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 ...
