It Was A Banner Year For Goldman Sachs-The Nation’s Leading Predator

As the economic armada is sinking with billowing smoke in the Sea of Financial Crisis, the U.S.S. Goldman Sachs raises a banner across its deck, announcing “Mission Accomplished”, Lord Lloyd Blankfein proclaims, “There’s no crisis that can’t be won!” During the state dinner aboard ship, during Lord Blankfein gives the opening address. He begins with a humbling first sentence stunning all of the oligarchs enjoying their elegant luncheon. He says, “A scam is a terrible thing to waste!” The crowd roars in applause, and a toast is made to Charles Ponzi, the first known grand Ponzi conartists of 1919.

That is correct. There is no crisis that cannot be scammed. While the neo-cons in the Grotesquely Oligarchist Psychopathetic Repugnicon Party are all saying that mortgage holders, in spite of being underwater with their mortgages, should not walk away from them. They must adhere to their obligations. WTF! are they talking about? As far as I can tell, Lord Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, AIG, and the rest of the financial crime syndicate thieves were about to sink in the Sea of Financial Crisis if they weren’t given TARP, TALF, PPIP, Fed Fund Drive-Through Windows (‘Can I have a Happy Meal with that, please?), and more totaling $23 trillion supplied by the taxpayers; yet, the homeowners, who were ripped off of $12T in household wealth, and found their mortgages underwater because of the financial crime syndicate thieves violated their ‘honor’ as American businessmen and sold junk mortgage derivative bonds to suckers who thought these low-grade securities were AAA, when really they were worth nothing; and then, knowing that these tranched bad mortgages mixed in with a few token good mortgages would likely go up in smoke, bought AIG’s credit default swaps to secure their foreshadowed losses. Nostradamus not required. In addition, they all knew they were Too Big To Fail and the government would step in with financial winches to hoist them all back up again.

But the small fry homeowners left out to dry with underwater mortgages are supposed to stand tall and keep on paying. What garbage.

Now, President Peacock Obama, who spent a year displaying his fancy feathers for the world to see as he strutted, while globetrotting, smiling for the cameras, while giving articulate speeches, has now decided to show he is more than just pretty feathers. He has told the voters that it was his “commitment [is] to recover every single dime the American people are owed.” Funny, funny Mr. President!! Where are the teeth behind this meek appeal? How will you actually do this? And, will you cower away when the banking predators come for your throat?

Your plan appears to be one that will place a tax levy on the biggest financial institutions in order to recoup losses from the TARP bailout program, which would amount to $90B over ten years. Now, being the math wizard that I am, that comes to just $9B per year. Goldman Sachs’ 2009 profit came to a whopping $50B, with $20B passed out in bonuses. Happy New Year big shots. Now, I would say President Obama has convinced himself that he believes he is sure talking tough. Unfortunately, he is only doing his new kabuki theater routine. It is just for show. He wants to try and look like he is all about the little guy. While stumping in Massachusetts for the Democrat who eventually lost to a neo-con Republican opposed to health care reform as viewed through the Democratic keyhole, he kept talking about the little guy and gal. Those hurting. Those suffering. Those who have lost so much while the bankstas took it all home with them. What a kabuki dance if I ever saw one. Wave the magic wand, Mr. President, and chocolates will come raining down on everyone, as George W. Bush believed when he entered Iraq for the first time.

Let us review the scam artistry that Goldman Sachs and the others engaged in. Brooksley Born, a member of the Financial Crisis Commission hearing panel, and the former head of the Commodity Futures Trade Commission, under Clinton, who, in 1998, publicly warned Alan Greenspan and Jamie Dimon, chairman of JPMorgan Chase, that there was a derivatives tsunami gathering a huge amount of destructive energy as it approached our own shores. They laughed at her, told her to go away and take some cookies on her way out. During these current hearings she reminded the four leading banksta syndicate operators testifying before her (GS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and BoA that they were chairmen of firms that they were responsible for about $230 TRILLION worth of trade in over-the-counter derivatives, much of which were still unmonitored!!! Holy heck! And the cons are worried about underwater mortgages and the working stiff getting health care at a reasonable price without cancellation?

Over time, the Federal Reserve worked its monetary magic by over-leveraging taxpayer wealth, via the treasury by increasing US debt by 4000%-from less than $3B to over $12T, with much of it going onto the balance sheets and into the pockets of the US corporate oligarchs, the financial banking thieves, and private equity funds, as well as the incredibly predatory industrial war machine.

After the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Federal Reserve and the laissez-faire, “free-market” (HA,HA) capitalists worked their black magic, their Voodoo Economics, by pressing legislators to erode the rules and regulations that were put into place following the economic collapse of the 1930s. As the government oversight was erased, the economic and financial predators began sucking from Lady Liberty’s breast to drain as much taxpayer wealth as was possible, revving up into a full force gale beginning in 2000. It appears that after one year of President Obama’s leadership, none of the erased rules and regulations had been restored, along with what we should have learned from past lessons.

We now have begun to see behind the Shadow Banking curtain thanks to the hosts on MSNBC, and others, such as Matt Taibbi’s work published in the Rolling Stone magazine, exactly how Goldman Sachs engaged in fraud against their clients, the American people, and AIG. Also, we are seeing a conspiracy to cover-up the fraud committed by the likes of Hank-the Paulie-Paulson, Monster Man of the Year—Bennie the Beard Bernanke, Lordie Lordie Blankfein, and Timmie-daG-Geithner, all of whom should be indicted using RICO. Where is the Justice Department? Where is the call for a Grand Jury investigation?

Back in 2008, when Timmie the G was President of the New York Fed and his chairman was Steve Friedman, who also had been a Goldman Sachs chairman, too, began mopping up AIG’s garbage mortgage bonds that they were insuring for Goldman Sachs to the tune of $14B at 100 cents on the dollar, since GS rejected a 40 cents on the dollar offer. Now tell me if this was not a conspiracy to protect the balance sheet of the top financial crime syndicate boss—Lord Blankfein!

Not only did GS get full value for their derivative contracts insured by AIG, but Merrill Lynch, and Wachovia did as well. They all got reimbursed by the taxpayer to the tune of $27.1B. Socialize the losses and privatize the gains!

It appears that under Bush, Hank Paulson and the others plotted to kill Goldman Sachs’ competition and leave only GS on the top of the investment banksta dog pile, since Goldman had its field marshal generals embedded in the government protecting their interests.

Lehman Brothers was brought down in 2007, and Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley were decapitated. While this planned demolition was going on, and long before, Goldman Sachs was selling garbage mortgage backed securities to suckers believing in the financial market’s Golden Egg, when actually it was rotten inside, while the wizards inside GS were selling off their garbage to AIG and buying swap insurance to guarantee their losses. They all knew, since Hank Paulson, a veteran GS chairman, then acting as Bush’s Treasury secretary, and Robert Rubin close to his side, as well as Bernanke, and Geithner, would rescue any of their losses when, and not if, it got there. There was no such thing as risk management. What it meant was take all the risk you want, Uncle Sam is there to help! Didn’t Reagan hate that phrase? Bush didn’t listen!

In 2006 and on into 2007, GS sold somewhere around $39B of their mortgage junk, and used their ‘honorable’ status as that of “upstanding” investment bankers and sold around $17B more mortgage junk securities for their clients, yet those good, law biding American business bankers never told the suckers who ended up buying those garbage bonds that they were making bets on the side just in case those mortgage bonds went south because the never-ending boom in housing price values might actually come tumbling down.

In late 2006, McClatchy News reported that Goldman Sachs spokesman, Michael DuVally said that the firm decided, at that time, to reduce its mortgage risks by selling off subprime mortgage-related securities as well as to purchase credit-default swaps which were used to hedge against a serious downturn in the US housing market. This all came about because in December 2006, after “10 straight days of losses” in Goldman’s mortgage business, Chief Financial Officer David Viniar called a meeting of key Goldman personnel.  (1.Economiccollapseblog.com, How Goldman Sachs Made Tens of Billions From The Economic Collapse of America In Four Easy Steps)

It seemed that Goldman Sachs was not going to let their Wall Street casino gambles become losses no matter what they had to do. This is how a crime syndicate operates. And, they are it!

“The New York Times recently wrote: A handful of investors and Wall Street traders, however, anticipated the crisis. In 2006, Wall Street had introduced a new index, called the ABX, which became a way to invest in the direction of mortgage securities. The index allowed traders to bet on or against pools of mortgages with different risk characteristics just as stock indexes enable traders to change the firm’s overall stance on the mortgage market, from positive to negative, though it did not disclose that publicly. Goldman used this new index [to their advantage].

Along with all of this, Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC, has been all over Timmie Geithner to reveal the secret deals and emails that went on between the NY Fed, when he was its president, and AIG, as well as everyone else involved in keeping their secret from their clients, and the SEC, the deal that brought Goldman Sachs, via AIG, a 100 cent reimbursement for their toxic mortgage backed securities that were insured (CDS) through AIG. Geithner has decided that the documents will remain secret until 2018. So much for President Obama’s transparency pledge to America.

These bets would only make money for Goldman Sachs if the U.S. housing market declined.” (See reference 1.)

It sure was a banner year for the King of FOP (Financial Obfuscating Predator), Mr. Lordie Lordie Lloyd Blankfein, but it was the nation that took the hit instead.

Thanks for reading, jerry

 http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

Here is the Colbert Report speaking about honor bound! It is great!