Goldman Sachs names ex-Sen Gregg to advisory post

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Friday that it has hired former U.S. Senator Judd Gregg as an international adviser.

Gregg, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire, joins a group of 17 international advisers to the New York-based investment bank and its clients, and will assist in business development initiatives.

TTBO = THROW THE BUMS OUT ! If this election isn't about spotting, supporting and electing those with personal integrity and country-before-self virtue, our nation is truly lost, and God help us.
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May 10, 2011: The 'vampire squid' of Wall Street faces wrath of nuns

Excerpt:

The Great Vampire Squid was forced to face the people last week as Goldman Sachs held its widely anticipated annual meeting. Wall Street's most powerful investment bank hosted shareholders at its building in Jersey City for the first time as it sought to head off anger about the fortunes it pays its top people and its role in the financial crisis.

The bank has dealt with these questions before, but this year's meeting promised to be particularly tricky. The meeting was the first time Goldman's chief executive and chairman, Lloyd Blankfein, had faced shareholders since the bank agreed to pay $550m to settle civil fraud charges laid by the Securities and Exchange Commission after Goldman sold clients mortgage bonds that were created by a hedge fund betting against the housing market.

A host of activist religious investors, including a group of nuns, turned up to the AGM under the banner of the Interfaith Centre on Corporate Responsibility to protest against the way Goldman rewards its bankers. The bank's top five executives were awarded almost $70m in total for 2010.

Sister Nora Nash, the corporate responsibility director for the Sisters of St Francis of Philadelphia, caused discomfort by pointing out:

"Execs have amassed untold wealth while a billion people suffer from poverty." Sister Nora's resolution requiring Goldman's board to judge whether pay was "excessive" got about 4% of the vote. The bank's own resolution on how to pay its executives secured 73% of votes.

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Goldman Sachs CEO's pay nearly doubles despite slump in profits

Goldman's chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, takes home $9m more for a year in which bank's profits dropped 38%

Excerpt:

An era of bonus "restraint" at Goldman Sachs came to a shuddering halt as the Wall Street bank almost doubled the pay package of its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, to $18.6m (£11.5m) for 2010 in spite of a slump in profits.

Blankfein, 56, who once quipped that his firm does "God's work", received share awards of $12.6m on top of a $5.4m performance-related cash bonus, and a salary of $600,000. He also received additional benefits worth $464,000, according to a filing by Goldman at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Virtue

1. moral excellence; goodness; righteousness.
2. conformity of one's life and conduct to moral and ethical principles; uprightness; rectitude.

Goldman Sachs Prospers at Taxpayers' Expense
The American Thinker ^ | December 31, 2010 | Fred N. Sauer
FR Posted on Friday, December 31, 2010 by Scanian

If prudent investors can only make .5% on short term assets, how does Goldman Sachs prosper?

Robert Rubin was a very powerful man. After 26 years and rising to the level of Co-Senior Partner, he left Goldman Sachs in 1994 to become Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration. His first major undertaking was during the Mexican bailout of 1995. ...

Rubin drew criticism in Congress for using a Treasury Department account under his personal control to distribute $20 billion to bail out Mexican bonds, of which Goldman was a key holder. For 1998, the first year which we have public financial information on Goldman Sachs, their total revenue was $22 billion and their net profit was $1.256 billion.

It is highly probable that the $20 billion was extremely helpful to Goldman Sachs -- if not essential to its continuing existence. And Robert Rubin had some very powerful friends. "In April 1998 Travelers Group announced an agreement to undertake the $76 billion merger between Travelers and Citicorp, and the merger was completed on October 8, 1998.

The possibility remained that the merger would run into problems connected with federal law. Ever since the Glass-Steagall Act, banking and insurance businesses had been kept separate. Weill and Reed bet that Congress would soon pass legislation overturning those regulations... .

To speed up the process, they recruited...to the Board of Directors...Robert Rubin (Secretary of Treasury during Democratic Clinton Administration) whom Weill was close to...." (a short history of Sandy Weill's march to riches) Read more at americanthinker.com ...

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