I'm Doing 'God's Work'. Meet Mr Goldman Sachs [They "Rule The World"]

Number 85 Broad Street, a dull, rust-coloured office block in lower Manhattan, doesn’t look like a place to stop and stare, and that’s just the way the people who work there like it. The men and women who arrive in the watery dawn sunshine, dressed in Wall Street black, clutching black briefcases and BlackBerrys, are very, very private.

They walk quickly from their black Lincoln town cars to the lobby, past, well, nothing, really. There’s no name plate on the building, no sign on the front desk and the armed policeman stationed outside isn’t saying who works there. There’s a good reason for the secrecy. Number 85 Broad Street, New York, NY 10004, is where the money is. All of it.

It’s the site of the best cash-making machine that global capitalism has ever produced, and, some say, a political force more powerful than governments. The people who work behind the brass-trim glass doors make more money than some countries do. They are the rainmakers’ rainmakers, the biggest swinging dicks in the financial jungle.

Their assets total $1 trillion, their annual revenues run into the tens of billions, and their profits are in the billions, which they distribute liberally among themselves. Average pay this recessionary year for the 30,000 staff is expected to be a record $700,000. Top earners will get tens of millions, several hundred thousand times more than a cleaner at the firm.

When they have finished getting "filthy rich by 40", as the company saying goes, these alpha dogs don’t put their feet up. They parachute into some of the most senior political posts in the US and beyond, prompting accusations that they "rule the world".

The list of former Goldman executives who have held key posts in the US administration and vital global institutions in New York and Washington alone is mind-boggling. It includes:

the treasury secretary under Bill Clinton (Robert Rubin);
the treasury secretary under George Bush (Hank Paulson);
the current president and former chairman of the New York Federal Reserve (William Dudley and Stephen Friedman);
the chief of staff to the treasury secretary Timothy Geithner (Mark Patterson);
the chief of staff under President Bush (Joshua Bolten);
the economic adviser to the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton (Robert Hormats);
the chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (Gary Gensler);
the under-secretary of state for economic, business, and agricultural affairs under President Bush (Reuben Jeffery);
the past and current heads of the New York Stock Exchange (John Thain and Duncan Niederauer);
the chief operating officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division (Adam Storch).
Moreover, Goldman’s new top lobbyist in Washington, Michael Paese, used to work for Barney Frank, the congressman who chairs the House Financial Services Committee.
To put this in perspective, imagine that Alistair Darling, the chancellor, and his key advisers, Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, Xavier Rolet, the boss of the London Stock Exchange, and Hector Sants, head of the Financial Services Authority, all used to work at the same City firm before moving into government. Small wonder that another of Goldman’s nicknames is "Government Sachs".

Our unelected government. At least there is more sunlight being shined on this.

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