FINANCIAL CONDITIONS ARE STILL WORSENING
OBAMA'S IS TOADYING DANGEROUSLY
TO WALL STREET
Goldman Sachs
THE UNBRIDLED GREED CONNECTION
==================================================================
Noun - toady - a person who tries to please someone in order to
gain a personal advantage
ass-kisser, crawler, sycophant, lackey
apple polisher,
bootlicker, fawner, groveler, groveller, truckler -
someone who humbles himself as a sign of respect; who behaves as if he had no self-respect.
adulator, flatterer - a person who uses
flattery.
Verb - to toady
- try to gain favor by cringing or flattering;
bootlick, kotow, kowtow, fawn, truckle, suck up
blandish, flatter - praise somewhat dishonestly
court favor, court favor, curry favor, curry favour -
seek favor by fawning or flattery; "This employee is currying favor with his
superordinates"
==================================================================
Wall Street - Goldman Sachs - Washington
The UNBRIDLED GREED CONNECTION
The CEOs who boss the huge Wall Street firms invariably took huge risks
with
other people's money in order to get obscenely high bonuses after 2000. It
was
their lobbying for de-regulation and then their over-leveraging that caused the
bubble and crash. Investment bankers like Goldman Sachs knew that they were
committing fraud when they sold packages of "liars' loans" as triple
"AAA" investments.
Not only did Goldman sell more of these bundles of "toxic assets" than anyone
else, they also bought more credit default swaps from AIG as insurance against
the mortgages and the banks who held them failing. Such large purchases of insurance
from AIG prove that Goldman knew their bundled mortgages were not grade "AAA".
That should prove in a court of law that they were guilty of fraud and
misrepresentation.
Why is their no
criminal prosecution and no trial? Sources.
Besides, Goldman, many economists also saw this
coming. Even TigerSoft
got the essentials exactly right. But among those who ran Wall Street and ran the
country, there was only a complete and reckless disregard about the consequences
of their greed, fraud and corruption as the housing boom developed and peaked.
Despite their responsibilities as leaders of finance and government,
bank
CEOs like Paulson at Goldman (for example), US Treasury officials from Goldman,
Geithner at the NY Fed and key Congressmen, all let the boom get bigger and bigger,
pushing home prices higher and higher. Goldman Sachs' CEO Paulson even
successfully lobbied the SEC to further reduce controls on investment bankers
in 2004 and 2005 while permitting them to use even more leverage. With no
real oversight, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, CitiGroup and
dozens of other banks became houses of cards to make their CEOs rich. Criminal
fraud of epic proportions as been committed, but Obama, who is in their
pay,
says no crime has been
committed without even conducting an investigation
and allows the CEOs at
the banks getting billions in bailouts.
The eventual collapse was easily foreseen by cynical Wall Street insiders, like
ex-GS CEO Robert
Rubin who sold out at the top. Rubin knew the risks. He and
Larry
Summers (who got $7.8 Million from Wall Street and Goldman Sachs in 2008)
had long promoted
the de-regulation of banks and the non-regulation of derivatives
like those that
bankrupted AIG within the Clinton Administration. At CitiGroup,
it was Rubin after 2002, more than anyone else, who had urged that big bank to
maximize their use of leverage all the way up, making more and more ridiculous
loans to increase short-term profits to get higher and higher bonuses. These
corrupt anti-regulation ideologues just didn't care about the consequences
of their policies. They completely disregarded the lessons of the 1920s-1930s.
How could such smart and learned men do this? Simply put, their loyalty had
been richly bought and paid for by Wall Street..
.
It is significant that Goldman Sachs avoided the worst of the 2008-2009 Crash.
In September
2007, Goldman issued a report predicting a 35% to 40% drop in housing
prices.
Most of their profits after 2007 came from buying credit default swaps and selling
stocks short. To that end, because they understood the dynamics of the boom
they had helped create, they set up a huge $10
Billion short selling Hedge Fund
in December 2007. This was done at the perfect time. Goldman thus sold
short
all the way down.
But that's only a small part of the story. Goldman Sachs got
a TARP- I taxpayer
bailout of $10
billion from their ex-CEO, Henry Paulson as Treasury Secretary,
even though they were in no way a commercial bank, which could extend credit to
Main Street and re-start consumer spending, as Paulson insisted was the purpose
of the bailout. And never ones to lose an opportunity to steal from the
taxpayer,
Goldman got $13 billion more when the American taxpayer bailed out AIG. Goldman
was claimed it was owed that much by AIG for the credit default swaps it has bought.
Keep in mind, If the taxpayers had not bailed AIG out, Goldman would have been
shy $23 billion last Fall and probably not have had sufficient capital to survive.
To arrange
their getting the $13 billion via AIG from the taxpayer, free and clear, a secret
meeting
took place in September 2008 between the current Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein,
and Henry Paulson, Bush's Treasury Secretary and the previous CEO of Goldman Sachs.
The pay-off was only divulged five months later, as a result of Congressional
investigation into AIG bonuses.
Goldman might have been grateful to get the Paulson bailout and the $13 billion
AIG pass-through. They might, as a result, have made a sincere, good faith effort to
set up a commercial banking business. They might have reduced their executive
pay and bonuses. But that was not their plan. The history of Goldman
unbridled greed,
fraud, insider trading and opportunism were too entrenched. They used the bailout
billions to trade the stock market for their own account even more aggressively,
Their
CEO vowed to return the bailout money as quickly as possible in order to avoid any
limitations on executive bonuses or oversight. Goldman now trades much more "
aggressively for its own account, as principals, far more than any other brokerage
or investment bank. The current ratio of trading for themselves as opposed for
clients
is 5:1, the highest on Wall Street.
( Source: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_FM71j6-VkNE/SfCdjXYUchI/AAAAAAAACGc/ehB0IWpfeuM/s1600-h/NYSE+Program+trading.jpg )
With this "MO", where they trade almost exclusively as principals,
there is no
justification for them being able to borrow from the Federal Reserve's Discount Window
for 0.25%. They are almost exclusively using this public money to trade for their
own
account. Their program trading makes the market's swings wider and makes prices
much more subject to their manipulation. They certainly have no compunction
about
using TARP money to sell short! These practices must be exposed to the light of day.
One wonders if it was Goldman Sachs, more than any other Wall Street firm, in 2007
that successfully lobbied the SEC to do away the uptick requirement on short sales.
That would seem likely given their influence and their decision at this time to create
a $10 billion short selling hedge fund in December 2007. This decision opened
the
door to aggressive short-selling and made the plunge much worse than it would have
been. The lessons of the early 1930s were convenienly forgotten so that gangs of
short sellers could again fleece Main Street for their own selfish purposes.
Investment bankers create nothing! But they are paid everything! Goldman
played the bubble perfectly. Why did they succeed, where others on Wall Street
failed? They controlled Washington. Their people ran the US
Treasury. When
they needed more money, their friends in Washington arranged billions for them,
always at the taxpayers' expense.
Washington has been the tool of Wall Street for years and years. But never
more clearly than now, and it is Goldman Sachs that is the epicenter of this
Greed Connection between Wall Street and Washington.
The first quarter of 2009 earnings reports for
Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs
and JP Morgan have now come out. They show that the biggest monopoly
US Banks are certainly making lots of profits from the bailout, but the amount of their
loans
to individuals and real people are declining, not rising! Housing
starts and
employment are not going to improve by making
wealthy bankers even richer.
The stated purpose of Obama's/Paulson's TARPs and the central premise in their
simplistic view of big bankers as salvation is shown to be a nasty FRAUD for scamming
billions from taxpayers. Shame on you, Obama! And shame on you, Mr.
Bernanke! We
still cannot see how much of the $2 Trillion that you have loaned individual banks,
has gone to companies like Goldman Sachs and on what terms. What are you
hiding? Why?
Who Are These People?
With an arrogance found only among the super rich, these Goldman Sachs
executives have claimed that they are the "best and the brightest".
They work hard
and have earned every penny of their fabulous pay. To keep the most talented
loyal, Wall Street firms like Goldman always say that they must pay very high salaries
and bonuses, very often in the tens of millions of dollars.
What a crock! They pay them excessively to buy loyalty, just as a crime boss would.
They wish to prevent dissent, to keep their frauds and deceptions private, to attract
the greediest who lack compunction and to perpetuate an aristocratic cult.
The truth is very different. Goldman Sachs executives are not so
smart. They cultivate contacts and insider knowledge. Most have
been shown to be cut-throat fraudsters, They are not complex. They
are not conflicted. They are simply massively arrogant, spoiled and
greedy. They are elitists with a gigantic sense of entitlement. They
expect others to clean up after them. Under Obama, they remain
unpunished white collar criminals. They have committed massive
economic crimes in bringing down the entire world economy to
the shame of all Americans. They now fully expect to go unpunished
and be fully bailed out. In this, they are as unworthy as any dull,
selfish, over-indulged child from rich parents. Until they are punished
and their power and wealth taken away, America's claim to be
a Democracy with equal justice for all will sound very hollow to
those that know the truth.
When the public finds all this out, they will be mad as hell. And it will ALL come
out.
Help
spread the word. Now is the time to break up these monopoly banks that are
"too big to fail" and have a thorough investigation of their criminal
fraud. Without
such a public investigation, nothing will have changed. Trust will not return and
America will be victimized by these same scam artists again and again. The US
is already in too much debt. Giving billions and trillions to the banksters
who
caused this calamity is immoral and very, very dumb.
( A very good summary: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html
)
--------------------------------- DJIA -2007-2008 ----------------------------------
2007-2008
|
In 2007, Wall Street
paid out more than $30 billion and London's City $15.6 billion) in bonuses. (Source).
In December, Goldman Sachs
set up a up a special huge $10
Billion short selling Hedge Fund to profit from the coming bear market thay they knew was coming, because
of how closely involved they were in involved in the creation of the Bubble.
Lloyd
Blankfein, Goldman's CEO received $68 million in 2007. Total GS Compensation was $10 billion in 2007..
Taxpayers Pay for Goldman Sachs' Executive Bonuses
in 2008. 30th October 2008 "Goldman Sachs is on course to pay its top City bankers
multimillion-pound bonuses - despite asking the U.S. government for an emergency bail-out.
The struggling Wall Street bank has set aside £7billion for salaries and
2008 year-end bonuses, it emerged yesterday. Each of the firm's 443 partners is on course
to pocket an average Christmas bonus of more than £3million. The size of the pay
pool comfortably dwarfs the £6.1billion lifeline which the U.S. government is throwing to
Goldman as part of its £430billion bail-out. As Washington pours money into the bank, the
cash will immediately be channeled to Goldman's already well-heeled employees. The same
bankers who have brought the global economy to its knees seem to pocketing the same kind
of rewards they got during the boom years. Source
|
2009
|
Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's CEO
since June 2006, He received over $60 million in 2008.
The Wall Street Journal has disclosed that Lloyd Blankfein
was present at the meetings with Tim Geithner and Hank
Paulson when the decision was made to bail out AIG, which
had sold credit default swaps to Goldman Sachs on which
AIG was unable to make good. Goldmans stock had
plummeted to 50-, wiping out vast amounts of wealth amongst
the Goldman Sachs top echelons, including Blankfein.
The taxpayer bailout of AIG to the tune of
more than
$150 billion, was said to be necessary to safeguard the
entire financial system. The truth is very different.
Goldman thereby secretly and quietly received
$12.9 billion from the AIG bailout for the debts
AIG owed it. GS was the largest beneficiary of such
AIG "pass-through."
See - Protests
against Greed at GS Meeting..
Who's Keeping Burger
King Workers Below the Poverty Line?
http://www.teachersforceomeritpay.com/profiles/
|
Instead of Challenging
Wall Street, Obama Has Turned The
US Treasury Over To Goldman Sachs Supporters.
This article attacks Obama. He deserves it. I
think he needs to change course.
He pretends to be
a populist in front of large audiences. But his appointments and actions
show he is a tool
of the biggest Wall Street firms and their CEOs.
Wall Street and Goldman Sachs, specifically, were Obama's biggest source of campaign
funds. If
McCain had won, would things be any different with respect to Wall Street running
Washington?
McCain got lots of money from the same people. So, we can't say. But
Obama is way
off-course if he wants an economic recovery. And this needs to be said.
It was the
bankers who were the problem. They are not the solution.
Obama chooses not to start an open investigation of what lay behind the financial collapse
from 2007 to 2008,
because of just how vast the corruption is, the venal connection between
Wall Street and
Washington, at the expense of Main Street.
I know it's hard to believe,
but the economic news is getting worse. Any day now GM may
declare
bankruptcy. The IMF is predicting that toxic bank debts "could
reach" $4 Trillion,
up 80% suddenly
from the $2.4 Trillion they had estimated until recently. Leading Wall Street
firms, especially
Goldman Sachs, have made a lot of money at public expense and now they
have a lot of
enemies and that number is growing exponentially.
HATRED FOR GOLDMAN SACHS IS GROWING FAST
"If Stephen Friedman (for insider trading of
Goldman Sachs while
he was Chairman of the NY Federal Reserve) is allowed to walk
away without tough legal prosecution aimed his way, then it makes a
mockery of prosecutions aimed at Martha Stewart or Sam Waksal
for insider trading. In fact, it makes a mockery of the entire USA
capitalist system and it further sows the seeds of mass cynicism and
disgust with the current Establishment. It is becoming very clear to
even the most obtuse that Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, as constituent
owners of the Federal Reserve, engineered a phony financial crisis last year
in order to allow their government shills to force the hapless US taxpayer
to pay for years of aggressive investment bets that turned sour...
"(B)oth Goldman and JP Morgan created this fake
financial crisis
in order to steal TRILLIONS of dollars from taxpayers and preclude
derivative losses that would have destroyed both companies. In the name
of protecting the system, their grand larceny of US taxpayer money
saved their hedgebooks from failure. They socialized their losses even
though, for many years, they always demanded their profits be kept in
private hands, utilizing every scam under the sun to avoid paying the
IRS a significant dime. Goldman and JP Morgan, as counterparties to
the failing AIG (another long-time precious metals short player), saved
themselves from bankruptcy under the guise of precluding systemic risk,
when the only natural result of their failure would have been to see some
major regional bank(s) absorb them for pennies on the dollar. As part of
this process, precious metals investors would have been enriched
tremendously, but THAT is how the capitalist system is supposed to
work, money is supposed to flow from those who are wrong to those
who are right! That was not allowed to happen as the markets normal
function once again was subverted by the Wall Street foxes who control
the chicken coop. (Source)
"Goldman certainly manipulated the
trading in various individual stocks last year.
They wanted a close competitor, Lehman, to go out of business and they used
whispers and rumors to help them go out. In March, a former Goldman
employee with then with the DOJ leaked an internal memo which caused CME
to drop 140 points in one day. That employee is now CEO of Wachovia.
Mission accomplished-and rewarded. "Anonymous on April 13, 2009 12:33 PM
Look at Yahoo's Finance's Messages on
GS. Here a sample.
- "Video that got Dylan Rattigan fired!" http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=10...
- "I agree... "
- "That video was just the start. Ratigan kept ranting through out the week
calling it the "Greatest
- financial fraud
ever" He was shown the door. So much for how outspoken honest people are
treated."
- I also agree that
was probably a key reason for letting him go. But he did raise many interesting
questions that have gone unanswered by anyone in our corrupt as hell government or Goldman
for that
matter. I truly can not stomach even the mention of the name of that schlock firm. The
only way to
get
any justice is the old fashion way folks. Grab a rope find a nice sturdy oak tree and hang
em
till
they no longer move!! Blankfein would be number one on my list and that list is very
long!!
"GS criminal" - "wear fancy suits, rob millions,
and make more money than 1,000 productive
humans
combined. These are the lowest form of human on earth. They must be destroyed for peace
on earth to
return." shintabou1
"what that F' blankfein and Paulson forgot is that-
" "they still live in the USA W/their families,
Paulson's son owns a baseball team in Utah.They still have to live among us, we might not
want to
talk
to them or even acknowledge them." takemychanc..
- We need them tried for treason and legally executed for treason... get them out
of the US
and onto their next life.
- But the first thing people need to know is just how crooked these two guys are and how
they are at the center of the whole crisis. All of the money trails, influence
peddling, fraud etc.
seems to (not so) mysteriously lead back to Goldamn... Paulson, Blankfein, Cohn!
What is the current method of executing someone for treason?
- YEH! they are liars and thieves
- good info! Keep it up outing these thieves and there families. They can
only walk the streets
so long if everyone knows them and wants to kill them
- Goldman Sucks needs to pay back the AIG money too.
These guys are really evil.
They stole from the taxpayers when the derivatives were trading at less than face value.
This is the problem when you put as the treasury secretary a cronyganger of Goldman Sucks.
It is time that Geithner left in shame, but you can see he has no shame. And neither does
Goldman Sucks.
Can
there be any doubt about Obama
bgamall4
Slate.com's critique of GS is heard
frequently and widely now. For the rally to continue, investor
confidence needs
to grow, not contract. Hatred, real hatred, for Goldman Sachs is growing.
Salon's
Don Rich makes a key point when he notes that Goldman's purchase of huge numbers
of credit default swaps
from AIG, more than anyone else, is strong proof that they knew that they
were fraudulently
marketing"toxic" bundled mortage loans as "AAA" around the world.
"It was Goldman Sachs more than any other entity who was peddling
these now so-called
"toxic assets" on a massive scale as AAA rated safe investments for your
grandmother's CD
account. At the same time that it was saying these now "toxic assets"
were safe, Goldman Sachs
was purchasing and advising clients to purchase insurance protection on these investments
called
credit default swaps from AIG on a scale that was wildly inconsistent with the
presentation of the
original securities being deserving of a AAA rating. In technical terms, their purchase of
default swaps at this level proves that their probability estimates as to risk was not as
stated in the
origination of the security. That constitutes a material, and I believe,
crimnal fraud and breach
of insurance contract in terms of the credit default swap."
CNN
Money has reckoned the US Government (and we taxpayers) have already spent $2.6
Trillion
rescuing banks from their own
mistakes. Obama is clearly continuing down the same path
that Bush and Goldman Sach's
CEO Paulson started. The
Zombie US banks will likely need $4
trillion
to make up for their "toxic" debts says the IMF. Will the American public
allow Obama to
keep giving unlimited amounts
of money to Wall Street as his advisors, Summers and Geitner want.
Scandal after scandal is
emerging for Obama. Even the liberal CNBC is critical. This weekend
the news broke that Obama's
Chief Economic Advisor, Lawrence Summers, got almost $8 million
last years for a few weeks'
"work" and speeches at Wall Street firms. Now the nearly $20 billion
secretly paid to Goldman Sachs
by the taxpayer through the newer AIG bailouts are being investigated.
As a result more and more
critics are emerging of the effectiveness of Obama's economic solutions
and his excessively close ties
to and and control by the biggest Wall Street firms. In former IMF
Chief Economist Simon
Johnson's words, "the finance industry has effectively captured our
government".
Leadership is desperately needed. Obama is not providing that now, despite all the
speeches.
And he will certainly not be able
to provide that leadership if the public realizes how effectively
Wall Street controls him.
Despite his populist rhetoric, Obama has shown no willingness to confront
entrenched interests
anywhere. Muddling through with a vaulted rhetorical style is not going to
"cut it" if the
unemployment keeps rising. Even if there is some recovery, without significant
new
controls and re-regulations on
banks and brokerages, there will little public confidence that
investments are safe. Only
trading rallies will take place. As usual, the broader public will
probably be tempted to buy at the
top and sell at the bottom.
Sadly, the Obama SEC now is postponing a decision on returning back to the short
selling rule
requiring up-ticks.
The delay is very dismaying and more proof that Obama's SEC is run by
pathetic cowards who continue
to want to protect Wall Street hedge funds rather than safeguard
investors and Main Street.
This is the single most important step the SEC can do to protect
everyday investors from
predatory organized short selling bear raids.
Goldman Sachs' Political Influence Is Dangerous and
Very Self-Serving
"Tally up the various forms of
direct and indirect taxpayer
assistance Goldman has
received in the last several months,
and it turns out that
you and I are providing billions of dollars
to bail out the proud
firm." Goldman is now
one of New York's
biggest welfare
recipients. Last Fall, GS redefined itself as a bank
holding company,
instead of being an investment bank. In doing
so, it became eligible
for TARP-I payments.
"On Oct. 28, Goldman sold $10
billion in preferred stock
to the government,
which bears an interest rate of 5 percent
through 2013 (after
which the rate bumps up to 9 percent). Like
other TARP recipients,
Goldman received capital on pretty easy
terms. Just a month
earlier, when Goldman raised $5 billion from
investor Warren
Buffett, it sold preferred shares that carried a
10 percent interest
rate. (At the same time, Goldman also raised
$10 billion in a public
offering of stock.) The difference between
borrowing $10 billion
at 5 percent and borrowing $10 billion at
10 percentin
other words, the value of the government
subsidyis $500
million per year..." Interestingly, Art Cashin on CNBC
just said that Obama's
Treasury is considering extending the 5% loan period
for banks by several
more years. There's nothing Obama won't do for Wall Street..
In addition, the Federal
Deposit Insurance Corp. has guaranteed $5 Billion of
Goldman's
unsecured debt sold in November 2008 in three-year notes at
a 3.367 percent
rate. On March 12, 2009 GS sold
another $5 billion. Thanks to
the government's
guarantee, Goldman is saving several hundred million dollars
per year in
interest. Wouldn't you like to be able to borrow with this guarantee
behind you!
Even more of a
subsidy for GS has come from the AIG bailout. Perhaps,
$20 Billion more.
"Goldman, and many other firms, made the mistake
of a) buying
insurance from a company that, it turned out, couldn't make good
on its insurance
contracts, and b) borrowing securities from, and lending
securities to, a
company that essentially went bankrupt. In normal bankruptcies,
firms in these in
situations have to get in line with other creditors and ultimately
settle for a
fraction of the amounts they're owed. As Eliot Spitzer pointed out,
because the
government didn't let AIG formally file for bankruptcy, Goldman,
and so many
others, have instead been made whole."
( Source: http://www.slate.com/id/2214076/
)
THE AIG
PASS-THROUGH OF $12.8 BILLION
(Maybe much more) TO GOLDMAN SACHS
Last month, Obama's Treasury
Secretary, Geithner, and Chief Economics Advisor,
Larry Summers
(who received a big advance-bribe from Goldman less than a year before)
quickly, secretly
and wrongly paid Goldman Sachs $12.8 Billion from the AIG Bailout.
They did not need
to. But they did. Criminal contracts have no standing in law.
AIG, it can be
argued, was a criminal enterprise, a giant Ponzi scheme. The CDS
contracts were a
fraud. The quote below is from -
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/923-FLASH-AIG-CALLED-CRIMINAL-SCAM!.html
"
"The key point is that neither the public, the Fed nor the
Treasury seem to understand is that the CDS contracts
written by AIG with these various non-insurers around the world
were shams - with no correlation between
fees paid and the risk assumed. These were
not valid contracts as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke,
Treasury Secretary Geithner and Economic policy guru Larry
Summers claim, but rather acts of
criminal fraud meant to manipulate the capital positions and
earnings of financial companies around
the world.
Indeed, our sources as well as press reports suggest that the
CDS contracts written by AIG may have included
side letters, often in the form of emails rather than formal
letters, that essentially violated the ISDA agreements
and show that the true, economic reality of these
contracts was fraud plain and simple. Unfortunately,
by not moving to seize AIG immediately last year when the scandal
broke, the Fed and Treasury may have given
the AIG managers time to destroy much of the evidence of criminal
wrongdoing.
Only when we understand how AIG came to be involved in CDS and
the fact that this seemingly illegal activity
was simply an extension of the reinsurance/side letter
shell game scam that AIG, Gen Re and others conducted
for many years before will we understand what needs to be
done with AIG, namely liquidation. Seen in this
context, the payments made to AIG by the Fed and Treasury,
which were then passed-through to
dealers such as Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), can only be viewed
as an illegal taking that must be
reversed once the US Trustee for the Federal Bankruptcy
Court for the Southern District of New York
is in control of AIGs operations.
"Had A.I.G. simply declared bankruptcy, the financial institutions doing
business with it would
have ended up in court, as they did in the case of Lehman Brothers, fighting to get pennies
on the
dollar for their claims. Instead, Goldman Sachs received $13 billion of the Federal Reserves rescue
money to close out various contracts it had outstanding with A.I.G. It was one of the
biggest
beneficiaries of the government rescue".
( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/business/17liddy.html?_r=2&ref=business.
)
|
GOLDMAN SACHS
TOO BIG TO FAIL. STOCK MARKET MANUPULATION
Goldman is so big it can manipulate markets as well as Presidents. The NYSE shows it
to be by
far
the biggest "program trader" for its own account. No other company comes close
to Goldman's
efforts to manipulate the market. For the NYSE "program trades" are orders
worth more than a million
dollars than simultaneously buy or sell a large number of different stocks.
The
period of time is not shown in the table below. But it clearly shows how much bigger
Goldman
is
than any other participant. What is scary is that program trading now
accounts for 32.1% of all
NYSE
trading and 67.1% of NASDAQ and ASE trading. Stock market liquidity is disappearing.
We
are right to worry about Goldman's front-running and manipulation. We need also to
worry about
another meltdown occasioned by out-of-control computerized program trading as took place
in October 1987.
Allowing program traders to go short on down-ticks with no need to borrow the stock in
advance has
set
the stage for the steep stock market decline in 2008 and in January and February 2009.
Speaking of Self-Serving Absurdities
"After the most volatile percentage day in history, October 19,
1987, trading collars were placed
on index
arbitrage transactions via NYSE Rule 80A. (Index arbitrage was a favorite tactic of
big institutions
to
circumvent other selling restrictions.) On November 2, 2007, however, the NYSE
abolished these
circuit breakers, writing The Exchange is making this change since it
does not appear...that market
volatility
envisioned by the use of these collars is as meaningful today as when the Rule
was formalized
in the late
1980s. Right .... On October 8, 2008, at 3:58 EDT, I captured a screenshot of the
market.
It was up 107.60
points. Two minutes later the market closed down 189.96 points. Thats a
300-point
swing in two
minutes. There was no news of interest to account for such a panic. There is no
way enough
individual
investors or even institutions acting rationally or placing orders up to 10,000 shares
could have
sent the market
into such a tailspin. I was a senior executive with Charles Schwab & Co. (SCHW)
on October 19,
1987. I can tell you it was the novelty of computer program trading that was
primarily
responsible for
the 1987 crash and the current crash, as well. Facilitating instantaneous
execution
of enormous
blocks of stocks, index stocks and futures resulted in blind selling of stocks as the
market
fell,
intensifying the decline in both 1987 and in 2008....If we are to reinstate reasonable
trading and
the confidence of
the backbone of the stock markets, actual investors (rather than program traders,)
we must reign in
program trading, dark pools and algorithmic trading. Its all trading. None
of it is
investing! ". Source.
http://www.bearmarketinvestments.com/time-to-breakup-goldman-sachs
http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/04/incredibly-shrinking-market-liquidity.html
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_FM71j6-VkNE/Sd-KeUtjJUI/AAAAAAAABzg/NyPbdplXe-k/s1600-h/nyse1.jpg
http://seekingalpha.com/article/100159-program-trading-dark-pools-and-gold
http://www.goldmansachs666.com/2009/04/does-goldman-sachs-manipulate-stock.html
|
:
OBAMA CONTINUES THE PAULSON CRIMINAL
FRAUD
AND TAXPAYER "RIP-OFF". No wonder
Obama Does
Not Want A Full Investigatiuon.
Loosening "frozen bank" credit was, and still is, the excuse given, to have the
taxpayer
give banks billions. Never mind, the absurdity of thinking that making taxpayers get
deeper in debt
will help the economy or that taxpayers should give money to banks so that they can be
charged
interest on their own money, when they borrow back their own money. The Billions
given the banks
have not freed up bank credit. Many knew it would not last year. So, that should
come as no
surprise. The billions-for-bankers federal bailout was never intended to do
that. Its real intention,
all along, was to let bank executives get their bloated, obscene and undeserved bonuses.
86% of Bailout Money Used for Executive Bonuses by Jason Green
( http://endthebailouts.com/2008/11/07/86-of-bailout-money-used-for-executive-bonuses/
)
"When confronted about these numbers, the executives will always claim that the
bonuses are paid out of other funds and company earnings. This completely ignores
the fact that without the taxpayers bailout money, there would be no
earnings! If there
was anyone left who still felt like the bailout was a good idea (besides the executives
who directly benefit), this should be the final nail in the coffin that we were just
robbed
blindly while the politicians patted themselves on the back.... It
turns out that the nine
banks about to be getting a total equity capital injection of $125 billion, courtesy of
Phase I
of The Bailout Plan, had reserved $108 billion during the first nine months of 2008 in
order
to pay for compensation and bonuses (PDF).
"The countrys top investment bank (which since Sept. 21
calls itself a bank holding
company), Goldman Sachs, set aside $11.4 billion during the first nine months of this year
slightly more than the firms $10 billion U.S. government gift to cover bonus
payments
for its 443 senior partners, who are set to make about $5 million each, and other
employees."
|
GOLDMAN SACHS IS THE GREED CONNECTION
BETWEEN
WALL STREET AND WASHINGTON
Obama's bank - rescue plan will likely
fail because
it is the product of Wall Street Big Bank "mind set", according
to a Nobel
Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia.
Shareholders and bondholders get bailed out, but the taxpayer
is left holding the bag. Obscenely bloated bonuses are par for
the course for this crowd. They protect each other's privileges
as royalty would in Elizabethan
England. With an arrogance typical
of the very rich, they claim that they are the "best and the brightest"
To keep the most talented, Wall Street firms say that they must pay
these high wages.
The truth is very different. They are simply totallly spoiled,
arrogant and greedy elitists and unpunished crooks. They have
committed massive economic crimes in destroying the world economy.
They now fully expect to go unpunished and be fully bailed out.
In this they are as unworthy as any over-indulged child with rich
parents.
Too harsh a judgement? Read what a former chief economist
at the IMF wrote:
"(E)lite business interestsfinanciers, in the case of the
U.S.played a central role in
creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the
government,
until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to
prevent
precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its
nosedive..."
( http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice
)
1. Robert Rubin - Worked for
26 years with Goldman Sachs.
There he specialized in risk
management and arbitrage. In 1990, he became the Co-Chairman
of Goldman Sachs. In
1993, was Clinton's Economic Advisor and the Director of the National
Economic Council.
He pushed for Free Trade and NAFTA, despite the loss of millions of
American jobs overseas.
In 1997, along with Larry Summers (see below), Rubin opposed the
regulation of derivatives,
like those that destroyed AIG and thereby cost the American taxpayer
$175 Billion in 2007-2008.
Rubin convinced President Clinton to sign the law that abolished
Glass-Steagall, thereby
permitting commercial banks to recklessly make mortgages and then
bundle them as products to
unsuspecting investors around the Globe. Rubin played a major role
in advising Obama whom he
should pick for the new President's economic team. Rubin advocated
at CitiGroup where he became
a chief advisor an expansion of their use of leverage in making
riskier and riskier loans.
When the housing bubble broke in 2006 and early 2007, Rubin sold
a huge stock
position in CitiGroup right at the peak, more than $20 million dollar's worth. He
knew that a Crash was coming.
It was he, as much as anyone, who created the financial bubble.
2. Henry Paulson - Worked as Assistant to John
Erlichman,
until the latter was convicted and jailed
in the Watergate scandal. In 1974, Paulson then joined Goldman
Sachs. In 2004, he lobbied successfully
the SEC to release the major investment banks from limits under
the net capital
rule, the requirement that their brokerages hold reserve
capital that limited their leverage
and risk exposure. Originally,
after this change there was to be set up a Federal Risk Management Office
to ensure undue risks were not taken by
banks. Paulson as CEO of Goldman Sachs convinced the
SEC not to establish such an oversight
office of investment banks. His compensation there
allowed
him to build up a net worth of $700
million. In 2006, Paulson was selected by President
Bush to become
the Secretary of The Treasury.
"Each of Paulson's three immediate predecessors as CEO of Goldman Sachs
Jon Corzine, Stephen Friedman, and Robert Rubin
left the company to serve in government: Corzine as a
U.S. Senator (later Governor
of New Jersey), Friedman as chairman of the National Economic Council (later
chairman of the President's
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board) under President George W. Bush, and Rubin
as both chairman of the NEC and later Treasury
Secretary under President Bill Clinton.[14]"
Source.
Paulson quickly fell behind the curve of the financial
collapse that gripped the world on his watch.
In August 2007, Paulson said that the
sub-prime mortgage collapse was "contained." On July 20th,
He said that the US banking system was
"safe" and "sound" and that regulators were on top of
the situation. The situation
was "very manageable". On September 7th, Freddie Mac and
Fannie Mae, went into receivership.
Two weeks later, he demanded that Congress give him the
colossal sum of $800 million to buy bad
("toxic") bank debts to keep them solvent and prevent
a financial collapse. In
this, Goldman Sachs received a very generous $20 billion loan from the
US Government with a charge of only
5%/year. Goldman Sachs also received nearly $20 billion
more by the taxpayer bailout of AIG,
because of money it was owed by AIG. No Goldman
Sachs "hair-cut" or reduction
in the amount it was paid back by failed AIG was ever asked for
by the Treasury under Paulson or Obama.
See my Blogs:
9/20/2008 - Paulson
Takes Washington Corruption and Cronyism To Dizzying New Highs.
10/20/2008 - Goldman
Sachs Foxes...Gaming The Bailout. $700 Billion Down A Rat Hole.
12/25/2008 - Paulson Is
Nothing More Than A Pimp for America's Greediest CEOs.
3.
Larry Summers Obama's Chief
Economic Advisor. Summers
teamed up with Rubin to block regulation of derivatives,
including those based on mortgages. He was
Clinton's Treasury Secretary in 2000 when Clinton
agreed to abandon bank regulation under
Glass-Steagall and allow banks to bundle dubious and
"toxic" mortgages and sell them to
others. . He had served as Rubin's closest aid previously at
the Treasury.
Summers Gets $7.9 Million "Advance Bribe" from Wall Street in 2008
"How would you like to make $7.9 million for a few
weeks' part-time work?
Could
you ever bite the hand that feeds you so well? That's what Obama's Chief
Economic Advisor got from a half dozen Wall Street firms in 2008, according to newly
released financial disclosures from the White House. Example - Goldman Sachs gave
him
$135,000 to make a single speech. Details
: This explains the taxpayer billions for banks
under
the new Geithner-Summers TARP-II Plan where FDIC Public money is used to guarantee
private investors against losses in buying the mostly worthless big bank "Toxic
Debts".
It
certainly explains the billions in bonuses for Merrill Lyuch, Bank of America and
AIG execs.
It
explains why Obama is bailing out AIG, so that Goldman Sachs will get the billions
that
they are owed by the bankrupt AIG. It explains why Obama refuses to order a
high
level criminal investigation of Wall Street and says the economic collapse Wall Street
created as all perfectly legal, even before there is an investigation about economic
crimes
and
political corruption. The subject of excessive Wall Street salaries have
recently
been
declared off limits, with Summers insisting the Obama
Administration can do nothing
about
AIG giving executives bonuses worth more than $200 million from taxpayers
Pay reform on Wall Street has very
low priority. This whole affair shows how superficial
and
cowardly much of the media is. They are infatuated by his eloquence and remain
blind
to how corrupt the Obama Administration looks when closely examined."
Source: http://www.tigersoftware.com/TigerBlogs/April6-2009/index.html
4. Gary Gensler (Obama's
nominee to be head
of
Commodity Futures Trading Commission) He worked at Goldman Sachs, one of the
biggest brokers of commodities, for nine years. He joined the Treasury
Department. Gensler
served under two Clinton Treasury secretaries. From 1997 to 1999, Gensler worked as
assistant
secretary of the Treasury under Robert Rubin until Rubin stepped down in 1999. Lawrence Summers
then
became the Treasury head, and Gensler was promoted to Treasury undersecretary.
There in
2000 "he oversaw the drafting of legislation that exempted derivatives from oversight
by the
federal
commodity regulator, including the viral credit default swaps that have amplified the
current
crisis." (Quote: NY Times.
) As the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC),
Gensler
will oversee a troubled organization that has come under fire since oil prices fluctuated
wildly
throughout
2008. Many industry experts have blamed excessive and unregulated speculation by
investors
on 7% margin as the main cause of soaring oil prices in early 2008. Gensler has so
far
been
entirely silent on revising commodity trading margin requirements, the need for more
regulation
of commodity speculation, including publicizing very large short positions. We have
to take
notice that both Summers and Gensler joined hands with Phil Gramm to ward off regulation
of the
derivative markets and to promote the deregulation of banking and mortgage selling.
5. Edward Liddy Liddy served on
the Goldman
Sachs
Board of Directors from 2003 to 2008. It was Liddy who ex-GS CEO and Treasury
Secretary
Paulson appointed as CEO of AIG. Liddy then gave Goldman Sachs $12.9 of taxpayer
bailout money
to
repay AIG's Credit Default debt to Goldman. There was no haggling. Liddy just
paid them this
amount "to
retire the derivatives." This was not made public until the issue of AIG bonuses
surfaced.
Many
consider this debt highly vague, suspect and criminal in itself. The truth will come out
as a result
of
the NY Attorney General's investigation. No help or thanks is due Obama, who
supported the
payment to GS. Source.
" Liddy has a bundle of stock in Goldman he earned as a Director on the Goldman board
before he took this job and his Goldman stock was down to $47 when he gave his former
company
$13Billion of 100cents on the dollar that Obama is covering up according to William Black!
Goldman stock has more than doubled with the secret $13 Billion payment to Goldman so
Liddy
has more than doubled his Goldman stock worth; far more than this joke he is working for
$1."
Source.
griz99cub
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/business/17liddy.html?_r=2&ref=business
OTHER GOLDMAN SACHS PEOPLE
RUNNING
THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT
Timothy
Geithner - US Treasury Secretary under Obama. He mever met a bank he didn't
want to give taxpayer
|
money to. Geithner, was mentored by
Goldman alumni. Mario Draghi, who is leading the crisis response
for
the E.U., is a former Goldman VP.
5. Steve
Friedman - along with Rubin,
Friedman was co-chairman at Goldman.
He was Bushs economic advisor and became the Chairman of
the NY Federal Reserve on Geithner's placement
in Obama's administration. Friedman abruptly resigned as Chairman in May 2009,
"after questions arose about
his ties to Goldman Sachs. Mr.
Friedman was chairman of the New York Fed at the same time that he was a member
of Goldmans
board. He also had a substantial stake in the firm as
the Fed was devising a solution to keep Wall Street
banks afloat... Because
the New York Fed approved a request by
Goldman to become
a bank holding company, (thereby
allowing them to get a massive TARP payment of
$10 billion despite the
fact they trade mostly for their own account and so should have
been considered a giant
hedge fund) the chairmans involvement in Goldman was a
violation of Fed
policy, The Wall Street Journal said in an article earlier this week. The
New York Fed asked for
a waiver, which, after about two and a half months, the Fed
granted, the
newspaper said. During that time, Mr. Friedman bought 37,300 more
Goldman shares in
December, which have since risen $1.7 million in value."
(Source: http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/friedman-resigns-as-chairman-of-new-york-fed/?hp
)
"Is it an equitable tradeoff for Goldman to be
released from TARP restrictions simply by paying back
the TARP itself while
retaining access to FDIC-backed financing and all the other perks of a bank
holding company?
..Its hard to really know how secure Goldman is as a bank. We know you cant
enter one of their
branches and make a deposit, let alone receive a free gift for
opening an account ."
(Source.)
Mark
Patterson - Geithners chief advisor . He was lobbyist
for Goldman Sachs who fought against limiting
Wall
Street executive pay..
John Thain
- Co-President of Goldman Sachs, its chief operating officer. Merrill Lynch
President when the company
failed. He had received $300 million from Goldman and was finally fired from Bank
of America for his wasteful
spending on his office. It was Obama's criticisms of Thain which scared the stock
market in early February 2009.
Wachovia head Robert Steel was a vice chairman of GS.
.... Paulson's Bailout aids
were mostly from Goldman.
Robert Zoellick -
World Bank president . He was a managing GS director
Neel Kashkari ("CASH_CARRY") Bush TARP head - had been a Goldman
vice-president
Edward Liddy, the CEO of AIG, came to the company from the Board of Directors of Goldman
Sachs.
Steve Shafran - Bush US Teasury TARP Administrator - formerly of Goldman Sachs
Kendric Wilson - Bush US Teasury TARP Administrator - formerly of Goldman Sachs
Edward Forst - Bush US Teasury TARP Administrator - formerly of Goldman Sachs
See
- http://www.tigersoftware.com/TigerBlogs/October20-2008/index.html
Compare JP Morgan to Goldman Sachs' CEOS
"Blankfein
and his ilk continue to function as though it were business as usual, using campaign
contributions
and lobbyists to grease the wheels of access and power. And as soon as they dislike
something, they start
shorting the market, engendering panic until the politicians relent. At least Morgan acted
out of a sense of duty
when he saved the country in 1909 and he wasnt even that rich. What America has now
is a pack of parasites
like Blankfein, to whom
the country is a bottomless pit they can exploit endlessly. " Source
Prosecuted Goldman Sachs'
Criminal Fraud
"Goldman Sachs was one of five Wall Street firms to settle a
December suit alleging insufficient email records.
The
suit, headed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), resulted in two penalties
for Goldman
Sachs: it was fined $1.65 million to be split between the U.S. Treasury, the New York
Stock Exchange (NYSE),
and
the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD); and it will have to take measures
to make sure that
it
complies with SEC record-keeping regulations in the future.
"Goldman Sachs is one of a dozen defendants in another securities
suit that is expected to settle in
mid-2003. This suit also filed by the SEC, but headed by New York Attorney General
Eliot Spitzer
alleges collaboration between the investment banking and research/advice branches
of each firm.
The firms are believed to have issued advice to investors to inflate stock prices, with
the goal of luring
the patronage of investment banking clients that stood to benefit from these inflations.
Goldman Sachs
will pay approximately $150 million of the $1.4 billion settlement, the second most among
the twelve.
Each firm also must agree to regulations designed to separate their research and
investment banking arms.
"Goldman Sachs, ..(is) currently being sued for fraudulent
manipulation of initial public offerings (IPOs) of
stocks. Investor suits, which also name as defendants the companies they invested in,
allege that the
investment firms arranged deals that inflated the stocks prices as soon as they hit
the market. For example,
Goldman is suspected of participating in the notorious broker practice of arranging deals
with buyers in
which they can buy a stock before it is offered to the public, but must agree to make a
purchase at a "
higher price during the stocks IPO stage. The demand for shares that results
inflates their price for consumers.
Goldman Sachs is also being sued by the companies themselves Etoys, for example, is
alleging that
Goldman undervalued its IPO in 1999.
"Goldman Sachs
is facing charges by investors that it defrauded them in other ways. One of the most
prominent cases involves Touch America, the company formerly known as Montana Power.
According
to investors, they were left in the dark when Goldman Sachs pitched the idea for the
energy provider
to transform itself into a telecommunications company. The transformation left the company
bankrupt,
and the stock has plummeted."
(http://www.goldmansachsfraudinfocenter.com/information.php )
More Links
"Our
treasury secretary hopes to circumvent laws enacted to protect the economy
by subsidizing a bunch of multimillionaire investors - ostensibly to help regulators
fulfill their
most basic job description - in a bid to prop up bankers who cooked their books to support
a gambling binge and still refuse to admit they lost." -- THE SEC...grossly
incompetent,
criminally negligent, or just simply corrupt? YES!! ... And for this to happen...the
Senate
Banking and House Financial committees are corrupted also.
READ http://www.motherjones.com/print/22937
Source
- fpvsff
TARP-II - Barrons says TARP-II is "Sweet Deal for Banks" 4/18/2009
http://online.barrons.com/article/SB124001886675331247.html
|
|