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From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression -- and they're about to do it again -~&~- The FIRST THING YOU NEED TO KNOW about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who's...

'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, selling...

Simon Johnson: Goldman Is About To Be Blacklisted And Possibly Banned In Europe Joe Weisenthal Feb. 15, 2010, 6:45 AM MIT professor Simon Johnson raises some provocative scenarios in regards to Goldman's participation in Greece's scheme to obfuscate its debt levels. In particular, he expects a full audit of the company, and perhaps some kind of ban: If the Federal Reserve were an effective supervisor, it would have the political will sufficient to determine that Goldman Sachs has not been acting in accordance with its banking license. But any meaningful action from this direction seems unlikely. Instead, Goldman will probably...

This looks pretty bad for both Goldman and Greece, as if things could look worse. According to a scathing piece in Der Spiegel, European statisticians in Luxembourg have had a very difficult time getting proper Greek economic and financial data for years. Worse yet, Goldman Sachs appears to have been helping Greece take advantage of a European regulatory loophole in order to understate its deficits: Der Spiegel:

The emails obtained by Cong. Darryl Issa (R-CA), which I have seen and reviewed, reveal a conspiracy among lawyers for AIG and the NY Fed to conceal from the SEC the nature and extent of AIG’s true indebtedness and its stated intention to pay certain vendors (among them the publicly-hated Goldman Sachs) one hundred cents on the dollar. While I have not heard any defense of this nefarious informal agreement, it does raise serious concerns. These emails are now to be the subject of scheduled hearings in the House and now requested hearings in the Senate. It is a federal...

MONTREAL - If the Chinese stock market is still an indicator of global investor appetite for risk, as analysts viewed it a few months ago, then that appetite has lately diminished. Perhaps they are finally absorbing some of the revelations about statistical manipulations. They may also be reacting to more recent revelations warning of bank fraud in China. In one case, the Royal Bank of Scotland is reportedly investigating suspected fraud in its China unit. Client losses could be worth up to US$3 million, the Financial Times has reported, citing local media. Whatever the reason, neither Chinese nor global stock...

NLPC has filed a shareholder proposal asking Goldman Sachs to report on the science behind its embrace of global warming in the wake of the ‘Climategate’ scandal. Goldman’s ‘climate policy’ is more than corporate public relations. In 2007, Goldman participated in the buyout of energy firm TXU. The transaction resulted in the cancelation of 8 of 11 planned coal-fired power plants after pressure from environmental activists. It might make wealthy financiers in New York City feel good about themselves to scotch electric generation in the name of environmentalism, but it has negative consequences for ordinary people. Electricity is a basic...

Rep Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) recently met with senior officials of Goldman Sachs. The confusion she displayed during that meeting is astonishing. Here is her report : This week I had an opportunity most Americans would relish, just as I did. I was able to unload on two top executives of Goldman Sachs who descended from on high to my office because I clearly needed some educating. One was a Vice President and the other their Chief Risk Officer. I had authored a letter on October 28, along with Congressman Peter Welch, that read, "We understand Goldman Sachs is expected to...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Some big Wall Street banks are girding against the swine flu, but a flap over how the firms got the vaccine will make them miserable. The public is outraged about reports that Citi , Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley along with other big New York employers, received hundreds, even thousands, of H1N1 vaccine doses before hospitals and other healthcare providers, many of which have run out of the precious drug

We've been trying to figure out what, if any, preparations Wall Street has been taking to guard against H1N1. For the most part, the banks have been coy about their activities. But as noted on The Today Show this morning, several banks have been among the early recipients of H1N1 vaccine, allowing them to get ahead of hospitals in some instances. The story was originally broken by BusinessWeek this week. Goldman Sachs (GS) has received 200 doses in total -- the exact same as Lennox Hill hospital. Health officials say corporate partners are always part of the distribution of any...

Sounds like it to me. Interesting info out of FT: The Galleon hedge fund at the centre of an insider trading scandal paid hundreds of millions of dollars a year to its Wall Street banks and in return regularly received market information that would not have been disclosed to most investors, executives familiar with the matter say. A person familiar with Galleon, whose founder, Raj Rajaratnam, was charged with insider trading this month, said it paid about $250m to its banks last year. Executives who dealt with the fund said it paid more in fees and other charges during the...

Amazing story here.... you really need to read the whole thing. The salient point is here: The county paid JPMorgan and a group of banks $120.2 million in fees for $5.8 billion of derivatives, according to a series of stories published by Bloomberg News in 2005. The payments were about $100 million more than they should have been based on prevailing rates, according to estimates in 2007 by James White, an adviser the county hired after the SEC said it was investigating the deals. That's six times what they should have cost - that is, six hundred percent of market...

“I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank...

Goldman Arming Itself? :-> This is a riot (well, ok, I might be a week - or a month early on that): Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- “I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the...