I guess maybe the watchdogs at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission were watching internet porn while Bernard Madoff went unnoticed, his Ponzi scheme defrauding $65-billion from investors, including humanitarian and philanthropic foundations. Now the boys at the SEC apparently have taken a break from internet surfing long enough to file a lawsuit against Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment and financial services institution “too big to fail.“ Goldman Sachs withheld “vital information,” according to the SEC, about synthetic investments it created out of thin air, handsome as the emperor’s new clothes, deriving whatever value and reality from the performance of subprime residential mortgages. Some of these investments were then bundled in such a way to doom them to failure, but insurance policies were taken out against that failure, then collected on. Collateralized Debt Obligation. Derivatives. Abacus. What more information would anyone need? Abacus cadabacus hocus pocus dominocus.
The Goldman Sachs CEO explained to a federal Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in January that Goldman Sachs packaged complex debt, while also betting against the debt, because “clients had the appetite.” He said, "We are not a fiduciary." Fabrice Tourre, a Goldman Sachs vice president who created the mortgage derivative product, has been charged with fraud. The Goldman Sachs officers will testify before Congress. I’ll bet $10 or all my remaining shares in my crashed 401-K, whichever is worth more, somebody will “take the Fifth.”
Robert Rubin, Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton, and Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury under President Bush, came to those important, indeed critical, offices directly from the executive suite of Goldman Sachs, just like there was a wing marked “Democrats” and one marked “Republicans.” The ultimate investment hedge. Goldman Sachs is a primary dealer in the United States Treasury security market.
“We are not a fiduciary.” I looked this up. “Fiduciary: one, such as an agent of a principal or a company director, that stands in a special relation of trust, confidence, or responsibility in certain obligations to others.” Willie Sutton, who was also not a fiduciary, said the reason he robbed banks was that banks were “where the money was.”
I saw popular Republican/Libertarian Presidential candidate Ron Paul on television the other night, saying he believed Social Security should be done away with, in order to teach a lesson to people who had not saved money for their own retirement. Kinky Friedman was also on tv the same night, and he said he thought we should just go ahead and “elect lobbyists to public office and cut out the middle-men.“ Kinky Friedman wears big cowboy hats and smokes big cigars. He is the author of a long list of books such as How to Get to Heaven or Hell Without Going Through Dallas-Fort Worth and is a sometimes country musician and front-man for the band he named Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. He is not a fiduciary, but he knows how telling the truth will usually surprise most people into an involuntary reflex of laughter. Basically, he is a court jester. Ron Paul does not make me laugh.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
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8 comments:
I wonder if there is a way that those Goldman Sachs guys can go straight to hell without passing through Dallas-Fort Worth and without collecting any bonuses.
They can share an unairconditioned cubby in Hades with the folks who sold my Uncle all that Enron stock..and his former banker who caused him to lose $12,000+ in a Ponzi scheme.
Oh, I certainly hope so.
An “octopus wrapped around the face of humanity” as one journalist put it; the New World Banking Order has arrived. In 2009 speculative, uncontrolled derivatives were the Worlds largest market at an estimated 600 Trillion. The Worlds total economic output was an estimated 58.07 Trillion and the total World bond market was an estimated 82.2 Trillion. Yet, there is no “crime” that the bankers can be charged with as they bankrupt citizens and Nations into the New World Order?
The appropriate criminal charge should be Treason to the American People and our Democratic Republic and Constitution. The members of the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group in government and banking who conspired to overthrow our soverenity as an independent nation, who conspired to bankrupt our Treasury with three unjust Wars and multinational corporate “rolling” bailouts, conspired to control mass media “free Press” propaganda, conspired and manipulated “financial crisis” for their own gain, conspired to “relocate” American industry and technology, conspired to offshore “American Income Tax”, and who have conspired to enslave American citizens with National debt (about $64,000 per citizen) and personal debt. Deserve the death sentence by firing squad for Treason.
Obama, your New World Order is Totalitarian and we Patriots, American free citizens, will fight for our Democracy, Independence and Freedom.
Dear Mr./Ms. Windcatcher:
I was pretty much with you until you blamed it on Obama, not particularly logical or even chronological.
“Blame it on Obama? Did you notice the seamless switch from Bush to Obama Administration? Wait, all of the key players are still in place. Gee, do you think that maybe they are on the same agenda to bankrupt the U.S. and do away with our Democracy? Hail! to the New World Order; they will set you free.
Yes, I noticed. All the important jobs in the defense and money establishments went to people who reminded me of the old cartoon: guys sitting around a restaurant table, a waiter holding a pad marked “New World Order,” and everybody saying, “I’ll have the usual.” I do not believe anyone is out “bankrupt the U.S. and do away with our Democracy.” Those horses are mostly long gone from the barn.
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country. I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people. No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will. Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society. Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. If the American people allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied ... The issuing power of money should be taken from the banks and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs. A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government. Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
Every generation needs a new revolution. The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
Thank You, Thomas Jefferson (all quotes assembled)
No doubt Thomas Jefferson had a flair for writing the English language and indeed was one of the most important Presidents of the United States, accomplishing the Louisiana Purchase and the arrest of his own former Vice President Aaron Burr for treason. At the same time, Jefferson was both a product and prisoner of his time, the so-called Age of Enlightenment, the American Revolution, the French Revolution (how you gonna keep ‘em down on the Plantation after they’ve seen Pa-ree?). A member of the Virginia landed gentry class, thus a southern slave owner, no big surprise he opposed Federalism and banking ideas of New Yorker Alexander Hamilton. I do not believe Jefferson’s mistrust of New York bankers postulated derivatives or international cartels. It would be interesting to speculate just where Jefferson might align himself today. With the anti-federal government states rights South? Wall Street? Could Jefferson survive public scrutiny of a personal relationship with a women not exactly free to say no, he her slave master, she his daughter’s baby-sitter, legally defined as his own chattel property? To be sure, he was an opponent of European royalty. What aspects of democracy did eclectic Mr. Jefferson cherish so much with his soaring rhetoric and so little with his real life?
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