(yay! capitalism is alive and well!)
Wall Street is so happy these days! Happy, happy, happy! Goldman Sachs has announced huge profits for the second quarter. In fact, they beat the estimates quite handily. I can just imagine all the stuffy old white men in $3,000 suits high-fiving each other. Brings a little tear to my eye.
Here is what Bloomberg.com had to say, a few days before the actual figures were announced:
July 10 (Bloomberg) -- "Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is poised to report the largest profit since it set earnings records in 2007, marking the return of a business model that was the envy of Wall Street before the financial crisis devastated competitors and spurred a government bailout."
And here is my rant (you knew I would have one, right?) -
What the heck??? Their business model was the ENVY of Wall Street??
- Their business model consisted, in part, of packaging worthless mortgages, disguising them as something else, and selling them for way more than they were worth, which was basically nothing.
- Their business model is based on manipulating financial conditions for their own best interests. I believe this is also known in some circles as The American Way.
- Their business model helped create the black hole that destroyed the lifelong savings of millions of Americans.
They are now earning huge profits by returning to the same business model, and we are supposed to be HAPPY about that??
Here is a link to a fascinating story called The Great American Bubble Machine. One section reads:
"The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pump and dump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses, and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere — high gas prices, rising consumer credit rates, half eaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to pay off bailouts."
Democrats and Republicans alike have expressed excitement about Goldman Sachs' return to profitability.
Me, I'm not so sure.
~~~
Is it just me, or do you sound cynical?
ReplyDeleteWhen are you running for office?
ReplyDeleteBruce: Oops, sorry. I need to watch that, or someone might mistake me for a Republican. lol
ReplyDeleteLily: I'd make a terrible candidate. I can write things down, but I'm awful at thinking on my feet. I'd always be saying "Uh, just a sec, let me go write down the answer to that question."
Hey, I'm politically conservative, and I agree with this rant. I ignore half the crap that oozes out of Wall Street simply because said crap is repackaged and sold to the public as good news. It's sick. Good news for me will be when the interest rate goes back up on my Money Market account...and when I don't have to worry about losing my job to budget cuts. When do the working people get a break?
ReplyDeleteDo some research on Goldman and Al Gore's potential profits if Cap and Trade passes? It will make you even more sick. Goldman and Paulson (former Goldman CEO) were directly behind the killing of Lehman Brothers which was a direct competitor of Goldman. They had Paulson bail out AIG because AIG owed them a payout of $12+ billion on insurance policies for those bad mortgage securities. Goldman paid 0 taxes last year.
ReplyDelete