Posted on 02/06/2009 5:15:40 AM PST by Azeem
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Goldman Sachs wants to give back the $10 billion it received from the government last year. But it may not be that simple.
David Viniar, Goldman Sachs' (GS, Fortune 500) chief financial officer, made headlines Wednesday when he told attendees of a Credit Suisse conference that he would like to pay back the $10 billion in capital it received from the government last fall.
Public distaste for the nation's banking industry has boiled over in recent days, amid signs that major financial firms have done seemingly little to rein in their spending despite the fact that they are now getting taxpayer funding.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
These clowns are playing rope a dope, they want to pay it back, sure, now if the tax payers would just take these loans, for the amount. Book value 10B, actual cash value 10 cents.
re: major financial firms have done seemingly little to rein in their spending despite
Would that it were that simple. Firms with budgets in the millions or billions of dollars and operations all over the world are bound by contracts that were entered into earlier. Most courts take a dim view of one or the other side in a contractual agreement violating it.
This is not said to in any way lessen the disgust I have for the firms involved, or minimize the problems I hope they discover attached to government largess, but it’s a fact of life.
Otherwise the wall street sharks will try and pay you with monopoly money.
Q: How many Ivy League MBA’s does it take to run an investment banking firm into the ground?
La-La land BS.
Well well well.
So much for the necessity of that bailout cash. Threaten them with executive salary caps in return for feeding at the trough and the pauper act comes to an end.
What a mess.
I have a pretty huge debt load. I entered into these contracts when I had a relatively good job and income. I lost my job and had to have major surgery. I can no longer meet my obligations. Can I go to my debtors and tell them to just forget my obligation to them, times have changed?
Despite what we've seen of late with the Obama ascendancy we are a nation of laws. Contracts are just one way one company has of being assured another company will live up to its word.
I am open to another way of looking at this. Meanwhile it's my humble opinion that many of the high price things these companies have wasted money on were done with the idea that they were legal obligations that could not be abandoned when times got tough.
Thanks!
What a joke. Good luck with that.
You really need to ask that question? :)
Frankly Obama's decision to nationalize all these companies that came to the trough to feed on taxpayer dollars is a decision that may, in the end, save capitalism. Now that the cat is out of the bag about what it means to be bailed out with taxpayer dollars, I think these struggling companies will know better than to go to Uncle Sam and ask to be bailed out.
They should have just declared bankruptcy and reorganized under the normal procedures. Instead they sold their souls to the devil and became "welfare recipients". Well the fact of the matter is that welfare recipients are all slaves to the government. This goes for corporate welfare recipients as well as individual welfare recipients.
There is no FREE RIDE. You get on the bus, and you're going to pay.
In my book they should have simply been allowed to go under. That would have negated all this discussion of what they can and can't do at this point.
I am not deciding anything for the courts. Been there, done that and the purpose of a contract is to protect both parties to an agreement from untoward consequences of unforeseen events.
Again, I am not defending them or making any attempt to assuage the deplorable way they did business. Just that with companies this big you are dealing with thousands and thousands of contracts and agreements that are legally enforceable. It's either meet the obligations, declare bankruptcy, or go to court as the defendant in a very expensive and time-consuming breach of contract action.
The Feds don’t want it back because they want to retain that foothold into a major investment bank. The Feds want control over the economy, and that’s worth a hell of a lot more than $10 billion.
A lot of people here have been arguing that the Government should not dictate the salaries of bailed out companies. But the fact of the matter is that if there are no such consequences to taking taxpayer bailouts, then there will be no end of those companies who are willing to go to the trough and feed with the pigs.
If these rules were in place before the Bush boondoggle bailout, or before the Automaker bailout, there would not have been a bailout. GM and Chrysler and AIG and these investment banks would all have found a way to survive without going to the taxpayers and begging for welfare.
The United States Government has become a fascist government under the obomba administration. You took what the fascist’s offered you to buy your business. What’s more you executives agreed to stay on as the operating managers. They own you Mr. Ellman. Deal with it. You’ll be out of work in less than 3 years if obomba has his way.
Actually not really as Goldman Sachs has some of the highest compensation to go along with huge bonuses.
They have had their hands all over the TARP process and were most definitely instrumental in sending off Lehman Bros. to its grave.
Their people are all over the TARP spending and now they want to be independent of the federal regulations.
I didn’t even know they had sucked out 10 billion! So, let the hammer (and sickle) fall on Goldman.
They have nowhere to go now anyway.
“These comments come at a time when public distaste for the nation’s banking industry is boiling over. Taxpayers are seething over the fact that major financial firms continue to pay lavish bonuses and make seemingly frivolous purchases after getting government aid.”
***
Here’s a “shameless” plug for Mr. President and his agenda.
Translation: My pay is going to be WHAT?!?!?
####
Egg-zackly!!
How am I going to keep up my three homes and my condo at Vail on a measly half a mil per year????
Psssst...Goldman took the money from Bush.
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