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As we pointed out recently, excess reserves at banking institutions have hit yet another all time record over $1 trillion, courtesy not just of the Fed's burgeoning reliquification efforts via direct asset purchases, but also due to its strategy to wind down the SFP program, and keep the Federal debt level under the legal cap, thereby providing even more liquidity to banks, to the tune of$185 billion. Yet if you thought that this inability to pass liquidity over into the broader currency pool was something to be concerned about (you know, that whole lending to consumers thing), you were wrong....

Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs (GS), has put an unusual spin on the bank's activities. He says his firm is doing "God's work." This may seem like an audacious statement....

Goldman wasn’t the only contributor to the systemic risk that nearly toppled the global financial markets, but it was the key contributor to the systemic risk posed by AIG’s near bankruptcy. When it came to the credit derivatives, American International Group, Inc. (AIG) was required to mark-to-market, Goldman was the 800-pound gorilla. Calls for billions of dollars in collateral pushed AIG to the edge of disaster. The entire financial system was imperiled, and Goldman Sachs would have been exposed to billions in devastating losses. A Goldman spokesman told me its involvement in AIG’s trades was only as an “intermediary,” but...

The Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal report that Wall Street giants Citigroup and Goldman Sachs have been issued the swine flu vaccine for their "at risk" employees despite the fact that there are massive shortages of the vaccine nationwide. The rarity of the vaccine has made it a hot commodity, one in which movers, shakers, traders, and bailout recipients now have jumped to the front of the line when it comes to what President Obama declared to be a National Emergency in late October. Reaction to the news has been swift, fierce, and angry. Senator Chris Dodd of...

During the Arlidge visit with Goldman, CEO Lloyd Blankfein spewed about one piece of BS for every billion dollars Goldman has made since the financial crisis started: Here's Blankfein or one of his lieutenants: ....with Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns off the street, Merrill Lynch a crippled shadow of its former self, and neither Citigroup nor UBS the forces of old, Goldman has a bigger slice of a growing pie. "We didn’t f*** up like the other guys. We’ve still got a balance sheet. So, now we’ve got a bigger and richer pot to piss in," is how one Goldman...

Is Lloyd Blankfein trying to provoke the enemies of Goldman Sachs? That was the first question that sprung to mind when we found the chief executive of Goldman smiling at us from the top of a very long profile of the firm that begins with the headline "I'm doing 'God's Work.' Meet Mr. Goldman Sachs. “We’re very important,” Blankfein is quoted as saying in The Times of London. “We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s...

LONDON (Reuters) - The chief executive of Goldman Sachs, which has attracted widespread media attention over the size of its staff bonuses, believes banks serve a social purpose and are doing "God's work."...

Treasury Blocks the Sale of Tax Credits by Fannie By NICK TIMIRAOS The U.S. Treasury blocked Fannie Mae's proposed sale of nearly $3 billion in low-income housing tax credits to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. on Friday after concluding that the deal was too costly for taxpayers. The extraordinary move was the latest sign of tensions within the Obama administration over how to balance political and financial pressures resulting from the housing crisis. Fannie Mae had agreed to sell roughly half of its $5.2 billion tax-credit portfolio and had received approval to proceed with the sale from...

Rep Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) recently met with senior officials of Goldman Sachs. The confusion she displayed during that meeting is astonishing. Here is her report : This week I had an opportunity most Americans would relish, just as I did. I was able to unload on two top executives of Goldman Sachs who descended from on high to my office because I clearly needed some educating. One was a Vice President and the other their Chief Risk Officer. I had authored a letter on October 28, along with Congressman Peter Welch, that read, "We understand Goldman Sachs is expected to...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Some big Wall Street banks are girding against the swine flu, but a flap over how the firms got the vaccine will make them miserable. The public is outraged about reports that Citi , Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley along with other big New York employers, received hundreds, even thousands, of H1N1 vaccine doses before hospitals and other healthcare providers, many of which have run out of the precious drug

We've been trying to figure out what, if any, preparations Wall Street has been taking to guard against H1N1. For the most part, the banks have been coy about their activities. But as noted on The Today Show this morning, several banks have been among the early recipients of H1N1 vaccine, allowing them to get ahead of hospitals in some instances. The story was originally broken by BusinessWeek this week. Goldman Sachs (GS) has received 200 doses in total -- the exact same as Lennox Hill hospital. Health officials say corporate partners are always part of the distribution of any...

This year's conference of the Francophone European Association for Bahá’í Studies (Association francophone européenne des études bahá’íes, AFEEB) on 24 and 25 October 2009 in Luxembourg discussed the future world order and global governance. The programme included a presentation of the concept of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) by the Chairman of the Committee for a Democratic U.N., Andreas Bummel. Outlining the path towards a directly elected world parliament, Mr Bummel stressed the "spiritual dimension" of the efforts. "The establishment of a UN Parliamentary Assembly would represent a changed consciousness. For the first time in human history such a...

As if $22 billion in bonuses were not enough, Goldman Sachs would now like to obtain another $1 billion in tax benefits from the federal government. As with the $12.9 billion that Goldman Sachs received from the U.S. government via payments made to the American International Group, Goldman Sachs would obtain an indirect federal benefit by using tax credits the government provided to Fannie Mae to offset its own profits and thus its federal tax payments. As the Wall Street Journal reported, Goldman Sachs might be purchasing up to $1 billion of Fannie Mae's tax credits. However, the tax credits,...

Hmmm.... maybe late, but not never! WASHINGTON — In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting. Right. On October 31st of 2007 I said: Realize this folks - some of these "boys" on Wall Street have gone so far with their hubris that they have, effectively, shorted your house! That'd be Goldman, who actually shorted subprime mortgage bonds (so they said)...

<p>Yesterday, I linked to an anonymous blogger/Goldman apologist who wrote that Tavakoli "has always been more bark than bite. Being provocative is part of her shtick."</p> <p>In August 2007, I publicly challenged the fact that AIG took no write-downs whatsoever for its credit default swaps on underlying mortgage related “super senior” positions. I used the example of its aggregate $19.2 billion in credit default swaps on super senior positions backed by BBB-rated tranches of residential mortgage backed securities. I spoke with Warren Buffett, but only about what I had already told the Wall Street Journal (Dear Mr. Buffett Pp. 164-165, 246).</p>

A much clearer picture is developing of what went on during the middle of the financial crisis, when AIG was bailed out by the government and Goldman Sachs ended up receiving 100 cents on the dollar from AIG on various instruments. The clearer picture is the result of Janet Tavakoli's provocative article, Goldman’s Lies of Omission. In the article, she claims that GS CFO David Viniar lied when he said GS's exposure to AIG would be insignificant. A anonymous Goldman apologist who writes at Economics of Contempt responded to Tavakoli's article, calling the article part of a, "ridiculous conspiracy about...

It's time to finally lay to rest claims stretching back as far as 2007 that Goldman Sachs was peddling securities backed by risky home mortgages while it was secretly betting that the US housing market was in trouble. Far from being "secretly" down on the US housing market, very early on Goldman was publicly and privately warning that home prices would decline and that this decline would have an impact on mortgage backed securities. The complaints about Goldman being on both sides of the mortgage trade stretch at least as far back as December, 2007. Ben Stein wrote a column...

WASHINGTON — In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting. Goldman's sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation's premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies. Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had...

WASHINGTON – In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages but never told the buyers that it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.....

Apparently there's a loophole in the law that allows barred foreign citizens to enter the United States. They just need to have a meeting with Goldman Sachs (GS). At least that's our interpretation of this story. WSJ: Aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska met with FBI agents in August and earlier this month as part of a continuing criminal probe, according to two administration officials. The focus of that probe couldn't be learned. Mr. Deripaska used the opportunity of his recent U.S. visits to meet with top executives of U.S. investment banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The aluminum giant...

When the historians finally finish sorting through the appalling decisions that have been made in the past two years, this one will probably be at the top of the heap. Last fall, as AIG began to realize how screwed it was, it started negotiating with the counterparties to all the credit default swaps it had written. One of the AIG's goals was to persuade these counterparties- These sorts of negotiations are exactly what should happen when a company gets in trouble. It goes to its creditors and says, look, we can't pay you everything, so here's your choice: Take something,...

Sounds like it to me. Interesting info out of FT: The Galleon hedge fund at the centre of an insider trading scandal paid hundreds of millions of dollars a year to its Wall Street banks and in return regularly received market information that would not have been disclosed to most investors, executives familiar with the matter say. A person familiar with Galleon, whose founder, Raj Rajaratnam, was charged with insider trading this month, said it paid about $250m to its banks last year. Executives who dealt with the fund said it paid more in fees and other charges during the...

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. — If Republican Chris Christie is being outspent by Democratic incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine in New Jersey's down-to-the-wire gubernatorial election, independent Chris Daggett is being swamped. Corzine, a former Wall Street executive who funded his own winning campaigns for U.S. Senate in 2000 and governor in 2005, is paying his own way again his re-election effort.

Congress Has 43,457,362 Reasons to Help Goldman Sachs Embattled Firm and Its Employees Spread Millions Around Washington in Donations and Lobbying Expenses 95 Not all their money has gone for mansions and Ferraris. Employees of Goldman Sachs are listed as a top contributor to 55 separate members of Congress. (ABC News Photo Illustration) The embattled Goldman Sachs investment banking firm and its employees have spent more than $43 million dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions to cultivate friends and buy influence in Washington, D.C. since 1989, according to an ABC News analysis of campaign finance records compiled by the Center...

It is by now well known that the banks on the other side of credit default swaps sold by AIG got paid out at par when the government bailed out the insurance giant. But what isn't as well known is that by deciding to pay AIG's counter-party in full, the Federal Reserve was reversing months of work AIG executives had done to convince the banks to take a haircut on their positions Bloomberg reports that the documents were similar to those drafted by AIG, except for one crucial detail. Part of a sentence in the document was crossed out. It...

Goldman Sachs Defends Dark Pools, Short Selling By JOAN E. SOLSMAN Goldman Sachs Group Inc. defended a range of trading practices currently under regulatory scrutiny, including dark pools and short selling, in a report to the Securities and Exchange Commission and a series of posting on its Web site. In defending dark pools, private venues where large blocks of securities are traded anonymously, Goldman said they are simply the result of technology improving on the kind of non-displayed liquidity that has always existed in the market. The firm, which has reaped huge trading profits in the last two quarters, said...

Janet Tavakoli is the president of Tavakoli Structured Finance, a Chicago-based firm that provides consulting to financial institutions and institutional investors, among those who have sought her opinion on derivatives, Warren Buffett. In an email to me, Janet writes: It is a strong statement to say that a CFO lied to the public, and in my opinion, David Vinear, Goldman Sach’s CFO lied about Goldman’s exposure to AIG while the AIG bailout was in progress in September 2008. Viniar spoke about risk management, but that is a separate issue from whether or not Goldman Sachs would have money at risk...

Back in 2003, the New Jersey Transportation Trust Fund Authority, which funds rail and road projects in the state, sold $345 million in auction-rate bonds. That's where the trouble began: Bloomberg: “This vividly shows the risk of entering into interest- rate swap agreements,” said Christopher Taylor, former executive director of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board in Alexandria, Virginia. “The world’s got to see what stupidity even the sophisticated investors like the transportation fund can get into.” While New Jersey replaced the debt with fixed-rate securities in 2008 after the $330 billion auction-rate bond market froze, the swap -- in which...

Goldman Sachs has hit the headlines again today, and for once the story does not concern the generous remuneration packages awarded to its staff. According to Felix Salmon at Reuters, Henry Paulson (pictured), the former US Treasury Secretary who was at the helm when the financial crisis hit in the autumn of 2008, held a meeting with Goldman Sachs’s board in Moscow in which he revealed details of future government policy. The revelation is contained in a new book, Too Big To Fail, written by New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, which describes the events leading to the collapse...

The prospect of Goldman Sachs awarding record bonuses in the wake of the financial collapse has the potential to incite a broad-based populist backlash, argues Martin Sieff. He explores how Wall Street has roused the public's ire in much the same way as did war profiteers in 1920s Weimar Germany. Why doesn't Goldman Sachs order its senior executives to wear silk top hats and 19th century long jackets with tails, and encourage them to kick beggars in the street with cable TV news teams covering them? They seem to be doing everything else they possibly can to discredit the capitalist...

A decade ago, when Goldman Sachs was a private partnership, it had $6.5bn in equity and its 220 partners, most of whose money was tied up in the firm until they retired, took good care of their pot of gold. The bank’s trading and principal investing division – the part that took the most risks with partners’ capital – was balanced with its fee-based investment banking and asset management divisions. Trading contributed about a third of its revenues in the two years leading up to its 1999 initial public offering. After it sold shares in the IPO to outside investors...

The vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs has launched an astonishing defence of bumper bonuses just a year after bankers brought the world's economy to the brink of collapse. In a speech likely to recall fictional banker Gordon Gekko in the film Wall Street - whose mantra 'greed is good' came to sum up the excesses of the 1980s - Lord Griffiths claimed taxpayers should 'tolerate the inequality'. And he insisted that banks should not be ashamed of rewarding staff. Lord Griffiths (left) has echoed the 'Greed is good' maxim by Gordon Gekko, played by MIchael Douglas in the film Wall Street,...

When sober-minded individuals begin to regard an enterprise within a nation as "an enemy of the people" you can bet that some serious blood is going to flow. This is now essentially the situation for the Goldman Sachs company, which last week announced third-quarter earnings of over $3 billion largely derived from converting zero percent loans from taxpayers into zero risk profits off of anything paying more than zero percent in interest, revenue, or dividends. The "people" across this big country may not have a clue how any of this is done, and there may be much to fault them...

Aided and abetted by imposters posing as authentic American citizens the United States of America has been taken over by an authentic dictator. How could so many millions of U. S. citizens just gently cede their heritage and birthright so easily; without more than a whimper? Assisted by genuine anti-American leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, actually elected by unknowing and uninformed lemmings, Barack Hussein Obama has surely seized the ultimate power of dictatorship and is making decisions not within the established authority of the office of President, which are opposed only by vocal chants from a gaggle of conservatives...

second and more serious battle of Copenhagen is shaping up, in mid-December, when a world conference gathers to impose limits on greenhouse gases to stop “global warming.” Primary purpose: Rope in the Americans who refused to submit to the Kyoto Protocols that Al Gore brought home in the Clinton era. The long campaign to bring the United States under another global regime—the newest piece in the architecture of world government—has been flagging since 2008. Then, it seemed a lock with the election of Obama and a veto-proof Democratic Senate. Why has the campaign stalled? Because global warming has stalled. The...

On October 14, Lord Christopher Monckton, a noted climate change expert, gave a presentation at Bethel College in St. Paul, MN in which he issued a dire warning regarding the United Nations Climate Change Treaty which is scheduled to be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009. .. Video 4:11 min

NEW YORK – Get over it, America. Wall Street bankers make too much money. The latest example: Goldman Sachs says it has set aside $16.7 billion so far this year for compensation — or about $530,000 per employee. Not bad for a company that a year ago received $10 billion in federal money as well as $12.9 billion from the government's bailout of American International Group Inc. Maddening? Sure. But forcing Goldman or any other Wall Street firm to pay employees less won't help a single unemployed American find a job. It won't help a single homeowner who can't afford...

Even as the economy continues to struggle, much of Wall Street is minting money — and looking forward again to hefty bonuses. Many Americans wonder how this can possibly be. How can some banks be prospering so soon after a financial collapse, even as legions of people worry about losing their jobs and their homes? It may come as a surprise that one of the most powerful forces driving the resurgence on Wall Street is not the banks but Washington. Many of the steps that policy makers took last year to stabilize the financial system — reducing interest rates to...

A celebrated Goldman Sachs partner, Gus Levy, coined the maxim that long defined the bank, the savviest and most influential firm on Wall Street: “Greedy, but long-term greedy.” But these days that old dictum is being truncated to just “greedy” by some Goldman critics. While many ordinary Americans are still waiting for an economic recovery, Goldman and its employees are enjoying one of the richest periods in the bank’s 140-year history. Goldman executives are perplexed by the resentment directed at their bank and contend the criticism is unjustified. But they find themselves in the uncomfortable position of defending Goldman’s blowout...

In a world where real competition, modern technology and lack of special government standing means most American businesses have no choice but to adapt and innovate -- Wall Streets wimps only apparent skill is rigging the game. In fact, on Wall Street there have always been only two basic ways to make money. The first and most difficult: Be a great investor -- to the best investors go the profits, rewarding those who are best at picking winning businesses for America and punishing those who fail through the loss of their money. The second, and seemingly preferred method, exploit those...

WASHINGTON – A Goldman Sachs executive has been named the first chief operating officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement division. The market watchdog says Adam Storch, vice president in Goldman Sachs' Business Intelligence Group, is assuming the new position of managing executive of the SEC division.

It will be business as usual for Goldman Sachs this morning. The bank will annoy a lot of people. Goldman, the institution that came through last year's financial crisis best - arguably the only pure investment bank left standing - will say how much money it made in the third quarter (a lot) and how many billions it has stored for bonuses (about $5.5bn towards a likely 2009 bonus pool of $23bn). For believers in Goldman's ethical standards and way of doing business, these are difficult times. Although it avoided the mistakes that brought down Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers,...

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- The Goldman Sachs steamroller keeps chugging along. The big investment bank posted a $3.2 billion quarterly profit Thursday, crushing Wall Street estimates for the third straight quarter. New York-based Goldman (GS, Fortune 500) made $5.25 a share, up from $1.81 a year ago and well above the $4.24 analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were forecasting. Goldman cited another strong quarter in its trading business, which has rebounded since the last half of 2008, when financial markets crumbled. Revenue at the fixed income, currency and commodities business soared to $6 billion from $1.6 billion a year ago,...

Goldman Sachs is considering donating in excess of $1bn (£627m) to charity in an attempt to quell the growing furore over the likely size of its 2009 bonus pot. The investment bank which is set to report its results for the three months to September on Thursday, is understood to be giving serious thought to some form of large philanthropic donation. The aim of the donation, first disclosed by Henry Blodget's Business Insider blog, would be to deflect the likely row come at the end of the year. By then Goldman's total compensation pot is expected to be a record...

<p>Noted analyst diverges with ratings cut, asks, 'why be greedy?</p> <p>NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- "Why be greedy?"</p> <p>That's the question star analyst Meredith Whitney asked her well-heeled clients on Tuesday as she went against the grain of recent Wall Street punditry and cut her rating on shares of Goldman Sachs /quotes/comstock/13*!gs/quotes/nls/gs (GS 188.99, +1.76, +0.94%) to neutral from buy.</p>

The calendars, obtained by the AP under the Freedom of Information Act, offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the continued influence of three companies — Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. — whose executives can reach the nation's most powerful economic official on the phone, sometimes several times a day. What the calendars show, however, is that only a select few can call the treasury secretary.

    1) Circa 1994/1995, Bill Ayers ghostwrites Dreams from My Father. 2) Barack Hussein Obama Jr thereby agrees to the publication of a fictional account of his own life, which includes a tale of a bogus Caucasian girlfriend who is in fact based on William Ayers's memories of his deceased lover, Diana Oughton. 3) Diana Oughton has perished in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion of 1970, and Ayers has gone on to marry Bernardine Dohrn [Ohrnstein] during his period in hiding. 4) Bernadine Dohrn [Ohrnstein] has received her JD in 1967, from the University of Chicago Law School, but...

A landmark ruling in a recent Kansas Supreme Court case may have given millions of distressed homeowners the legal wedge they need to avoid foreclosure. In Landmark National Bank v. Kesler, 2009 Kan. LEXIS 834, the Kansas Supreme Court held that a nominee company called MERS has no right or standing to bring an action for foreclosure. MERS is an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a private company that registers mortgages electronically and tracks changes in ownership. The significance of the holding is that if MERS has no standing to foreclose, then nobody has standing to foreclose – on...

From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they're about to do it again ### The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a...

HANK Paulson has admitted that he kept in touch with "market participants" on Wall Street when he was Treasury secretary. But did the former head of Goldman Sachs use his government position to enrich his friends during one of the most tumultuous times in US financial history? Paulson's phone logs, which I obtained after a Freedom of Information Act request, show that the Treasury chief kept in frequent touch with a virtual Who's Who of Wall Street's power players. But a half-hour block of time could prove to be the most intriguing bit of non-information in his schedule. Let me...