Tuesday, July 14, 2009

The miracle of Goldman Sachs




The G&M notes the "miraculous recovery" of Goldman Sachs, "expected to report Tuesday that it made a profit of more than $2-billion US in the March to June period – possibly its best quarter in two years."

It's a freakin' miracle alright - just like the miracle of the cups and ball trick.

Or, as Matt Taibbi writes in Goldman Sachs : The Great American Bubble Machine, helpfully posted up at Statism Watch , it's like "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money... If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain."

Matt Taibbi does the trick with the transparent cups :

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.

And why should you care? Well "the heads of the Canadian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York - which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman ..."

Penn and Teller, well, Penn, explains that one of the secrets of magic is to never repeat a trick for the same audience, but Taibbi tells us "Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they’re about to do it again." Good article.

Fun fact : Goldman Sachs' corporate tax rate in 2008 : 1%
.

2 comments:

West End Bob said...

Once again the Lady Alison is on target:

Matt Taibbi rules and GS controls the US $$/political power elite.

Makes one wonder if by today's revelation of exorbitant profits by GS will the public demand an explanation?

Nahhh, the "sheeple" aren't that interested/involved in what really matters . . . .

thwap said...

I heard the "business" news, or "reports from the 'financial markets'" on the radio yesterday, after skimming that Matt Taibbi thing on the intertubes.

The clueless "oohing" and "aw-ing" about Goldman Sach's stellar showings seemed so very, very sad.

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