THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE
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PostPosted: Wed, Jul 8 2009, 9:58 pm EDT    Post subject: THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE Reply with quote

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

By MATT TAIBBI

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 Citigroup - which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the rear end in a top hat chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman 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, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York - which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman - not to mention ...

But then, any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain - an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pump-and-dump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses, and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere - high gas prices, rising consumer-credit rates, half-eaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to pay off bailouts. All that money that you're losing, it's going somewhere, and in both a literal and a figurative sense, Goldman Sachs is where it's going: The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth - pure profit for rich individuals.
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http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3159732&pagenumber=1
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PostPosted: Thu, Jul 9 2009, 7:28 am EDT    Post subject: Re: THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE Reply with quote

Interesting, but it also left off the list our own Gov. Corzine who has led the state through massive job losses, increased taxes and debt, plus our own wonderful COAH and increased state mandates. Not to mention it was because of Corzine and Paulson that Goldman was left no choice but to dissolve their partnership basis and go public. As CEO he mismanaged the firm so badly that they were left without a choice. As a former Goldman employee (no not the ones making millions), I can tell you there were a lot of people who wanted Corzine out before he forced the firms hand.

Funny how wherever he goes mismanagement follows.
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publius
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PostPosted: Thu, Jul 9 2009, 8:36 am EDT    Post subject: Re: THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE Reply with quote

We all know that the bankers and the moneyed interests are nothing but amoral, bloodsucking leeches. What gets my goat is how ambivalent the American public is to the malefactors of great wealth. It's not Capitalism which I disagree with, but, the so-called Capitalists who through greed and avarice put our economy at risk by privitizing their ill-gotten profits and also socializing the down-side risks.
It's nice how they game the system...dontcha think?
The public has been lulled into a sleepy servitude by flooding their lives with gadgets and gizmos and other shiny objects to take their attention away from whats REALLY going on behind boardroom doors.
The government for the last decade or so has been THE absolute worst that I have ever witnessed! Both major parties stink, but, the gop really dragged us through the gutter with their Orwellian NewSpeak and their Frank Luntz focus-group tested buzz words meant to instill anger and confusion amongst the great unwashed populace. Divide & conquer. They used debating team rhetoric like framing the issue and by accusing their foes of THE SAME EXACT THING that they were doing themselves.
I've NEVER seen such low-life scum such as these except when looking for helgramites under rocks and coming up with a handful of oozy blue-green algae!
The average person has been screwed over for the last generation, lets hope they don't sit back and let the screwers continue with their vile little game of Monopoly with OUR money!
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PostPosted: Thu, Jul 9 2009, 10:01 am EDT    Post subject: Re: THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE Reply with quote

The problem is not capitalism it is greed overall. In Venezuela we you have people threatened with death and money remaining in special interests. In Cuba the wealth is maintained at the upper levels. France and Italy have the same issues as the U.S. with wealth and greed. I lived in Russia for two years in the late 90's and it was horrible how corrupt everything was and still is. I then lived in Paris for 1 year in 2001 and the same situation occurs there. It's always a grass is greener arguement until you live and work there and see there is no great difference.
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publius
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PostPosted: Thu, Jul 9 2009, 10:46 am EDT    Post subject: Re: THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE Reply with quote

Guest wrote:
The problem is not capitalism it is greed overall. In Venezuela we you have people threatened with death and money remaining in special interests. In Cuba the wealth is maintained at the upper levels. France and Italy have the same issues as the U.S. with wealth and greed. I lived in Russia for two years in the late 90's and it was horrible how corrupt everything was and still is. I then lived in Paris for 1 year in 2001 and the same situation occurs there. It's always a grass is greener arguement until you live and work there and see there is no great difference.


Yes, I don't blame CapitalISM......it's the CapitalISTS that worry me.
Like letting a 3 year old play with dynamite!!!!!!!
It's just that the Capital system makes greed and thievery more efficient. So long as the masses get a few crumbs now and again, you can get away with a WHOLE LOTTA STUFF. The trick is to lull the middle-class with jobs & some money so that they have the ILLUSION of success and security. Then, you pull the rug out from under them while quoting Biblical scripture and worn-out "patriotic" chestnuts.
The banksters have it all down to an exact science now.
Anyway, I'm describing how it works in America. I'm not comparing and contrasting with other nations.
Look how things have changed.
When I was a kid (early 1970s) Dad had a blue-collar job, Mom stayed at home, we had a pretty decent house and 2 decent cars in the garage. We were at the lower-end of the middle-class, but, we never felt poor. I always had a bike, we always went on vacation for at least a week in Summer, we had a pool. It wasn't too shabby. Try to do that now on a blue-collar wage-if you can find blue-collar jobs anymore.
It can't be done.
Like Dick Cheney always growls......."ARGHHHH, CLASS WARFARE"
Cuz, he and the malefactors know that if THE PEOPLE ever catch onto whats happening to them....he and his minions will lose their too cushy lifestyles forever!
In many ways we've gone backwards. It seems more like 1909 than 2009!!!!!! Tainted food, cheap crap imported from Asia, diseases, that were nearly eradicated, coming back again, environmental damage, etc. The nation was again being run by oil, coal, and railroad men-just like a century ago. All those "good" corporate types praising Jesus as the first CEO in history, the warped version of social Darwinism. Then, it came back to blow up in their faces. The government that was supposed to be "the problem" is there to give these dirtbags a blank check.
CRAZY STUFF!
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greed is good
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PostPosted: Thu, Jul 9 2009, 10:54 am EDT    Post subject: Re: THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE Reply with quote

I'll argue that "greed" (or to be rich) is the driving force of capitalism. I don't think many people will say I have earned 5 millions now and I'll just stop making money and enjoy my life.

But obtaining wealth using "unethical" (not illegal) means is a gray area. I admire rich people who make their fortunes without resorting to unethical means (unethical is defined as "will you be embarrassed by a front page story about how you obtain your fortunes").
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PostPosted: Thu, Jul 9 2009, 1:04 pm EDT    Post subject: Re: THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE Reply with quote

Publius,

You're over simplifying the issue to a degree and placing the blame on captilists, when the issue is much broader (though corporate greed is a contributing factor), but small compared to what we are doing to ourselves through governmental actions such as deregulation with the mortgage industry or increasing our tax structures in NJ or through Cap and Trade.

For example, NJ is a very blue state and we have the worst enviornment for businesses and home owners with our insurance and property taxes. That means as a result that the family you describe cannot afford to live and work here or enjoy that life style, not because of Capitalists, but because of our own elected officials who drive away the capitalists from investing. If you take that same scenario and apply it to a mid-western state or a southern state you will see that the family in question is able to afford a different lifestyle because there is more disposable income through a decreased cost of living and better tax enviornments.

As the link shows NJ is the worst state in the nation for businesses and home owners (page 9).

http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/bp58.pdf

As the link highlights NJ is- dead last overall, corporate tax index rank- 39, individual income tax rank 48, sales tax rank 41, unemployment insurance 24, property tax 50. That is excluding our other leading factors such as auto insurance costs.

So based on the above companies won't and don't see NJ as a solid investment state and the family you describe can't survive in NJ with the same means as before.

If your talking about outsourcing and purchasing of goods from Asia; then the answer is a bit more difficult. Certainly, businesses will produce in the lowest cost areas which is why businesses are leaving NJ in droves and going to other states or outside the U.S. However, that is true for any company in any country. Siemens, Volvo, Toyota, Daewoo, Heineken, Nokia, etc...all have plants operating outside of their home countries as by necessity either prices increase or goods are produced at a lower cost.

Further, if we see issues like Cap and Trade imposed, what is going to happen is that the businesses will find the national situation much like that in NJ where cost of operating becomes too expensive. So you'll see a signifigant number of plants closing and moving to less restrictive areas like India, Mexico, China, etc...Yes, based on profit motives, but directly resulting from our actions taken at a governmental level. Rather than incenting items such as clean energy and investment we offer penalties on existing production methods increasing costs. So the companies leave and find cheaper areas to produce.

Couple that with the increased cost for products from those companies that do remain, for the home energy bills, for our own government offices passing on their increased costs for operation and it becomes a major problem for the average family. That blue collar family for example in Ohio is now subject to paying signifigantly more than they were before and the NJ family is stretched even further as are our retired seniors who have no chance for increased income opportunities and live on fixed incomes.

We see this in our town even with the costs of sewers tripling and state mandates coming through that make no sense or ball fields going in or agreements to build bridges like liberty way. Our own officials locally have sought to increase costs without worry for the bigger economic picture over the last 5-10 years. We do more harm to ourselves by re-electing these people and increasing our cost of living than any Goldman or AIG can do to us personally.
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publius
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PostPosted: Mon, Jul 13 2009, 10:35 am EDT    Post subject: Re: THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE Reply with quote

Methinks you read my posts, but, don't comprehend!

I said that Capitalism is a decent system for distributing goods & services and stuff like that. What I don't like is the no-goodniks who have their grubby paws of the levers of power and know how to game the system to THEIR own advantage while leaving everyone else to fend for themselves in some Darwinistic Lord of the Flies scenario!
You don't mind these pirates of the financial industry plundering the company treasure chest, giving themselves MILLIONS in bonuses, while firing thousands of workers just to make the companies stock APPEAR to LOOK solid?
I know that the government screws up too, but, thats not my screed for right now. GREED IS GOOD is just a throw away line from a 1980s Michalel Douglas movie, it really isn't all that good. You may be confusing GREED with AMBITION. I have no beef with someone who makes money honestly and fairly, like that guy from ebay. My beef is with the scoundrels and mountebanks who play with the houses money, lose the money, then come to Uncle Sam and ask for more!!!!!!!!!!!
If I did that, I would be in prison now!
Like this guy John Thain. Not only does he look like an alien, but, he spent a few million to fix up his office whilst getting his welfare check from you and me.
WHAT GIVES?????????????????????????????????????????????????
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PostPosted: Mon, Jul 13 2009, 10:54 am EDT    Post subject: Re: THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE Reply with quote

Publius,

I understand and comprehend, but your thinking is too isolated and has no macro level view or understanding.

There is greed in socialist, communist and capitalist societies. You are complaining about the individual capitalists, but since there is greed and corruption in all forms across borders the arguement you're making is immaterial as your view is that the alternate removes this issue. There are as many greed and corruption issues with captialists as there are with corrupt officals and businessmen in other forms. Look at the nationalization in Venezuela with the loss of jobs, reduction in wages and high inflation cause by the government. They are moving away as far and as fast as they can from having capitalisits involved. France is just as corrupt and they have a highly socialized process with works councils and collectives.

Tell me what you're proposing as the alternative because the issues you lump under capitalists are present in everywhere.
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PostPosted: Mon, Jul 13 2009, 10:59 am EDT    Post subject: Re: THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE Reply with quote

In addition, you're blaming the capitalists for the lack of earning power. You can't blame the capitalists without looking at all factors involved and the capitalists are the smaller piece of the pie.
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publius
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PostPosted: Mon, Jul 13 2009, 9:03 pm EDT    Post subject: Re: THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE Reply with quote

OY VEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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PostPosted: Mon, Jul 13 2009, 9:53 pm EDT    Post subject: Re: THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE Reply with quote

funny that is my thought as well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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