and its employees gave
$981,000 to his campaign.
If you don’t think that kind of money does not buy influence then you are delusional.
Goldman used some of that powerful influence to get the U.S. government
to bail out AIG so that AIG could pay off the bets that Goldman had made
with them. In a recent article, Vanity Fair described part of what went down….
After the government bailout of A.I.G., in order to end the
collateral calls on the insurance giant, the New York Federal
Reserve—whose chairman at the time was former Goldman chairman Steve
Friedman—decided to purchase a slew of the securities that A.I.G. had
insured, including $14 billion of those on which Goldman had purchased
insurance. The government—meaning taxpayers—did so at full price,
although according to a recent Bloomberg story, there had been
negotiations with A.I.G. to do so at a 40 percent discount. Goldman says
that the New York Fed broached the topic of a discount only once. The
firm’s response: a flat no. While no one will ever know what would have
happened had A.I.G. gone under, the essence of what did happen is
perfectly clear. As a recent report by the Office of the Special
Inspector General for tarpput it, the decision to pay full price
“effectively transferred tens of billions of dollars of cash from the
Government to A.I.G.’s counterparties.” Or to put it another way:
because Goldman felt it was owed its billions by A.I.G., the firm took
it from taxpayers instead.
So what about all of the thousands of small businesses that are failing
and what about the millions of Americans that are losing their jobs and
homes?
Do they get bailouts?
Of course not.
But the U.S. government definitely made sure that AIG and Goldman were taken care of.
Step 4: Collect the profits – Goldman Sachs is having their
“most successful year” and will end up reporting approximately $50
billion in revenue for 2009.
Goldman Sachs ranks #1 in annual net income when compared with 86 peers
in the investment services sector. They are on course for their best
year ever.
Yes, they are having a really good “crisis”.
Goldman Sachs is on course to surpass $50 billion in revenue in 2009 and
to pay its employees more than $20 billion in year-end bonuses.
20 billion just in bonuses?
That would mean that the average bonus for all Goldman employees would be over $700,000.
No wonder everyone wants to work for them.
It’s good to be on the winning side.
So just how are they making so much money?
In their recent article, Vanity Fair described it this way….
But because so many of Goldman’s competitors were gone or
disabled, spreads—the difference between the price at which you sell and
buy a variety of securities—were wider than they had been in years,
meaning that Goldman could practically mint money. By acting at the
moment it did, with Lehman out and Merrill Lynch down for the count, the
government enabled this situation.
The other reason for Goldman’s profits is that the government
has flooded the system with money, not just the money it used to rescue
the financial system but hundreds of billions more in stimulus, in
support of the housing market, and in the Federal Reserve’s purchases of
securities.
But all of this success has not come without controversy. In fact,
Goldman executives are very much aware of the growing backlash against
the firm.
Senior officials at Goldman Sachs have reportedly loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a “populist uprising” against the bank.
In addition, Goldman Sachs employees are now not allowed to gather in groups of 12 or more outside the office.
The firm very much discouraged “holiday parties” as they most
definitely did not want to be seen as celebrating the downfall of the
U.S. economy.
But the truth is that Goldman Sachs won because so many others lost.
In his very revealing article on Goldman Sachs in Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi described how Goldman keeps making money from the bursting of these economic bubbles….
They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again.
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, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of
really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They’ve been pulling this
same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they’re preparing to
do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble
yet.
The truth is that in this latest economic collapse there were millions of losers and just a few winners.
Goldman Sachs was one of those winners.
So will they lose next time?
Not likely.
In their recent article, Vanity Fair quoted an anonymous source in the financial industry as saying the following….
“Are they the Yankees? No, the Yankees actually lose! Goldman never loses.”
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