Everybody hates Goldman Sachs

“Our model really never changed, we’ve said very consistently that our business model remained the same” - Goldman Sachs CFO

One fine afternoon last October, George W. Bush, in a scene for the history books, tilted over the large oak table in the White House and said to Hank Paulson, "If money isn't loosened up, this sucker is going to go down." The public was told in no uncertain terms that if the American public didn't agree to saving the reptilian army of bankers that had brought about this disaster, that we would all go down with the Titanic. The deal was made, the money transferred, and like children waiting for Santa, the public expected that the banks would begin lending and the economy would right itself. It didn't happen. Instead Goldman Sachs hoarded the cash in their vaults and then disgorged themselves of their nimiety by giving their staff the largest bonus payouts in the firm's 140-year. The company is believed to have paid 973 bankers $1m or more in 2008, while this year's payouts are on track to be the highest for most of the bank's 28,000 staff.

What we now know is that "sucker" as Dubya put it at the time wasn't the US economy or the American public, but rather Goldman Sachs and the pirates of high-capitalism. Matt Taibbi, of Rolling Stone magazine, states that the public was hoodwinked to make a, "Political decision in the middle of an economic crisis to use the state as a crutch to prop up exactly one sector of the economy, and we chose exactly the wrong people."

Robert Reich, former secretary of labor under Bill Clinton, explains that,

Goldman's high-risk business model hasn't changed one bit from what it was before the implosion of Wall Street. Goldman is still wagering its capital and fueling giant bets with lots of borrowed money. While its rivals have pared back risks, Goldman has increased them. And its renewed success at this old game will only encourage other big banks to go back into it...

[That] Goldman has reverted to its old ways in the market suggests it has every reason to believe it can revert to its old ways in politics, should its market strategies backfire once again -- leaving the rest of us once again to pick up the pieces.

Paul Krugman further elaborates that what has been done is not in the public interest and in fact, has created the groundwork for an even greater economic catastrophe in the near future because,

The huge bonuses Goldman will soon hand out show that financial-industry highfliers are still operating under a system of heads they win, tails other people lose. If you’re a banker, and you generate big short-term profits, you get lavishly rewarded — and you don’t have to give the money back if and when those profits turn out to have been a mirage. You have every reason, then, to steer investors into taking risks they don’t understand.

Max Keiser, broadcaster, former broker, and options trader, has the harshest and absolute best words I've seen or read in regards to Goldman Sachs,

They are literally stealing a hundred million dollars a day. Goldman Sachs is stealing every day on the floor of the exchange. They should be in the Hague. They should be taken on financial terrorism charges. They should all be thrown in jail.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/max-keiser-goldman-sachs-are-scum

Would Goldman Sachs still be pulling in record profits if the government didn't bailout AIG, which at the time owed Goldman nearly $20 Billion, or given the fact that the FED gave them another $10 Billion through the TARP program and undefined additional millions (billions?) from other government programs, when the company converted itself to a bank holding company? The latter number is impossible to determine, because Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve have refused to disclose this information to the public; the very people who made the loan to these bankrupt bankers and greedheads!

What does this say about the American government or for that matter, Hank Paulson who was then secretary of commerce and former CEO of Goldman Sachs? Clearly, the primary objective of both the Democrats and the Republicans wasn't in getting Americans back to work, but instead in saving their wealthy donors/friends in high places. The banking industry and Goldman Sachs have gamed the system and the entire Bush and Obama administrations are part of this orchestrated fraud. Goldman Sachs has made fools of every tax paying American and are laughing all the way to the...