The NY Times reported Goldman Sachs was AIG's largest trading partner......about $13 billion of US government funds that went to AIG, ended up being paid to Goldman Sachs.......
THE ENEMY WITHIN
Sept 26, 2008
The Goldman Sachs Group announced that Edward M. Liddy resigned as a member of its Board of Directors in light of his new role as Chairman and CEO of AIG, Inc. His resignation was effective Sept 23, 2008. Mr. Liddy had been a director of Goldman Sachs since June 2003....he served as chairman of the Audit Committee, a member of the Corporate Governance and Nominating Committee and the Compensation Committee.
GOLDMAN-SACHS-A-THON After the market meltdown, many Goldman Sachs execs fled to the "safety" of the Federal Reserve and Dept of US Treasury........and are sucking up tax dollars as we type. Tax cheat (and US Treasury Secy) Tim Geithner hired a Goldman Sachs lobbyist as his COS. ...even though Obama said his admin is off-limits to lobbyists.
Ex- Goldman Sachs head, Hank Paulson as Tresury Secy, stationed his G/S right hand man---Neel Kaskari---- to (cough) oversee $350B TARP payouts. We still do not know in which G/S rathole these two secreted the first $350B. Paulson threatened US Senators with Martial Law if they did not vote him the bailout billions.
Paulson demanded the TARP be exempt from judicial, legislative, and regulatory review. $350B disappeared without a trace---and NO significant effect on the economy.
========================================
US Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) said that Congress was not told the truth about the $700 billion bailout. "The American people don't know how much money Treasury Secy Henry Paulson has given away to anyone. IT COULD BE TO HIS FRIENDS. We don't know. There is no way of knowing.''
The late economist John Kenneth Galbraith blamed Goldman Sachs policies for causing the Great Depression of '29. In his book, The Great Crash, 1929, Galbraith, a key figure in JFK's admin, an entire chapter titled “In Goldman, Sachs, We Trust,” details the “large-scale corporate thimblerigging” that Goldman and other Wall Streeters practiced in the 1920s.
=============================================
Goldman Sachs: Masters of the bailout
Washington Examiner | Editorial
FR Posted March 24, 2009 by RatherBiased.com
There is nothing quite so ridiculous as a bunch of Washington politicians running at break-neck speed to get in front of an American public frothing in a righteous uproar over something in the news. The first casualty in such episodes is invariably a clear picture of who actually deserves the public’s anger, and so it is with $165 million in AIG executive bonuses.
Leading the charge now are members of the same Congress that approved the $700 billion bailout and the $787 billion economic stimulus bill that authorized the bonus payments without reading either of the 1,000-page monsters. These same people are screaming to confiscate a bonus amount that equals one-tenth of one percent of the $1.5 trillion total they blindly approved for the bailout and stimulus legislation. The lack of proportion here is staggering.
But let’s not forget that the sturm und drang over AIG bonuses serves a serious purpose for those politicos fueling the drama – it diverts the public’s attention away from other far more revealing facts like those surrounding the role of Goldman Sachs, the once-mighty investment bank that became a commercial bank last September as the financial crisis threatened its existence.
Goldman Sachs has been everywhere in the crisis, yet has almost entirely escaped critical public attention. Goldman Sachs alumni have been in the forefront of the government’s response to the crisis under both the present and former presidential administrations.
Tim Geithner served in multiple roles at the Treasury Department in the Clinton administration when long-time Goldman Sachs head Robert Rubin was Treasury Secretary. Geithner then worked closely with Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, another long-time Goldman Sachs executive, in crafting the $170 billion AIG bailout.
Also among G/S alumni in key Treasury Dept positions is Asst Secy of Treasury Neel Karshkari, who heads the Office of Financial Stability (as of January 2008). NOTE: Karshkari was Paulson's henchman at G/S and at Treasury before he got the TARP job.
What Goldman giveth, Goldman also taketh away. While little is known about where the AIG bailout money went, we do know that Goldman Sachs received $12.9 billion of it. As one Wall Street insider recently observed to The Examiner: “This is an investment bank that earned more than $12 billion and paid its CEO $68 million in 2007.
Even in 2008, this self-proclaimed home to the ‘Masters of the Universe’ paid out more than $10 billion in compensation and received its own $10 billion in taxpayer funding.” Congress ought to stop swatting at AIG bonus gnats and take on the real masters of the bailouts.