By Michael McCune
Wall Street is moving further into the realm of weightlessness, the euro’s demise moves closer by the moment while the United States government by passing tax cuts without corresponding spending cuts pulls the noose tighter around its own economic future. These events all have one entity to bless for their convergence–Goldman Sachs.
Seems like a nightmare to be able to blame a host of converging events on the actions of one company but when “you dance with the devil…”
Before blood pressures exceed the limits of human veins, remember this company did not act entirely alone, it worked in concert with the affected governments though maybe not within the bounds of the current C-in-C’s professed “government transparency” from 2008. Goldman Sachs is the ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Allegedly an independent financial institute, Goldman Sachs has over 200 former employees in well-placed Washington positions and probably 200 times that number scattered over the globe in various governments and financial agencies. Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, is currently directing the forthcoming bailout of Greece and is a former Goldman employee. Lucas Papademos, the Greece Prime Minister who pushed through the “austerity measures” necessary for Greece to receive the funds from Draghi’s ECB, is a former Goldman employee. Mario Monti, Italy’s Prime Minister whose country is next in line for a substantial bailout from the ECB, is a former Goldman employee. Ben (BS) Bernanke, chair of the Federal Reserve which is funding all of the shenanigans going on in Europe, isn’t a former member of the Goldman Sachs but merely a misplaced academic who taught many of the higher-placed Goldman employees while at Princeton and surely listens to the whispers from the many ex-Goldman employees roaming Washington as advising bureaucrats.
But their machinations are having the desired effect on Wall Street. The Dow is moving into territory not seen since late 2007 when the housing bubble broke. Did you know Goldman had a visible hand in that pop but, unlike the majority of American investors, Goldman made a mountain of money on the breaking bubble? While urging investors to buy, buy, buy the housing market, Goldman sold, sold, sold. When the bust came, Goldman raked in the dough and almost everyone else dropped like a corpse.
The same thing has happened before—such as when Greece was seeking admittance to the Euro Union. Goldman covered up the debt problem so the Greeks could qualify to get into the EU and then sold additional tons of Greece debt on its unsuspecting customers, while selling the euro in currency exchanges. Now those gullible investors are being asked to take another 70% haircut on the face value of the bonds they are holding after dropping about 50% last October. Goldman just makes money on both ends of the deals.
Because it is so deeply embedded in governments, particularly here in Washington, even when the company is hauled into some Congressional hearing it receives no more than a slap on the wrist. Those elected officials know who butters their bread and it isn’t you and me in Constituency land, it is the movers and shakers behind the scenes for Goldman in major financial centers around the globe.
It has been alleged, not yet proven, that it was former Goldman employees who actually wrote the recently infamous NDAA where Americans can be tossed into prison for acts of “terrorism”. Read the final version carefully and you will not find this directly, only indirectly.
This bill, at certain times and places, removes the Secretary of Defense from the seat of power and puts in the Secretary of Homeland Security and uses Homeland’s definitions of terrorist and ensuing penalties as the basis for incarceration despite overt pronouncement’s “No American will forfeit their rights” in the bill. Follow some of the recent FBI directives where “shielding or attempting to shield a computer screen”, “operating a radio-controlled airplane” or “illogical lengths of travel” are considered basis for investigation as terrorist-related activities.
But Goldman has never acted overtly. Its “overt operations” are no more than a front for its true activities which is to enrich the governments it works for while impoverishing the citizens of those same countries. It is a whore for sale to the highest bidder. Maybe the government officials involved ought to be prosecuted as Goldman’s pimps. At least that would be a honest incarceration and give a honest description of Goldman’s activities.
