The Goldman Rule

The Man who takes Sach’s of gold makes the rules; ergo, Republicans in Congress should demand an independent, Special Prosecutor to investigate Goldman Sachs because with nearly a million dollars of their money in his hip pocket, Obama appears to be looking the other way from what may be serious rule breaking. Last Friday news broke that the Securities Exchange Commission was suing the Wall Street bank of Goldman Sachs but conspicuously absent was an announcement from the Department of Justice that anyone would be indicted. How curious. Obama has relentlessly attacked big business and Wall Street greed draining every last metaphor from the leftist’s lexicon used to attack Capitalism. The SEC is accusing Goldman Sachs of some pretty nasty stuff according to the Washington Post.

“The suit asserts that Goldman defrauded investors when it sold them a subprime-mortgage investment in 2007 that was secretly designed to lose value. The agency alleges that Goldman created and marketed the investment without telling its clients that Paulson & Co., a prominent hedge fund, had helped the bank assemble the investment while at the same time was placing bets that it would lose value. The bank received $15 million from Paulson & Co. for its services.”

This case sounds like it could have been a test designed in purgatory to try the mettle of a devout populist. But Obama wanted no part of a criminal investigation of his biggest donor of the 2008 election. There could be other problems for the Obama administration as well, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is notoriously close to many top Goldman officials. In fact, prior to his confirmation Geithner’s critics were on record with what they saw as conflicts of interest. In January 2009, financial risk analyst Chris Whalen told Yahoo Finance,

“Geithner is the wrong man for the job because of his decision-making as President of the New York Fed. I believe Tim Geithner only represents part of Wall Street - Goldman Sachs"

Indeed, Geithner was one of the architects of the Troubled Asset Relief Program and during that time had an unusual number of contacts with Robert Rubin, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs and it was Geithner’s decision to bail out American Insurance Group, a controversial move that made Goldman whole at a time when other banks were left struggling or allowed to fail such as in the case of Bear Stearns.

Obama faces potential peril if the SEC lawsuit ends up being a prosecution but confident he has nothing to fear from his Attorney General, he displays his usual hubris by politicizing the affair to his own benefit using it to declare that this is why congress should pass his Wall Street reform bill that, according to critics, would allow him to take over any public company that he deems unstable.

Obama is using the Goldman Sachs case to set a trap for Republicans, hoping that Republicans will do what they are already doing and that is defend Goldman which is a heavy contributor to the Democrats. Republicans can fight back by demanding a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of this matter that the SEC calls fraud and take it a step further by demanding the investigation include political donations and influence peddling this is critical considering the amount of taxpayer money used to bail out the politically connected firms.

The political fallout for Obama could be devastating, after publically chastising a supreme court decision that he says will allow big business more freedom to influence elections, he would be forced to defend himself for taking nearly one million dollars from a big bank that faces possible indictment while Republicans take the high road and lecture Democrats about the evils of big banks, Wall Street and tainted campaign donations.

Not just Goldman. Magnatar Capital should be FIRST on the list to investigate. Esp. how much did Rahmbo profit from this scummy practice?

You got that right. Thanks for the link. The BIG question is----how much did Gangster Government pocket for blanketing Wall Street with billions and billions of tax dollars with virtually no accountability. We may never know, but I'll betcha wire transfers offshore musta been going 24/7.

Goldman kept Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on a $3,000 monthly retainer while he worked as presidential candidate Bill Clinton's chief fund-raiser.....first reported by Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney. The financial titans threw in another $50,000 to become the Clinton primary campaign's top funder. Emanuel received nearly $80,000 in campaign contributions from Goldman during his four terms in Congress -- investments that have reaped untold rewards, as Emanuel assumed a leading role championing the trillion-dollar TARP banking bailout law.

Goldman helped Emanuel---employing him, and giving his Congressional campaign $74,750 (Emanuel's fourth largest source of funds). So how has Emanuel helped Goldman? The most obvious answer is in Emanuel’s lead role in shepherding the “$700 billion” bailout—first proposed by former a Goldman CEO Henry Paulson—through the skeptical House. ...which blanketed Goldman with billions in US tax dollars.

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NOTE WELL In addition to his role as White House Chief of Staff, Emanuel is heavily involved in decisions made by the US Treasury.

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Behind The Real Size of the Wall Street Bailout (Mother Jones reports its $14 trillion)
Mother Jones | Dec. 21, 2009 / FR Posted January 04, 2010 by E. Pluribus Unum

A guide to the abbreviations, acronyms, and obscure programs that make up the $14 trillion federal bailout of Wall Street.

The price tag for the Wall Street bailout is often put at $700 billion—the size of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. But TARP is just the best known program in an array of more than 30 overseen by Treasury Department and Federal Reserve that have paid out or put aside money to bail out financial firms and inject money into the markets. To get a sense of the size of the real $14 trillion bailout, see our chart here. Below, a guide to the pieces of the puzzle:

Treasury Department bailout programs (controlled by Rahm Emanuel)

Money Market Mutual Fund: In September 2008, the Treasury announced that it would insure the holdings of publicly offered money market mutual funds. According to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), these guarantees could have potentially cost the federal government more than $3 trillion [PDF].

Public-Private Investment Fund: This joint Treasury-Federal Reserve program bought toxic assets from banks and brokerages—as much as $5 billion of assets per firm. According to SIGTARP, the government's potential exposure from the PPIF is between $500 million and $1 trillion [PDF].

TARP: As part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Treasury has made loans to or investments more than 750 banks and financial institutions. $650 billion has been paid out (not including HAMP; see below). As of December 21, 2009, $117.5 billion of that has been repaid. Government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) stock purchase: The Treasury has bought $200 million in preferred stock from Fannie Mae and another $200 million from Freddie Mac [PDF] to show that they "will remain viable entities critical to the functioning of the housing and mortgage markets." GSE mortgage-backed securities purchase: Under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, the Treasury may buy mortgage-backed securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to SIGTARP, these purchases could cost as much as $314 billion [PDF].

--SNIP--- long read

Federal Reserve bailout programs

Commercial Paper Funding Facility: With the support from the Treasury, the Fed established the CPFF in October 2008 to increase the availability of short-term debt (commercial paper) funding. Up to $1.8 trillion [PDF] was earmarked for the program.

Mortgage-backed securities purchase: In 2009, the Fed earmarked up to $1.25 trillion to buy investments based on home loans.

Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility: TALF provides financing to investors who are buying asset-backed securities. In February 2009, the Fed and Treasury announced an expansion of the program to generate up to $1 trillion in new lending.

Foreign Central Bank Currency Liquidity Swaps: The Fed has provided $755 billion [PDF] for currency liquidity swaps with foreign central banks.

--SNIP--- long read

“. Republicans can fight back by demanding a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of this matter that the SEC calls fraud and take it a step further by demanding the investigation include political donations and influence peddling this is critical considering the amount of taxpayer money used to bail out the politically connected firms. “

___________________

This presents quite a problem for ‘republicans’ like John McCain.

Is anyone going to ask John McCain to return the $230,000 he got from Goldman Sachs? There have been demands for the democrats to do so.

This table lists the top donors to this candidate in the 2008 election cycle.

John McCain Merrill Lynch $373,595
Citigroup Inc $322,051
Morgan Stanley $273,452
Goldman Sachs $230,095 [snip]
Greenberg Traurig LLP $146,437 (Abramoff’s firm...OH, the irony)[snip]
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=n00006424

McCAin voted and pushed TARP.

TARP bailed out Goldman, and McCain’s top donors.

Goldman uses HB1 visas....

McCain got more $$ than any republican.

McCain is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

[snip]But there are at least some new supporters of the campaign. B. C. Clippard, who was national finance chairman of Fred D. Thompson’s presidential campaign, has now raised $100,000 or more for Mr. McCain. Former Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato of New York also supported Mr. Thompson but recently helped organize a fund-raiser in New York that netted over $1 million for Mr. McCain. Peter Newman, a former fund-raiser for Mr. Giuliani from Pebble Beach, Calif., has since become a Trailblazer for Mr. McCain. The list also includes something of a who’s who of his national finance team, including Tom Loeffler, a former congressman, and Lewis Eisenberg, a former Goldman Sachs partner and longtime player in Republican fund-raising.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/us/politics/21bundlers.html

[snip] Over the last year, John McCain supported everything that the grass-roots Tea Party movement has stood against:

*The $700 billion all-purpose, earmark-stuffed TARP bailout;

*The $25 billion auto bailout;

*The $300 billion mortgage entitlement bailout; and *The first $85 billion AIG bailout.

When push came to shove, McCain and his economic advisers (including his hand-picked California GOP Senate candidate, Carly Fiorina) caved to the Chicken Little chaos in Washington every time and joined hands with Barack Obama.

Reasonable people may not assert that John McCain is an unsurpassed paragon of “fiscal responsibility.”

____http://www.desertconservative.com/2010/02/11/mccain-a-rino-see-and-decide-for-yourself/

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