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You know, the mendacity is just killing me.
"Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs issued what it called a clarification of statements by its chairman and chief executive officer, Lloyd Blankfein, at Wednesday’s opening hearing. [TobyNote: Oh yes, Blankfein - the guy who claimed G-S was 'doing God's work'. Yep. That's the guy.]
Asked about Goldman’s secret bets against the housing market while it sold $40 billion in risky mortgage securities in 2006 and 2007, Blankfein said he thought "that the behavior is improper, and we regret the result — the consequence that people have lost money in it."
On Thursday, Goldman said that Blankfein had "said no such thing" and that the question was "predicated on the assumption that a firm was selling a product that it thought was going to default" and in that case, "the practice would be improper."
Blankfein’s statement (and the G-S walkback) shows what delusional, arrogant, classist assholes Blankfein and his buddies are. "..that people have lost money in it."
Lost money in it? Is that all it was? When you say ‘lost money’ that is one thing; when you say ‘lost money IN IT’, the whole thing becomes something else entirely. To Blankfein et al. it was all some sort of investment game being played by people they knew – people who could afford to play.
I get it…what he regrets is that the individuals in HIS world, those creatures that HE considers to be ‘people’ lost money.
He has no clue that there are millions of other creatures that do not live in HIS world – to him they are not ‘people’, who have lost homes, jobs, members of families, have committed suicide, cannot pay for medical care of any sort, are in bankruptcy, are no longer and never will be again in the middle class, whose very lives as they (and their children) have known them have ended — because he and his puffed up buddies sold $40 billion in risky mortgage securities and helped to bring the entire flaming economy to its knees.
I have absolutely no compassion for Blankfein and his friends. And if they don’t understand why the other 99.9% of the US population isn’t in sympathy with their horrid plight, well, then that is a problem.
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That 99.9% of the US population is merely a flock to be fleeced, consumed, sold, whatever pleases Blankfein and the other shepherds.
Rat..I don’t agree. I think to Blankfein and his buddies, the rest of us (and what happens to us) do not exist. It’s all like radar playing out on a screen to them..numbers moving from one column to another (and bonuses moving into their bank accounts, probably by electronic funds transfer). We are merely shadows, of no account to them. It’s as if we exist in an alternate but connected universe – to them, the real stuff happens in their universe..but with the connection, what happens there flows out to us. It’s sort of like ‘when Wall Street coughs, the rest of the world gets pneumonia’ except that they resent it terribly if the rest of the world wants to do something to prevent them from making the rest of us sick.
You’re correct. It was a bad analogy. Shepherds actually care about the well being of their flock. I was thinking about our getting fleeced and stretched it too far.
I agree with you.
I think they can’t really conceive of people who are not their peers as actually being people, having faces, families, people that MATTER.
“If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
TobyWollin, last week bobschacht linked to a site called New Deal 2.0, where Robert Johnson (formerly of Soros Fdn and also formerly economist for the US Senate Banking Committee, made a similar point.
I agree that this is pathologic behavior, in the sense that it is socially destructive; like a eating the Golden Goose.
I agree also that watching screens make it hard to know the impacts of your decisions on ‘real people’ and I’ll bet that in one way or other, most of us have inadvertently made this error. However, having done a fair amount of work around eCommerce ‘back in the day’, it’s my view that no serious business allows themselves to be fooled by images on screens.
If you are going to sustain a business, you have to know your customers. There is zero evidence that GS did anything other than deliberately, manipulatively screw their customers.
In this instance, screens were the tools they used for criminal activity.
But just as a hammer is a tool that doesn’t require bashing in someone’s head, I’d encourage you to be a bit more skeptical of falling for the ‘it was the screens!’ mantra.
There is probably a solid basis for better screen design, one that prompts the trader to walk through additional criteria that prompt them to consider the impacts of their trade.
And I do think that the screens were A factor.
But others of us have sought to use computer screens far, far more responsibly, and sought to use them to make the world a more decent, sane place.
So the next time GS tries to blame their criminal conduct on the abstraction of computer screens, we should all push back with the ‘hammer analogy’.
A screen is just a screen.
It is a tool.
People may realize they’re misusing it; when socially responsible businesses realize their software is creating problems, they ask for interface redesign and they clean up their procedures. GS and the other traders didn’t do that — they simply pushed for bigger trades, bigger bets, bigger bonuses, and they’re still at it.
That’s irresponsible, and it is socially destructive.
One aspect of the pathology of Wall Street that is ignored is that they are fighting tooth and nail, and with some success, against having derivative transactions take place on a public exchange where everyone can see the transaction price. Why?
Easy answer – keeping their customers ignorant of the deals they and others make with different customers prevents these customers from bargaining from an informed position. By keeping their customers in the dark about the pricing of similar products, they can gouge the ignorant ones with overpriced or overly risky products. Public reporting on their transactions would erode their profit margins.
This violates almost every principle of a free market economy. Keeping one’s customers at an informational disadvantage when negotiating prices is socially and economically malignant. They should be forced to publicly report every transaction and it’s terms in a timely manner.
A very important Wall Street Rule is that a “Free Market” is only free when it is slanted in your favor.
Whether they think we’re livestock, insects, or ghosts, seems to me not to matter at all. They have dehumanized us, and can therefore justify killing us. Which, in my carefully considered opinion, gives us the pure moral right to dehumanize and [edited by mod].
They cannot be pursuaded, educated, or rehabilitated, but they can be extinguished. Where are all those NRA guys who’ve been proclaiming that they have their guns so they can fight back against the Government and other oppressors? I guess we’ll have to rely on them, because Lefties are congenitally too civilized.
OR, lets just keep voting Democratic (snark).
They aren’t so much shepards as they are sharks. Their feeding frenzies create a lot of scrap that those lower on the food chain feed on and think there is a limitless supply but when the feeding for the sharks gets thin the scrap feeders are the next target.
“It turned out that the Bush administration had about as much respect for scientific facts as it did for facts about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As one official explained to author and journalist Ron Suskind in 2002, the administration had nothing but disdain for what it called “the reality-based community,” people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” That would be science. Instead, said the official, “we create our own reality.”
Same unfounded arrogance; wonder what G/S will say when they read the transcript.
I sense no regret or feelings of guilt or remorse in a peron like Blankfein. Its obvious that behind his poker face is nothing but utter bottomless contempt for Congress and the rest of us, including Obama. He ( They) WON period, that they lied , connived, cheated probably murdered as well to win matters not the least. The ONLY THING that matters is THEY are the BIG WINNERS. Testifying in front of ants is these just part of the job. Its a few hrs. of discomfort like haveing a tooth drilled thats all. Afterwards was a great dinner at a 1st class restaurant then maybe a few hrs. with a beautiful mistress and then off to some other exotic locale. Such is the life of a Master of the Universe.
I wouldn’t give a shit about Blankfein or G-S, except that (1) they deceived a bunch of investors with a big assist from the rating agencies, (2) they’ve not been held to account, and (3) they got a big helping hand from the U.S. Treasury Department, made off with billions in taxpayer money.
Ordinary criminal institutions, like organized crime, don’t bother me.
Cheer up and see the inherent potential of fatcats in an economy that is tanking:
http://www.kaboodle.com/reviews/dee-dee-ramone–eat-the-rich-t-shirt
… or we could hand them over to Marsellus Wallace. Let him get medieval on their ass.
Being civilized is sometimes so unsatisfying.
I’m thinking more on the lines of a huge line up of stocks in Union Square in NYC, with unending supplies of rotten veggies and then a parade through the streets.
That’s not bad. Even the squeamish could enjoy it.
Oh! Where do I line up?! Thanks Toby. I had just been tossing those peelings in the “to-be-compost” pile, but we’ve got a partial thaw going here. Start the march. I’ll be there in just a sec. I’ve been practicing my aim all winter.
Yeah, I love those “Eat the Rich” T-Shirts, but I choke on the irony that they are charging $40 apiece for them.
I’ll eat the rich, you buy the shirt. If I could spend $40 on an Eat the Rich T-Shirt, I’d BE the rich lol.
[edited by mod.]
i suggest u make yerself a home-made bumper sticker. if you worry about copyright, ad-lib the idea. oh the horror! am i aiding and abetting heathen trubble-mongers? heh.
Be careful, Teh Mod browns his/her panties if anyone gets too close to realizing that throughout history only violence has worked once a system becomes this corrupt.
Violence by the system against the public is the “only thing that works” to maintain the system, you mean?
;^)
That might work if you could use enough spices to cover the taste of corruption. Heads on pikes might be helpful. Publicly executing banksters would send a welcome and cheery message. Those are fine interim measures but if you really want to put the fear of God into these people the thing to do is take all their money and let them know that they can stop living in a cardboard box after all their victims have been made whole.
Let the class-actions begin!
i only hope the Revolution begins soon.
I maintain that what this country needs is a good five dollar guillotine.
I’ll see you at the barricades.
Where is Madame Defarge when we need her?
One hopes that a fashion will take hold in this country, because, as we all know, it is fashion that really changes things. From now on when one is characterized as wealthy instant distrust will be manifested where ever that one may go. Upon entering a restaurant one who is known to be wealthy will find that conversation stops, crafty glances are cast and whispers follow in their wake. Of course such people only go to places where everyone is rich you may say. True say I, but there is a difference between the wealthy and the merely rich and class distinction must now place those who are only rich down with the rest of us, the great unwashed. So the whispers will rankle. Yes, my wealth was inherited, but is that my fault? Well, I did, in fact, make my fortune starving little old ladies and small children, but it was all legal. These are the thoughts we want them thinking. When looking for a bridge partner at the club we want these people to find the task difficult, because no one will want to bid three spades to someone who made their money destroying civilization as we knew it. Wealth must now breed suspicion and disgust. Do this, create this fashion, and true change will occur.
There was another article this week;
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bw/20100112/bs_bw/jan2010bs20100111383186
“It would be a mistake to say that business schools are directly to blame, even when their graduates were closely involved; there are more basic drivers. But business schools have played a role indirectly, due fundamentally to their adherence to and perpetuation of an ideology that has contributed significantly to the crisis, albeit unintentionally. That is the ideology of Shareholder Value Maximization (SVM). In most business schools, SVM is the leitmotif of finance teaching and implicit throughout the rest of the curriculum.”
Then there’s the public-administration programs, that teach their victims that we don’t really need things like public libraries.
or teaching the arts in public schools,
or kids who can afford breakfast, and get themselves to school without busses,
Somewhat related, or just coincidence? you decide: I knew it was rotten to the core when the Rummymachine started its terrah crusade by bombing Afghanistan’s national library…
That’s the mentality of these scum.
David, I have to admit something – I went to business school in the late 70s and the big ‘fashion’ in business schools at the time(and I think it did me down from Harvard B-school) was this semester long, huge credit thing in the MBA program called (believe it or not) “The Game”. People were split up into teams and at that time we were in the soap industry and had to deal with running soap companies. Frankly, what people figured out pretty quickly was that the point was not to run your company the best way you knew how..it was to figure out how the algorithm worked and beat the game. Teams that tried to run their soap companies and compete (and so all the real work of a business in terms of getting discounts and so on), got killed off pretty quickly. The team my year that won basically figured out how to get out of the soap business and buy up the stock of the other companies and made their money off trading THAT. This whole ‘game’ thing was very very hot in b-schools for a very long time and people’s whole academic careers depended on their being on a team that did well and on teammates who gave them good grades.
Fascinating. Is there a book on this topic?
Ah yes, games. I have two nephews, and I like children as long as I don’t own them, yes two nephews who love computer games. The ‘first person shooters’, as they’re called, in particular. The first order of business once a new game is aquired is discovering the ‘cheats’. I have pointed out that this seems to circumvent the challenges which the game was designed to present. They roll their eyes and comment on my status as an ‘old schooler’. Playing and enjoying the game is most certainly not the point. Winning is what matters, whatever that takes. Patience and ingenuity might lead to victory I tell them. The ingenuity part they understand, patience . . . well, no. I fear we are breeding a generation of inside traders. This could lead to problems when it is discovered that there is no one to make things. We do need things from time to time you know. If we don’t have things what will there be to win?
I like it. Subversive. Let the whispering begin in earnest. Very big Goldman Sachs types vacation here. I already was whispering and pointing last summer.
Thank you montanamaven. You are obviously an intelligent and insightful judge of the subversive. Keep pointing and whispering.
Heh, i have my knitting going already, and i’m spelling SOCIOPATHS as i knit.
Wendell Potter, the PR guy for the health insurance co, said that it was just the numbers – until he saw a Remote Area Medical set-up in horse stalls.
The ‘s’ and the ‘p’ are the hardest to get right unless you are using really thin yarn and needles. :)
Braille might work. Of course, then you need to have the whole alphabet memorized.
It turns out that in the run-up to the the crash, GS was selling CDO and then betting that they were worthless (i.e., buying CDSs on them). Per Dean Baker:
What we have here is an extreme case of “adverse selection,” something that insurers and actuaries carefully guard against. So was there collusion between GS and AIG? Was AIG that stupid? Were they both counting on the taxpayers to bail them out, an extreme case of a moral hazard? Hmmmm.
Well, if you are the sort of people who believe that YOU are the Sun and the rest of the universe revolves around YOU and that all life and energy derive from YOU and that if you suddenly ‘go out’, that everything else will be destroyed, then you believe that YOU are necessary to life and must be and will be protected. The problem is, though, that they forget that the Sun is NOT vampiric.
It’s possible, if one imagines without limit, that firms came to G-S and requested these CDOs and to be a market-maker G-S created & sold them despite believing strongly that they would go bad. In such an event the beleaguered G-S who bears the weight of being a market-maker also had to protect itself by buying CDSs from someone (AIG).
In that scenario G-S is essentially innocent. Were they such a market-maker that they would more-or-less have to respond to such requests for CDOs? Did they really believe AIG’s CDSs were adequate protection against the losses they expected to occur?
If this is the case, then you have to go back to the culture which promoted the CDOs and the bad mortgages and the high-ratings of crap assets. In that G-S might or might not have had a hand.
discuss…
“pissed” doesn’t even begin to describe how I’m feeling. I’m pissed these sorry ass excuses for human beings are even allowed to live. I’m pissed at this silly ass commision for even giving them a forum. I’m pissed that after this commission is finished, not a fucking thing will change. I’m pissed half of Obama’s white house if full of goddamn former g/s employees.
And I’m pissed that the inheritance tax has been suspended for 2010, so that if one of these bastards would die, their sorry ass offspring would inherit every fucking dime free and clear.
To beleck @11. I’m so ready. History has proven it is the only thing that will wok.
Funny thing is, when I listened to Blankfein, I heard him say what he now claims he said. Then when Cynthia wrote it us as a confession, I was surprised, but just figured I wasn’t listening carefully. There was NOTHING in Blankfein’s testimony that indicated he was giving an inch. He was obnoxiously aggressive.
The banksters are being replayed right now on cspan for anyone who has the stomach.
The really outrageous part of Blankfein’s testimony was the assertion that what Goldman-Sachs did is a legitimate function of their marketmaker role. And that those who were the counterparties should have known that Goldman-Sachs was shorting the securities it was selling. It was at this point in the testimony that Angelides reminded him that among the counterparties were managers of pension funds who had fiduciary responsibilities to their pensioners. And Blankfein proceeded as if he had no inkling of what that could mean to those pensioners.
And yes, I am pissed off with him. He was the most well-prepared. But I am also pissed off at the CEOs who testified and couldn’t explain clearly how their operations worked — either from being out of touch or lacking any practical understanding beyond firing people up and reading the bottom line on balance sheets. The salaries and bonuses for those four people represent a gargantuan waste of their shareholders’ money.
I’m not an expert on the Enron case, but as I recall, there was a point where regulators wanted to control that market and Enron argued that they were the market maker and by being freed to come up with new products, they would be more efficient than any outside imposed system.
And we all know where that got them…and everyone else.
As I remember, they did not have to make that argument because the section that Phil Gramm slipped into the Commodities Modernization Act prohibited the government from new regulations. And the so-called electricity markets were considered a new market; so they could not be regulated by the federal government. Enron might have made that case to the State of California, but I’m not up on what happened at a state level in California. And at the time, such a statement would have been assumed by all but a few Democrats and progressives.
Off topic, but I just refreshed this page and my anti-virus program detected something. I saw a similar comment in an earlier thread. I’m guessing it’s a false positive … maybe ad related?
It would make sense that it’s ad related.
Which anti-virus program are you using?
what’s your browser? you might want to check this out.
It does a good job of catching “flash” cookies that are not covered by other cookie settings. Our sonny had us run a check and, surprise(?!!!) We were able to strip a number of pesky little “persistent cookies” from our machine and those annoying little suspicions eased, for the moment…
security is seemingly a running battle these days, unfortunately, and probably will remain so for the forseeable future, I suppose.
I hope this can help you the way it did us. ;->
Blankfein kept repeating that these crimes need to be looked at “in the context of the times” And that this economic catastrophe was like a “hurricane.” Thank goodness Angelides called him out on that spinning horseshit by pointing out that a “hurricane is an act of nature” and this economic catastrophe was “caused by acts of men and women” mostly greedy men.
I will not be satisfied until I witness the same sort of so called justice that is applied to the person who rips off the corner drug store to these fats cats who have ripped off the American public.
Obama, Holder, Leahy, Whitehouse, Feinstein (war profiteer) all repeat “no one is above the law” The peasants know better. We are waiting for them to walk the talk. Otherwise the American public knows that “no one is above the law” are just hollow words used to pacify the peasants
At the end, Angelides will issue a sternly worded letter to Blankfein.
Which will be read by one of his secretaries in a meeting and then round-filed after they all have a good laugh.
Well, this particular peasant is not pacified and I will not be satisfied until we have regulators and regulations in place that tie these thieves up twenty-eight ways from Sunday, that require real auditors to be on site who are totally independent, and that protect the folks at the bottom. And if people want to stand outside the offices of these people wearing tee shirts and holding signs that say, “Within these walls are profiteering scum”, then I would not complain at all.
Blankfein is not a new kind of monster.
Our very beginnings as a country reflected that it was okay to steal from the Native Americans. Though they did not meet the standard of browns… they did the godless meme.
Propaganda just keeps on going …the latest with Pat Robertson and the devil pact with Haiti.US policy has always been to destroy them. Arristide comes to mind. Read Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder re. the true character of “those” people.The marvelous work done by Dr. Paul Farmer. Plenty of good people..we just don’t hear about them.
Kevin Annette out of Canada is another one. He brings attn.to the fact that the Anglican Church and Canadian govt. has been taking Native American children from their homes, putting them in boarding schools, and then sexually molesting and killing them. Know when it stopped? 70′s.
I used to think that it was just an odd coindidence that Catholics were guilty of so much pedophilia..maybe because of the single priests thingy. Nope. It is a way of taking away a culture’s power. As proof of Kevin Annette’s accusations that the Anglican Church was in on the abuse and murder? He was kicked out of the church and the church paid for his wife to divorce him.
When he had no money and no voice , he took to the streets with a bull horn. True goodness….
Oh, NOW I know where all the spines went – HE’s got ‘em!!
What is the best way to launder money?
Trade it through a system of collateralized debt.
Consider this:
Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/dec/13/drug-money-banks-saved-un-cfief-claims
Are you starting to understand why we are occupying Afghanistan?
And why toxic pharmaceuticals are FDA approved while marijuana is not?
And why President Barack ‘Goldman Sachs’ Obama isn’t about to do anything about it…
other than escalate these inhuman atrocities?
Is that an oxymoron? Can there be an atrocity that is not human?
Glenn Smith’s upstairs with a new post at the mother ship.
i’m a perfectly respectable compassionate heathen pacifist, and too old to worry myself into a dither over nonsensical things.
but i confess that i enjoy defusing abusive nincompoops with random acts of kindness.
nice to make your acquaintance razorbrain.
be nice to the mods. they be pretty sweet as well as savvy, in my experience.
p. e. a. c. e.
Shorter Lloyd Blankfein:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e0BV6ftXEk
F–k you too, pal and your elitist entitlement mentality.
Hello, any intelligence out there?
Look, kids, everything that occurs in US or what US does to aliens is part of the system.
Nothing, no change can occur in US or its planet unless it is a part of the system. Getting rich is part of the system.
Selling snake oil is as amercian as the apple pie; it is of the system
Bankers-banking is,along cia,fbi,media,’educators’, congress, judiciary, army, WH,integral part of US governance;thus, banking is also at least partly self-regulated.
We wld see that ?all people, if we wld stop beating bush and around bushes, who r not with or for the US system,is just like every indian had been.
There is no loopholes in the US system. On a scale of hundred,it cld be rated as 99.98d.
And if u squak too much, it cld get a 100d. So watch it kids!
To burst the loop, one needs a second political party in US. U didn’t, did u, think that the funni uncle wld have two different and popposing agents in US system!?
tnx
Sad thing is there is no ethical alternative.
There is only 1 model taught in business schools.
Remember some years back there were funds that invested in ethical companies. Haven’t heard much about it in a long time. People were interested in doing the right thing.
That reminds me of the long ago days (60′s?) when you used to hear pharma company stocks referred to as “ethical pharmaceuticals.”
As opposed to patent medicines, I think, a lot of which were either high in alcohol (but okay with the prohibitionists) or actively harmful to your metabolism.
The story reads like a the bank robber stories from the 30s. The robber sending a letter to the town whose bank he cleaned out saying that he feels bad that it had to come to this. The people who savings were wiped out or had their lives ruined are just part of the breaks of the game and the crooks aren’t about to give their ill-gotten gains back.
Of course in this version of the story the government is the victim, the policeman that couldn’t find his butt with both hands and the partner in the ongoing string of robberies.