Flashback: Goldman Sachs: The Great American Bubble Machine

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 Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.

By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citi-group - which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former GoIdman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibillion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG,

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.

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GOOD FOR GOLDMAN, BAD FOR AMERICA (G/S the major toll collector on govt's red-ink railroad)
BY TERRY KEENAN, anchor of Cashin' In, Fox News Sat 11:30 AM.

EXCERPT G/S morphed into a commercial bank to take advantage of gov't handouts, yet Goldman is really a hedge fund on steroids, with trading accounting for 69% of gross revenue in the first quarter........ a big chunk of its trading involves US govt debt -- federal, state and local......

G/S has a huge vested interest in the US digging a deeper and deeper hole.........trading govt IOUs is big business.....one of the few growth markets on Wall Street. IPO's, M&A's, etc, have yet to recover but the US will borrow a record $3.25 trillion in the current fiscal year -- four times as much as in 2008.

With its biggest competitors out of business, G/S is a major toll collector on Washington's red-ink railroad.......a "debt tsunami" that will lift Goldman's fortunes. G/S plays on the bankrupting of America -- the more we borrow, the more they make........

.........but the American public should know this side of the G/S profit miracle. .......Through savvy trading and management, G/S set aside $11.4B this year to compensate its employees on a playing field cleared of its top competitors and soon after Uncle Sam bailedout G/S with $10B TARP -- and millions more through AIG, all paid for by taxpayers.

G/S benefits nicely from the govt borrowing binge that was triggered in part by the banking crisis that started in Wall Street's own backyard.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07192009/business/good_for_goldman__bad_for_america_180130.htm

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Goldman is more than surviving the current financial storm. Recently it gave out billions in bonuses. G/S cultivates clout in Washington. And now they have Rahm---their very own WH toadie---pushing their agenda.

THINGS WE DO NOT KNOW ABOUT RAHM EMANUEL Did Rahm reveal all of his ties to financial institutions involved in Obama's trillion dollar federal bailout of financials?

Goldman Sachs Will Be Sitting Pretty With Emanuel in the Obama White House
By Timothy P. Carney, Examiner Columnist, Nov 21, 2008

EXCERPT Today, in these tumultuous times of bailouts and meltdowns when the investment banking leviathan needs Washington more than ever before, Goldman Sachs can leverage its most valuable asset yet White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

Traditionally a Democratic booster, and one of Barack Obama’s top sources of funds in this past election, Goldman has always had particularly strong allies in government.

Rahm Emanuel is one such ally. An interesting early chapter in the Goldman-Emanuel relationship took place in the setting of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign for the White House. Clinton hired Emanuel as his chief fundraiser.At the same time, however, Emanuel was on the payroll of Goldman Sachs, receiving $3,000 per month from the firm to “introduce us to people,” in the words of one Goldman partner at the time. This is certainly a noteworthy relationship, but it’s one that has almost entirely escaped scrutiny. (snip)

In his four terms in Congress, Emanuel raised $74,750 from Goldman, making the firm his number four source of funds. Goldman has helped Emanuel. How has Emanuel helped Goldman? The most obvious answer, as mentioned in this column two weeks ago, is in Emanuel’s lead role in shepherding the “$700 billion” bailout—first proposed by former a Goldman CEO, Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson—through the skeptical House.

Of course, back in the Clinton days, Goldman benefited from NAFTA and the bailout of the Mexican currency, with Emanuel pushing NAFTA through Congress, and Rubin hammering out the peso bailout.

Did Goldman improperly funnel money to the Clinton campaign by subsidizing Emanuel’s salary in 1992? Did Goldman’s help to Clinton spur the Democratic president to push NAFTA and the Mexican bailout?

The answers to these questions are opaque, and with Emanuel burrowed deep within the Obama White House, the continued relationship between Goldman Sachs and Obama’s right hand man won’t be easy to follow.

Watch which regulations of Wall Street Obama fights for. Watch where the bailout money goes.

SOURCE http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/TimothyCarney/ Goldman_Sach_Will_Be_Sitting_Pretty_With_Emanuel_in_the_Obama_White_House_112108.html

G/S' elite mortgage unit is now at the center of allegations that they and Mr. Tourre, 31, defrauded investors with complex mortgage deals.....and then bet AGAINST investors that the scheme would fail.

EXCERPT William Cohan book, "Does Goldman Sachs Really Rule the World?" The logic of the conspiracy theorists in this regard is, of course, impeccable: Goldman alumnus Josh Bolten ran the Bush White House, while his former Goldman boss, Hank Paulson, ran the Treasury. They both speak regularly to former Clinton Treasury Secy Bob Rubin who ran Goldman before Paulson (Rubin was an Obama advisor and was later ousted from Citigroup ); Rubin keeps Paulson and Bolton dangling like puppets on a string.

They all supposedly touch base with the heads of the Italian and Canadian central banks—both Goldman alumni—and with ex-Goldman Robert Zoellick, head of the World Bank.

Paulson is now getting his advice on how to handle the crisis from Ken Wilson, recently retired Goldman partner and financial-institutions M&A banker, who Paulson just recruited to Washington to help him out. Already at Treasury were Goldman alumni Dan Jester, Anthony Ryan, David Nason and Bob Hoyt, the department's general counsel.

And—--the conspiracy crowd can't help but point out—Neel Kashkari, 35, a former Goldman VP who Paulson recruited as his Assistant Secretary of international affairs in 2006, has just been appointed—by-Paulson—to run, on an interim basis, the $700 billion TARP bailout fund." END EXCERPT

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The BIG question is----how much did Gangster Government pocket for blanketing Wall Street with billions and billions of tax dollars with virtually no accountability. We may never know if Paulson and Kashkari bailed out their friends and cronies but I'll betcha wire transfers offshore musta been going 24/7.

The $700B TARP Bailout is now being called, "A MASTERFUL DECEIT." saying Paulson, et al, may not have pulled a fast one when he testified in favor of the TARP before Congress----but Congress' phony outrage is a puzzlement. If HR 1424 was a 'MASTERFUL DECEIT' then CONGRESS didn't do its job.

TITLE I—TROUBLED ASSETS RELIEF PROGRAM (required 'Congressional Oversight' sections listed)
Sec. 101. Purchases of troubled assets.
Sec. 102. Insurance of troubled assets.
Sec. 103. Considerations.
Sec. 104. Financial Stability Oversight Board.
Sec. 105. Reports.
Sec. 107. Contracting procedures.
Sec. 108. Conflicts of interest.
Sec. 111. Executive compensation and corporate governance.
Sec. 116. Oversight and audits.
Sec. 118. Funding.
Sec. 119. Judicial review and related matters.
Sec. 121. Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Sec. 125. Congressional Oversight Panel.
Sec. 127. Cooperation with the FBI.
Sec. 129. Disclosures on exercise of loan authority.

In HR 1424, there are enough rules, regs and CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT REQUIRED that not one Thin Dime should have been 'misspent.' So if anything crooked did go on Congress should look in a mirror. They dropped the ball -- again. And the same bunch of know-nothings will run our healthcare.

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The Great Matt Taibbi