Posted on 09/23/2008 6:50:23 PM PDT by vadum
The liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith, a key figure in President John F. Kennedy’s administration, famously blamed Goldman Sachs in his book, The Great Crash, 1929, for helping to set the stage for the Great Depression. Galbraith, who died in 2006, devoted a whole chapter he titled “In Goldman, Sachs, We Trust,” to detailing the “large-scale corporate thimblerigging” that Goldman and other investment firms practiced in the 1920s.
Now Goldman Sachs veterans at the highest levels of the Bush administration are trying to convince policy makers and the public that they know the way out of the current market troubles. (In hopes of bringing in fresh capital in the form of bank deposits, Goldman Sachs received authority from the Federal Reserve Board to become an ordinary commercial bank over the weekend.)
But there has to be another way to restore stability to the nation’s markets other than the outrageous $700 billion taxpayer-funded bailout of banks proposed by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, a former head of Goldman Sachs. As Jed Babbin of Human Events sagely opines, “There is only one certainty: whatever the government does will cost taxpayers vastly more than anyone will now admit.”
Of course, Paulson downplays the costs. “I hate the fact that we have to do this, but it is better than the alternative,” he said yesterday. The Wall Street Journal reported that earlier in the week behind closed doors the Treasury Secretary sounded positively apocalyptic: “If it doesn’t pass, then heaven help us all.”
Oh?
It’s no surprise that this plan hails from former Goldman Sachs banker Paulson. The powerhouse investment bank has long been a friend of Big Government.
Goldman has provided Treasury secretaries to both Republican and Democratic administrations (e.g. Robert Rubin in the Clinton administration). A Goldman veteran, Joshua Bolten, now serves as President George W. Bush’s chief of staff. “Over the past few years, people from Goldman Sachs have assumed control over large parts of the federal government. Over the next few, they might just take over the whole darn thing,” writes New York Times columnist David Brooks.
The company’s politics skew left. It supports much on the left’s laundry list of trendy environmental initiatives including a government-imposed cap on carbon dioxide emissions. Its corporate foundation’s donations go only to the left, according to a study we published in Foundation Watch, August 2006. We found that in 2004 the Goldman Sachs Foundation gave $35,525,000 to liberal non-profit groups, mostly to environmental organizations such as the Nature Conservancy and the Wildlife Conservation Society. There were no recorded contributions to conservative or free market public policy organizations.
Goldman Sachs also has a long history of caving in to left-wing pressure groups, such as Jesse Jackson’s Citizenship Education Fund and the extremist Rainforest Action Network (RAN).
And Paulson’s ethics have been questioned.
POST SCRIPT: We keep hearing from some commentators that Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson is a Democrat. Although it’s no secret that Paulson is an ardent environmentalist, to the best of our knowledge, he’s a Republican. Campaign finance data suggest he’s a Republican too. Of the $661,540 he’s given since 1983, $336,250 has gone to Republicans and just $13,990 to Democrats. However, Robert Novak argued in a column last year that Paulson has extensive ties to Democrats.
Government officials like Paulson claim that we should trust them to exercise their powers wisely. But government officials spawned the mortgage meltdown and financial crisis through their incompetence, such as mandating risky loans to promote “affordable housing.” And Paulson himself failed to see it coming even when the warning signs were obvious. Not long before taxpayers ended up bailing out mortgage giant Fannie Mae, Paulson claimed it was in good health, and for political reasons, he ignored warnings to the contrary from conservatives. His arguments for the bailout are internally inconsistent, and disregard the lessons of history. There is no reason why taxpayers should trust him with $700 billion and no strings attached, especially given his conflicts-of-interest in doling out the money.
If this wasn’t really happening it would almost be comical. We’ll see if the public is mostly comprised of lemmings or not.
I love it when Paulson says, I hate to do it but it’s better than the alternative. Humbug. I would rather take my chances with the alternative and sell apples on the side walk for five years than watch another clatch of greedy Goldman bankers slice up our $700B pie.
And while I don’t agree with Iran’s President...he’s not far off the mark when he says that Zionists run Wall Street. I am not anti-Semitic but I have had my fill with greedy cavalier and yes predominantly Jewish New York Wall Streeters screwing with the ordinary people of this country.
Now that Warren Buffett has signed on as a major shareholder in Goldman, I say let the short sellers back in and let’s have a blanket party with Goldman’s stock. Let’s teach Warren about the nature of falibility and let’s take some of these nasty Goldman jerks with him. No bailout!!
LOL. good one
Paulson is not the solution to our problems, he is the problem. ~~ RR
One wonders about the potential for conflict of interest here.
Paulson isn’t Jewish. Neither is Jon Corzine (CEO before Paulson). Goldman Sachs was founded by Jews, but non-Jews have been CEOs for years. Conversely, Microsoft was founded by a non-Jew, but the present CEO is Jewish.
This is a 'Zionist conspiracy' and anti-semitic sentiment that I wish you would reexamine and retract. You do this forum a great disservice by posting such trash.
I can see the end of the 'crisis' guys. Just hand over the money and the powers to me. And do it quickly, without questions and any of those checks and balances nonsense.
Um. He’s a Republican because he says he’s a Republican? Or, He’s a Republican because 50.8% of his political donations have gone to Republicans?
Less than 51%?
Where did the other $331,300 go? All to Independents? Really?
Besides which, having an (R) next to your name is MEANINGLESS. The Republican Party stands for nothing, and there is nothing to distinguish a Republican from a Democrat. By claiming to be a Republican, does this mean that he is a conservative (fiscally or otherwise)?
No one but an outright Marxist would do what he’s done. It’s just that simple.
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