[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Why Goldman Sachs Is the Greediest ...

Wed Jul 15 20:30:32 MDT 2009

... and Most Dastardly of the Wall Street Pigs

by Jim Hightower

AlterNet (May 22 2009)

No doubt you're going to feel terrible about this. Top executives of
Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street powerhouse, are in a pout about how they're
being treated by you and me - that is, the public.

These execs are used to being revered as financial geniuses, but having
taken a $10 billion bailout from us taxpayers last fall, they're now
widely viewed as ... well, as welfare recipients. Like other welfare
checks, the big one that Washington doled out to Goldman Sachs came with
some strings attached, causing the chieftains to get all huffy. Especially
galling to these princes of privilege is the limit on salaries and bonuses
that bailed out banks are allowed to give to those in the executive suites.

Thus, Goldman recently threw a little hissy fit and haughtily declared
that it will pay back our $10 billion to get the blankety-blank government
out of its private business. Bold move! At last, Wall Streeters are
reasserting their rugged, free-enterprise ethic, right?

Uh, not exactly.

What Goldman officials fail to mention is that they'll still be clinging
to several other lifeboats floated to them by those skinflint meanies in
Washington. For example, when insurance giant AIG was given some $200
billion last year to save it from total collapse, $12 billion of it was
actually a pass-through payment to Goldman Sachs. Best of all, this quiet
handout did not come with any of those nasty restrictions on executive pay
- so Goldman is happily hanging onto this backdoor subsidy.

Then there's another $28 billion that was slipped to these hardy
free-marketers in the form of special low-interest loans guaranteed by the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation - a subsidy that Goldman's chief
financial officer concedes is vital to its survival. Far from foregoing
this government underwriting, the bankers say they expect to ask for $7
billion more of it.

Additionally, Goldman has taken many more billions' worth of low-cost
loans from Federal Reserve funds. How many more billions? The Fed and the
bank say this is "proprietary" information, not for public disclosure,
even though it is public money.

So, while these golden ones are loudly repudiating the $10 billion public
subsidy they took from us, they are coyly retaining at least forty billion
of our dollars to stay afloat - a tidy sum that does not include any
restrictions on pay levels. Coincidentally, Goldman has since announced
that it is setting aside nearly $5 billion to be distributed at the end of
the year as compensation for its executives, including payments for
outlandish bonuses for those at the top.

Saying that such-and-such is the greediest bunch of bankers on Wall Street
is like someone claiming to have the biggest hairdo in Dallas - the
competition is fierce. But that's quite a head of hair atop Goldman Sachs.
Well, sniff the executives, we merely play the game according to the rules
we're given.

Sure, and the Mafia plays its game strictly according to Hoyle. The
difference is that the Mafia must actually break the rules, while Wall
Street simply hires lobbyists and politicians to write the rules.

Indeed, Goldman Sachs has been nicknamed "Government Sachs" by its rivals,
for it always seems to have at least one of its top officials
strategically placed inside government to bend federal financial rules to
its benefit. In the 1990s, for example, two Goldman foxes - Robert Rubin
and Larry Summers - were inside the Clinton administration henhouse, where
they helped craft the deregulation scams that enriched their former banks,
before the scams caused the crash of our economy.

Following that crash, up stepped Hank Paulson, who had been Goldman's CEO
before George W plucked him off the Street to run the very bailout that
has now deposited so much of our money in his bank. With Bush's demise,
Hank is gone, but not Goldman. That sly Goldman Fox from the Clinton
years, Larry Summers, is back, this time in Barack Obama's henhouse, where
he's top economic advisor.

Not surprisingly, our gold keeps flowing to Goldman Sachs - but don't
expect the bankers to be grateful to you. _____

Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and
author of the new book, Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go
With the Flow (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower
Lowdown", co-edited by Phillip Frazer.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators
Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page
at www.creators.com.

http://www.alternet.org/story/140166/

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