Friday, April 16, 2010

Springtime for Goldman

Having a tough time understanding the complexities surrounding the SEC's fraud case against Wall Street Masters of the Universe Goldman Sachs?

Barry at Big Picture has a great analogy
- essentially the boys at Goldman (including President Obama's friend, Lloyd Blankfein, the man Obama says "deserves" every penny he makes in bonuses and salary) created the worst hedge fund known to man guaranteed to fail, sold it to investors without telling them what was really in it (toxic waste) and then bet against it all.

Just like Bialystock and Bloom in The Producers.

For a while now we kept hearing how "brilliant" the Masters of the Universe at Goldman were (and JP Morgan Chase too) and how "smart" and "savvy" and all that other jive about navigating the housing crisis without collapsing blah blah blah.

But they were simply crooks.

That's how they navigated the crisis - they helped create it, had the political connections to use when it came time for government action and intervention (Remember Geithner making sure AIG counterparties got 100 cents to the dollar for the shit on AIG's books? Remember Goldman's Lloyd Blankfein was at the meeting between Paulson and Geithner to figure out how to do the AIG bailout?), and rode the crisis for all it was worth.

And it was worth plenty.

We'll see what happens from here. I suspect the Obama administration will find a way to fuck this up because further investigations into this mess will lead investigators closer and closer to Paulson, Geithner, and who knows who else in both the Bush and Obama administrations.

Obama wouldn't want that, would he? Might take the gloss off his More Change We Can Believe in re-election slogan for 2012.

Plus corporate whore that he is, Obama thinks Goldman did everything above board and is deserving of all the money they've raked in.

I bet he STILL thinks Blankfein is a fine sort.

But we'll just have to see.

Hopefully more charges will be filed against Goldman and Chase will be targeted as well.

Heck, I'd like to see Greenspan off the talk show circuit and in the courthouse awaiting trial.

And Bernanke impeached or whatever the hell you have to do to remove a Fed chairman.

Hell, I'd like to see Obama impeached for nominating Bernanke to another term.

That would truly be Change I Can Believe In.

But I won't hold my breath. I bet Obama and company will be too busy working with Florida Repubs to relaunch their Teacher Pay/Test Score bill to get meaning financial reform through the Congress or hold the crooks who took this nation to the financial brink accountable.

2 comments:

  1. Or the whole thing may very well be a public relations thing. Make the public think the government is doing something. My question is why only a civil suit and not a criminal?
    Where was the SEC all along? So sick of the charade they put on.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm thinking you're exactly right, primadonna. That's why they're going after the mid-level guy in a civil case, not the top guys in a criminal case.

    More jive from Obama.

    ReplyDelete