I’m a little surprised that this article in Rolling Stone has not received a mention, much less debate.
While my knee jerk reaction to articles in Rolling Stone is to automatically pooh pooh them, this one could change my mind. Why it was published here instead of NY Times, WSJ, etc - I don’t have a clue, other than maybe Rolling Stone is not as worried about financial repercussion from Goldman Sachs.
Taibbi goes on to accuse Goldman with heavy involvement in the Mortgage crisis, Oil Speculation, and the self-serving financial bailouts.
As for name dropping:
The thirst for more funding:
The Obama factor
Cap & Trade/Carbon Credits
So, who is this Taibbi? How credible is his data and conclusions? At face value, this is an extremely damning article.
Paulson actually accumulated a mere 800 million of personal wealth before he became in charge of the recovery. We love to let the thieves take charge of our money. They continually prove who they serve. But we do not learn. We do not prosecute them, we do not tell the public what they did. We just keep repeating our stupidity over and over.
I worked on a job once where the person in charge seemed to be a complete idiot. When I asked some of my fellow workers how in the world the guy got the job, I was told that he had been responsible for some big fuckup at Disney or somewhere that had lost like $30 million dollars.
How did he get this new job? Well, he had experience running big jobs.
That seems to be the kind of logic we got last fall, and are still getting re: bailouts.
I thought it was stupid last fall, I thought it was stupid this spring, and I’ve seen nothing to change my mind.
I’m gonna go find this issue of RS tho. Seems like once every 3-4 years they run a story thats not only good, its well written and researched. Maybe this is the one for the last part of the decade or something.
The utter collapse of this profoundly criminal Bush conspiracy will come none to soon for people like me. The massive plundering of the U.S. treasury and all it’s resources has been on a scale that is criminally insane and has literally destroyed the lives of millions of Americans and American families. Exactly ,you and me sport. We are the ones who will suffer and suffer massively . This is going to be like the book of Revelations said it was going to be, the end of the world as we knew it.
Hunter Thompson 2002
Former political writer of Rolling Stone
Taibbi’s article makes Goldman Sachs sound like an insidious conspiracy, ala the Illuminati, to hijack both the markets and the American government, for the greater enrichment of GS. The list of GS alumni who are now working in government, making decisions ostensibly on behalf American taxpayers that invariably favor GS despite all logic, and despite what’s best for the American people, was truly chilling. I hope someone in the know will weigh in on this article, because if it’s an accurate representation of the unpunished malfeasance of GS: woe is us.
JPMorgan, which has never hired an oil tanker based on data compiled by Bloomberg going back five years, follows companies including Citigroup Inc.’s Phibro LLC unit and BP Plc in hiring ships to store crude or oil products at sea. The firms are seeking to take advantage of higher prices later in the year.
“I’ve never before seen storage demand on this scale,” said Didier Labat, a Paris-based shipbroker at Barry Rogliano Salles who has worked in tanker markets for about 20 years.
The clowns keep raping the little people as they bring in the profits, but a breaking point will come eventually. There is no moral or ethical considerations in big business when it comes to making profits and this has to END!
For now, I’m with this gang of starving the beast. I have no credit cards, and drive a 45 mpg vehicle which I use sparing and ride my bike the rest of the time. This system we now live in has to collapse.
HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost They are after a return to extraordinary paydays. They are greedy bastards who are only trying to enrich themselves. Damn the country, full speed ahead. They will not stop . The government has to prevent their continuing theft.
Let me just take one quote from him, referenced in your post.
‘…a society governed by free markets…’
How does a free market ‘govern’ a society? That sentence makes no sense.
Without reading the full article (just looking at your quotes) it sounds like typical left-wing econo-babble, retrofitting accusations about private enterprise and ‘free markets’ into his socialistic world view.
It might at the moment. But if there is a free link above, maybe I could squeeze it in.
Anybody who calls bank CEO John Thain (who I suspect he has never met) an ‘asshole’ in a supposed serious article about finance and markets drops to the bottom of my reading priority list, unfortunately. Because it sends a red flag that he is more interested in dropping attention-grabbing personal judgments about personalities than facts and understanding.
Right. Looks like you’ve found your villain. Let 'er rip. That shows sound judgement and good problem-solving ability.
Make sure to throw your support some ham-handed legislation and regulation to ‘protect us’ and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
How about Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and the other politicians who allowed them to do this with your money? Aren’t they the real villains? Alan Greenspan? Ben Bernanke?
Hell, how about Barack Obama? How about that little trip to Broadway with his wife? I’m going to guess that cost more than $87,000, once security costs are figured in. Does that make him a bigger asshole?
While Dodd, Frank and all the rest of our DC “leaders” are certainly enablers and deserve much scorn, I think they would be regarded as small potatoes as compared to the evil outlined in this article.
Taibbi lists off all the Goldman Sachs alumni (and there are a freakin’ lot of them, and they’re everywhere) who are or have been working in our government, and whose actions seem very much dictated by what is best for Goldman Sachs and not the American people. While I don’t know if that’s the free market governing society, it is very much Goldman Sachs governing society, and they don’t give a rat’s ass about you or me.
Goldman Sachs related donations to his campaign are mentioned in the article (and above) as well as the overall donations made to the controlling party members.
As I’ve said many times, we have the best government that money can buy.
Taibbi talks about that, but realize that Goldman Sachs contributed to the McCain campaign also. In 2004, they gave to both Bush and Kerry. They are totally non-partisan, and consequently, they get what they want from whomever is in office.