Goldman Sachs' Financial Boom: A Political Mess for Obama

[Yurt]

Goldman Sachs' Financial Boom: A Political Mess for Obama

In a clear departure from the historical norm, the White House is not cheering the return of huge profits to Wall Street. On the contrary, the recent windfalls at Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, and the promise of giant year-end paydays for banking executives and traders, has caused a bit of consternation in the West Wing, coming as it does so soon after the taxpayer bailouts saved the entire financial system from total collapse.

...

On July 14, Goldman Sachs posted second-quarter profits of $3.44 billion, more than the company made in all of 2008 and about on par with the precrisis gilded age, while announcing that it had set aside $11.4 billion this year to compensate workers, or $386,489 per employee. The huge profits were hailed on Wall Street as another sign that the crisis might be ending. On July 15, the Dow Jones industrial average jumped 3.1%, and other banking giants are expected to issue their own similarly glowing reports. On July 16, JPMorgan announced that it had earned $2.7 billion in the second quarter

Goldman Sachs' Financial Boom: A Political Mess for Obama? - Yahoo! News

so obama saying they are going to fail without his stimulus and bush saying they are going to fail without his stimulus......hmmmmmmm

quite a profit for a failing company....and yes, even with the loans and the government forcing the buyout (thanks annie for bringing that to my attention) there should not be this recorded profit....if the company was that close to failure

maybe toro could enlighten us, i am not an expert in this field

 

[Xenophon]

Pretty much proof that they didn't need to be 'bailed out.'

Once again the tax payers are suckers.

 

[concept]

How will this affect the messiah?

Will we actually see some ivestigative jounalism for a change?

 

[Xenophon]

Sure.

I hear they are after Cheney as we speak.

 

[concept]

Sure.

I hear they are after Cheney as we speak.

All te investigative journos are still up in Alaska I guess. I'm sure they'll get right on it when they return.

 

[WillowTree]

Sure.

I hear they are after Cheney as we speak.

naawwwww they are still encamped in Wasilla! the battle rages on, the bugle boy needs some kool aid.

 

[chanel]

Ha ha Or covering the "Michael Jackson murder"

Ironically it was Rolling Stone who connected the dots on the Goldman Sachs con. You'd think they'd be more concerned with MJ. I heard an Obama supporter say "What's good for GS is good for the whole economy" I guess they are capitalists this week.

 

[midcan5]

Why is this Obama's issue? This started with Bush / Paulson and is part of the conservative / republican / libertarian worship of business and corporate power. I think you guys need to get your values straight or maybe think and read a bit before posting BS.


'Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression'

Inside The Great American Bubble Machine : Rolling Stone

 

[cbi0090]

Why is this Obama's issue? This started with Bush / Paulson and is part of the conservative / republican / libertarian worship of business and corporate power. I think you guys need to get your values straight or maybe think and read a bit before posting BS.


'Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression'

Inside The Great American Bubble Machine : Rolling Stone

No, this all started back much further than that with the creation of Fannie May and Freddie Mac. To me the banks royally screwed up and if they went under so be it, someone else would gladly be standing in the wings to take their place. Goldman probably didn't even need the governments money as they paid it all back within a few months. It was almost like they were just going along with Obama's mantra of financial disaster just to appease everyone. Same with GM. They should have gone under. Let someone else come in and rebuild it. As it is, the whole stimulus thing is a scam. It was a lot of noise to get public support to save certain special interests and get specific pet projects built.

 

[brownlou]

hmmm..I don't think so......I know that G/S got a big pay out by AIG and AIG was Bush's baby...I am not certain when Goldman Sachs got a bailou.........But that is not the thing.

The thing is the greed on Wall Street and the political influence from Wall Street in both our parties. The rich get heard and get helped. The poor get heard and get helped. The middle class gets to pay the bills for both groups.

I think I might be leaning towards taxing rich greedy fucks a little more now. Especially since they are getting bonuses from companies that got bail out by my tax money. Usually I am against such a thing but this greed and bonuses are getting way out of hand. Maybe if they were taxed more, I wouldn't feel bail outs were such a burden on the rest of us.

 

[alan1]

The MountainMan Bank wants some stimulus.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Why is this Obama's issue? This started with Bush / Paulson and is part of the conservative / republican / libertarian worship of business and corporate power. I think you guys need to get your values straight or maybe think and read a bit before posting BS.


'Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression'

Inside The Great American Bubble Machine : Rolling Stone

I hope everyone reads the Rolling Stone article to which you allude.

Now, for "Why is this Obama's issue? " we need to go over several points.
1) you are one of those Obama supporters who can be reliably expected to line up like an iron filing in a magnetic field.
2) sometimes even the talking-points cohorts, like yourself, can be expected to slip up
3) you slipped up

You see, your usual defense of the hope-and-change President is predicated on how different he is from the run-of-the-mill Chicago pol, and/or President Bush

Matt Taibbi, a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, writing for a liberal magazine, still shows enough journalistic integrity to indict, not only President Bush (who he blasted throughtout the campaign) and President Clinton, but includes President Obama.

1) G-S was the greatest corportated donor to Senator Obama, $1 million.
2) One of the first promises that President Obama broke, "no lobbyists in my Administration!" was in appointing Patterson to Treasury. Patterson was a G-S lobbyist.
3) Cap and Trade Scam is aimed at benefitting G-S, which is a partner in the nacent Chicago Cap and Trade Exchange.

From the article:
"Fast-forward to today. It's early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs — its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign — sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs.

Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites. (Gensler was the firm's co-head of finance.) And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits — a booming trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance."

So thanks for referencing the article, which I have mentioned in earlier posts, but I suggest you read the material before you post it next time.

BTW, I noticed that you ran and hid after I slapped you around about John P. Holdren, the Science Czar for President Obama.

Time to wise up.

 

[midcan5]

No, this all started back much further than that with the creation of Fannie May and Freddie Mac. To me the banks royally screwed up and if they went under so be it, someone else would gladly be standing in the wings to take their place. Goldman probably didn't even need the governments money as they paid it all back within a few months. It was almost like they were just going along with Obama's mantra of financial disaster just to appease everyone. Same with GM. They should have gone under. Let someone else come in and rebuild it. As it is, the whole stimulus thing is a scam. It was a lot of noise to get public support to save certain special interests and get specific pet projects built.

You need to turn off that radio receptor that fills your head with wingnut nonsense. Fan/Fred were a small part of this issue, I do agree the banks screwed up. GM supports American and thus America. We have GM cars made here. And consider GM pays for health etc and buys here. Profit doesn't go to foreign nations. I'll buy foreign when they support Americans by building our cars there.

These pieces are excellent if you can turn off that receptor.

How We Were Ruined & What We Can Do - The New York Review of Books
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-

 

[midcan5]

So thanks for referencing the article, which I have mentioned in earlier posts, but I suggest you read the material before you post it next time.

BTW, I noticed that you ran and hid after I slapped you around about John P. Holdren, the Science Czar for President Obama.

Time to wise up.

LOL - I'm sure your reply will be the usual easy stuff - always wrong. You have to realize I cannot change ideologues like yourself but I think the replies speak for themselves. I'll go back there later. Did you answer my Con accomps question btw; I want some some real fun. lol

As far as the article, I guess I am missing how this supports the thread premise????

 

[PoliticalChic]

No, this all started back much further than that with the creation of Fannie May and Freddie Mac. To me the banks royally screwed up and if they went under so be it, someone else would gladly be standing in the wings to take their place. Goldman probably didn't even need the governments money as they paid it all back within a few months. It was almost like they were just going along with Obama's mantra of financial disaster just to appease everyone. Same with GM. They should have gone under. Let someone else come in and rebuild it. As it is, the whole stimulus thing is a scam. It was a lot of noise to get public support to save certain special interests and get specific pet projects built.

You need to turn off that radio receptor that fills your head with wingnut nonsense. Fan/Fred were a small part of this issue, I do agree the banks screwed up. GM supports American and thus America. We have GM cars made here. And consider GM pays for health etc and buys here. Profit doesn't go to foreign nations. I'll buy foreign when they support Americans by building our cars there.

These pieces are excellent if you can turn off that receptor.

How We Were Ruined & What We Can Do - The New York Review of Books
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-

You are begining to teeter off the brink of reality.

Starting in 1938, with the GRE's through FDR, through the CRA, the Clinton-Cuomo pressure on banks, the Dodd and Frank refusal to stop the insanity, all Democrat ploys, we have the resulting meltdown.

Now the best part: "We have GM cars made here. And consider GM pays for health etc and buys here. Profit doesn't go to foreign nations."

Are you so befeft of understanding that you are unaware that every car made and sold in the United States is an amalgm of parts made all over the world?

Should you ever decide that research is one possible avenue to knowledge, I suggest you study Warren G. Harding:
"America's greatest depression fighter was Warren Gamaliel Harding. An Ohio senator when he was elected president in 1920, he followed the much praised Woodrow Wilson— who had brought America into World War I, built up huge federal bureaucracies, imprisoned dissenters, and incurred $25 billion of debt.

Harding inherited Wilson's mess— in particular, a post–World War I depression that was almost as severe, from peak to trough, as the Great Contraction from 1929 to 1933 that FDR would later inherit. The estimated gross national product plunged 24 percent from $91.5 billion in 1920 to $69.6 billion in 1921. The number of unemployed people jumped from 2.1 million to 4.9 million.

One of Harding's campaign slogans was "less government in business," and it served him well. Harding embraced the advice of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and called for tax cuts in his first message to Congress on April 12, 1921. The highest taxes, on corporate revenues and "excess" profits, were to be cut. Personal income taxes were to be left as is, with a top rate of 8 percent of incomes above $4,000. Harding recognized the crucial importance of encouraging the investment that is essential for growth and jobs, something that FDR never did."
N-Philes :: Forums - View Single Post - The not-so-great depression of 1920-21

The result was a recession that ended in 1923.

 

[PoliticalChic]

So thanks for referencing the article, which I have mentioned in earlier posts, but I suggest you read the material before you post it next time.

BTW, I noticed that you ran and hid after I slapped you around about John P. Holdren, the Science Czar for President Obama.

Time to wise up.

LOL - I'm sure your reply will be the usual easy stuff - always wrong. You have to realize I cannot change ideologues like yourself but I think the replies speak for themselves. I'll go back there later. Did you answer my Con accomps question btw; I want some some real fun. lol

As far as the article, I guess I am missing how this supports the thread premise????

Read carefully.

Goldman Sach has bought and paid for the Obama Presidency.

 

[cbi0090]

No, this all started back much further than that with the creation of Fannie May and Freddie Mac. To me the banks royally screwed up and if they went under so be it, someone else would gladly be standing in the wings to take their place. Goldman probably didn't even need the governments money as they paid it all back within a few months. It was almost like they were just going along with Obama's mantra of financial disaster just to appease everyone. Same with GM. They should have gone under. Let someone else come in and rebuild it. As it is, the whole stimulus thing is a scam. It was a lot of noise to get public support to save certain special interests and get specific pet projects built.

You need to turn off that radio receptor that fills your head with wingnut nonsense. Fan/Fred were a small part of this issue, I do agree the banks screwed up. GM supports American and thus America. We have GM cars made here. And consider GM pays for health etc and buys here. Profit doesn't go to foreign nations. I'll buy foreign when they support Americans by building our cars there.

These pieces are excellent if you can turn off that receptor.

How We Were Ruined & What We Can Do - The New York Review of Books
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-

They were not a small part. When Freddie and Fannie kicked in everything went into high gear; they led the pack. Certain banks didn't follow the pack like, like Goldmans. Now they are reaping the rewards of being one of the few left, for behaving a bit wiser than their counterparts. That is how free markets work. The sad thing is that it is the appraisal firms who are the most guilty and they are not on anyones hit list. They were the ones giving derivatives AAA ratings, fueling the frenzy. Granted the banks didn't have to believe them, but the system sure did.
As for GM, they buried themselves. Did you know that Ford is the best selling car in Europe? Why isn't GM? Why isn't American cars the best selling in, say, South America? Most GM parts are made in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, etc, anyway. It is poor management, terrible sales strategy, and advesarial labor relations that put GM into where it is today. It's not an American versus foreign interest issue, although I'm sure there are many politicians who prefer to make it seem like one.

 

[ba1614]

hmmm..I don't think so......I know that G/S got a big pay out by AIG and AIG was Bush's baby...I am not certain when Goldman Sachs got a bailou.........But that is not the thing.

The thing is the greed on Wall Street and the political influence from Wall Street in both our parties. The rich get heard and get helped. The poor get heard and get helped. The middle class gets to pay the bills for both groups.

I think I might be leaning towards taxing rich greedy fucks a little more now. Especially since they are getting bonuses from companies that got bail out by my tax money. Usually I am against such a thing but this greed and bonuses are getting way out of hand. Maybe if they were taxed more, I wouldn't feel bail outs were such a burden on the rest of us.

Then go after the "greedy fucks"!! Don't punish an entire class of far from rich people because a few super rich people are taking advantage of the system.

The problem, my friend, is that in this administrations haste to get those "greedy fucks", they are going to throw a fuckin' into a lot of folks who are far from greedy.
Small business that runs 250-400k,(depending on today's definition of rich), through their books are hardly "greedy fucks" in most cases, yet they are considered rich by these people. There is a whole lot being proposed right now that is going to pile on to these people and many just won't be able to handle it. You can only raise the price of your product and/or service so much.
There will be a whole lot more people getting fucked who provide a great number of jobs than there is of these "greedy fucks" who are going to be wealthy no matter what you do to them.

 

[PoliticalChic]

So thanks for referencing the article, which I have mentioned in earlier posts, but I suggest you read the material before you post it next time.

BTW, I noticed that you ran and hid after I slapped you around about John P. Holdren, the Science Czar for President Obama.

Time to wise up.

LOL - I'm sure your reply will be the usual easy stuff - always wrong. You have to realize I cannot change ideologues like yourself

It doesn't get any funnier! "...cannot change ideologues ..."

Read my documentation, re: John P. Holdren, Science Czar selected by B. Hussein Obama, and we'll have a laugh together, as to which of us is the ideologue.

Not only do I substantiate that Holdren is a wacko who believes in forced abortion, sterilization of Americans with 'poison,' but in force marriages as well.

And one of the quotes is from the NYTimes! Ideologue?

Now, get ready to run and hide.

In fact, I'm going to suggest the Federal Witness Relocation Service. But there may be a backlog...lots of former-Obama supporters are signing up.