Posted on 04/19/2010 11:15:40 AM PDT by grayhog
Type this search phrase into Google: Goldman Sachs SEC
Look at the two paid search results at the top. The first will likely be from Goldman Sachs (makes sense they would buy the key words with their name in it). The second is a link to www.BarackObama.com with the tag line "It's Time for Financial Reform that Protects Main Street. Act Now!"
If there was any doubt that the government/SEC actions against Goldman Sachs were politically motivated, there is no doubt now. This is disgusting. The SEC has lost any shred of credibility it had and have become a political tool of the Administration. Its so sad that career SEC people haven't stood up to this gestapo tactic. I had been assuming that the charges had some merit, but after reading the SEC filing detailing the charges, reading Goldman's rebuttal, and now seeing this, I'm more willing to believe that Obama has decided that Goldman must be sacrificed for the greater good. Wonder how Lloyd Blankfein feels about his democrat fund raising now?
In the breaking hyper-metabig financial/political scandal, either Goldman or the Obama team are going to take it in the shorts, and Team Obama is determined that it won't be them. The Google sponsored-link buy simply serves notice of their resolve to push Goldman under the bus.
Of course, there's certainly room in Leavenworth for all of them, and when it comes to traduction of the public trust, either in politics or in the markets, I'm a pretty broad-gauge guy. Let's find room in the ruder cell blocks for everybody.
I'd invite Bob Rubin and the Klintonx, too -- room for everyone, like I said.
Don’t weep for Goldman.
It has been a broodery of leftist politicos for some time now - Jon Corzine of New Jersey, Tim Geithner the “Treasurer”, and Lewis Eisenberg the RINO Republican Bag-man.
My guess is there are other nefarious characters coming out of this nest of vipers.
And, I ALSO believe it has its headquarters in that bastion of pro-western Freedom and Judaeo-Christian Values - Great Britain.
Bloomberg now reporting that the vote was 3-2 to proceed with the suit - 2 Dems voted for, 2 Repubs against and SEC Chairman Mary Shapiro (Obama political appointee) voted for the case. This was clearly not the strongest case and the timing of the release with the coordinated political assault leaves little doubt about the political motivation behind this.
This whole thing reads like a Mafia movie plot. Capobama in charge.
I'd say your definition pretty much gets it, but you didn't mention the low-low-low rental rates on the interned labor-camp workforce or any of the other comps available to the connected.
That’s great detective work. This should get broad dissemination. Never let a crisis go to waste.
Goldman should have taped a gun in the bathroom stall.
Add Hank Paulson to your list who served in both the Nixon and GW Bush admins.
This is not about weeping for Goldman. This about weeping for our country as we watch our government use its resources to attack one of our most successful companies to score political points. Regardless of whether the management of Goldman are democrats or republicans, this open misuse of government power is frightening.
Every other corporation will be intimidated to stand up to these guys and will have to pay homage (and $) to the mafia that’s running the White House. Its similar to how the pharma industry caved in on healthcare reform and agreed to pay tens of billions of dollars for the promise that they Obama mafia wouldn’t come after them. Wall St. didn’t go for Dodd financial reform bill and had enough support in Congress to stop it, so now they are being made an example of. Classic mafia - go after the strongest of the group to set the example for the rest of them.
I’m sure the energy industry is watching how this works as the admin is planning their attack on Cap and Trade.
Management of Goldman is Democrat and yes, we are all screwed by 0bama’s mafia, not just Goldman.
I know, I know. I just can’t stand Corzine, Geithner, Einseberg et al.
Bob Rubin, Clinton's financial fixer.
Goldman had sold a hell of a lot of Mexican tesobonos with Rubin at the helm. When Mexico stumbled early in the Clinton regime, it was Rubin who led the charge when Greenspan's Fed rode to the rescue. How do you spell "conflict of interest" in Spanish legalese?
(Side note: Former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.), Clinton's first SecTreas, didn't take long to figure out that he had been installed by Clinton as a front man, and quietly retired from public life.)
When the Chinese were about to deliver a couple thousand fully-automatic AK-47 assault rifles to Triad-linked Chinese gangs on the West Coast, government agents got wind of it. During an investigation shared between Customs and the ATF (both responding to SecTreas), somebody high up at Treasury called in a cub East Coast reporter (not an experienced local from the San Francisco papers or the L. A. Times, mind you) and briefed him. The guy immediately went out to the docks and started asking very awkward questions and generally knocking over trash cans all over the place, alerting the gangs, and the big fish evaded the net. The raid went forward, but netted only second-level lieutenants and the cargo.
The big fish who got away was Wang Jun, CEO of Norinco, the Chinese arms maker, who was very well known around the White House, having attended a couple of the infamous "Clinton coffees".
Really think about including Bob Rubin! So many fragrant memories .....
Wonder how many more vermin came out of Goldman Sachs?
I guess if you sleep with the pigs, you eventually soiled by them.
On the other hand, Goldman is largely responsible for both the Bear Stearns and Lehman meltdowns, and they were a leading issuer of the exotic bundled securities that figure so prominently in our current economic distress. They sold them -- and then they shorted them, and they shorted the stocks of their customers.
Let me be blunt: Possessing very nearly "perfect information" thanks to their many acolytes scattered throughout government and industry, Goldman does not invest, they harvest -- sure things.
Goldman looted the entire economy, and right now they are participating in a Geithner- and Bernanke-modulated looting of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. It's happening right now.
Let’s assume you’re 100% right. We still don’t want to see the SEC put through trumped-up indictments on a party-line vote and use them to try and muster support for new legislation that will permit the Federal government to take over yet another sector of the economy.
I don’t weep for Goldman; I weep for America and the way that Government is attempting to use Goldman to manipulate us.
Goldman didn’t help Lehman or Bear Stearns go under - those firms did it all by themselves. They borrowed up to 30-40x their assets, much of it from overnight repo transactions, then bought and traded in all kinds of securities that had a similar underlying asset - subprime mortgages. When the asset went south, so did the banks holding the securities. Goldman was doing the same thing, they just recognized that it was all going down sooner than the others and got out of the way faster. They go clobbered in 2008 as well - just not fatally like the others. There is no evil cabal at these banks nor are their investments “sure things”. If the charges that the SEC laid out is they best they have, then I’m feeling better about how Goldman behaved in all this. I figured they would bring out their strongest charge first - and what they showed now looks pretty flimsy and political in nature instead of substantive.
FROM BUSINESSWEEK:
http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1377-advwrcgo8wwi-6c48g1o3jj8nopgll6u6mrmobb
Ping
Goldman Sachs SEC Case May Hinge on Meaning of Word ‘Selected’
SHAKE DOWN....
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