Posted on 07/20/2009 12:21:49 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Money can't buy love? For proof, look no further than Goldman Sachs. Last week, the firm reported a spectacular quarterly profit -- close to $3.5 billion for the bank and about $385,000 in compensation for each employee for the first half of the year -- and right on cue, the braying began for the heads of the Goldmanites. Earlier this month, Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, in a comprehensive exercise in conspiracy mongering, primed the pump of outrage with his article "The Great American Bubble Machine." Now a chorus of supporters has chimed in, shocked that in a recession the evil Goldman could turn such profit.
The rhetoric of outrage has come full circle: Before, the villains were the banks that were stupid and greedy enough to fail; now the villains are those -- a small club, basically just Goldman and J.P. Morgan Chase -- that have been smart and greedy enough to succeed.
What began as an effort to keep the financial industry from repeating its mistakes has turned into, as at other points in history, an attack on the idea of trading profit. It is no longer enough that the banks should be reformed; the opportunity to make this kind of profit should be eliminated.
This now-fashionable line of attack is badly misguided. Goldman and J.P. Morgan are reaping great rewards as the last firms standing in a game in which everyone else has been cowed or crushed. Yes, they're able to do that partly because the government has kept the financial system afloat. (Would anyone really prefer that it had not?) But the essence of the outcry is that we must punish Goldman for having been right. This is a mistake.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I would highly reccommend you read the article linked to in post 4 and get back to us.
$3.5 billion sure is a lot of quarterly profit. Would $1 billion satiate your rage?
$13 billion of government bailout dwarfs it all, jackass.
If simple, direct questions anger you, you are at the wrong forum. There are other sites more suitable to your demeanor.
Simple, direct questions don't bother me. Weasels who overlook the fact that GS got $13 billion in bailout money via AIG do.
There were some recent articles on a theft of GS trading code. One story reported (excerpt):
“because of the way this software interfaces with the various markets and exchanges, the bank has warned it could be used to “manipulate markets in unfair ways”
From: http://www.cnbc.com/id/31783285.
My question is: How do they know the software can be used to manipulate the market in unfair ways? And does this have any relationship to their $6.8 billion in second quarter trading profits?
1. This guy has friends or relatives @ GS hence he’s carrying water for them. A shill, a mouthpiece. That’s to be polite, I should call him a simple whore, but that would be insulting to whores who can and do provide pleasure, however transient. GS just screws America and doesn’t even bother asking if it was good for us, too.
2. If I got a few billion from the goobers, I could be highly successful too.
GS employees should be thankful they ain’t hanging from lamp posts or adorning the trees of Central Park.
So how much profit is appropriate? Just asking.
And once again, I answered you.
So here are some questions to you - do YOU have a problem with the fact that GS got $13 billion in AIG bailout money? And that their former chairman was the architect of that bailout? Do you think AIG would be posting a $3.5 billion profit now without that bailout money? Do you have a problem with such an incestuous relationship between the Treasury Secretary and a financial firm?
First of all, I think that is a very stupid and irrelevant question.
Secondly Goldman Sucks is a taxpayer charity, what kind of profits are other charities limited to?
OK, the same then.
Any lie is considered acceptable if the target is a rich financier or firm. Why? Because hatred of capitalism is rampant.
If it was a stupid question, why did you answer it yourself?
If someone doesn't care how much money they lose they can reverse the objective and trade as dumb as possible to move a market as much as possible for the amount sold. They'd hurt themselves but would also destabilize the market they traded in.
Ah, so what's $13 billion between cronies?
Any lie is considered acceptable if the target is a rich financier or firm. Why? Because hatred of capitalism is rampant.
I don't hate capitalism. I applaud and admire the businessman who gets rich running a business that does not require billions from taxpayers to stay afloat because of greedy, stupid decisions.
I instead despise the current symbiotic and self-serving relationship between the likes of GS and politicians. It reeketh of facism and taxpayer ripoffs.
And I also despise the cheerleaders who cannot tell (or does not want to discern) the difference between the two.
Why don't you try something remotely resembling debate, instead of yammering like a drunken parrot? Why don't you answer at least some of the questions I asked in #31? Or are they just too inconvenient for your opinions?
And it is the US government and treasury that requires billions stolen from profitable finance every year to pay for all its middle class entitlement boondoggles to the ungrateful populist rubes on mainstreet, not the reverse.
Because I was told that there actually aren’t any stupid questions, just stupid questioners. So I indulged y’all.
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