Why Goldman Sachs Is the Greediest and Most Dastardly of the Wall Street Pigs | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet

Why Goldman Sachs Is the Greediest and Most Dastardly of the Wall Street Pigs
(or reason 2, 998 why what the Obama administration is doing is not evidence of socialism but rather evidence of desperate measures to save a dying, greedy capitalism. We could call it late finance capitalism, financial monopoly capitalism, debt capitalism, or, something with a history: Mafioso Capitalism. It's what we called the Russian form that emerged in the shock treatment of privatization as everything public was expropriated. Our version is of course much more extreme and advanced--makes you almost proud to be an American--because it's rooted in expropriating not just current public funds, but private savings (the exsanguination of all savings funds, funds themselves that were part of the buy off of the middle class). So, it's not the return of Mafioso Capitalism, but it's public face--they don't even have to hide it anymore.)

So, while these golden ones are loudly repudiating the $10 billion public subsidy they took from us, they are coyly retaining at least 40 billion of our dollars to stay afloat -- a tidy sum that does not include any restrictions on pay levels. Coincidentally, Goldman has since announced that it is setting aside nearly $5 billion to be distributed at the end of the year as compensation for its executives, including payments for outlandish bonuses for those at the top.

Saying that such-and-such is the greediest bunch of bankers on Wall Street is like someone claiming to have the biggest hairdo in Dallas -- the competition is fierce. But that's quite a head of hair atop Goldman Sachs. Well, sniff the executives, we merely play the game according to the rules we're given.

Sure, and the Mafia plays its game strictly according to Hoyle. The difference is that the Mafia must actually break the rules, while Wall Street simply hires lobbyists and politicians to write the rules.

Indeed, Goldman Sachs has been nicknamed "Government Sachs" by its rivals, for it always seems to have at least one of its top officials strategically placed inside government to bend federal financial rules to its benefit. In the 1990s, for example, two Goldman foxes -- Robert Rubin and Larry Summers -- were inside the Clinton administration henhouse, where they helped craft the deregulation scams that enriched their former banks, before the scams caused the crash of our economy.

Comments

[Bob Allen]

"(savings) funds themselves that were part of the buy off of the middle class"..

Exactly; this "bought off" middle class, which at the same time (is it the same thing?) bought into the "myth of the saving worker", is now demoralized and in shock- metanarratives were supposed to be over but this narrative of capitalism-as-religion was supposed to have a different ending, a Heaven of gated security in old age. What happens when the middle class finds out they are working class after all, at the moment when working class institutions (unions et al) have been crushed?

[Jodi]

I agree--it makes me think of Greenspan's term 'the traumatized worker'--he used this to explain why workers didn't do more to resist outsourcing and deindustrialization in the 90s. So perhaps now we are seeing the traumatized middle class, which strikes me as a better description than 'outraged' insofar as the manifestations of outrage are pretty lame.

[Alain]

I do not want to start a fight - but this description sounds a bit condescending. As a member of the traumatized middle class, I think while expressions of outrage maybe "lame" to this point, I think we are only at the beginning of the current crisis. Most home forclosures have been concentrated to certain regions of the country, umemployment is still under 10% in most places, etc... As the devastation spreads and becomes more profound, there is bound to be more social unrest. If people do not respond in a more aggressive manner, than perhaps this description will be warrented.

[Jodi]

I'm surprised this seems condescending. I wrote after reading about the unemployment rates in Michigan and North Carolina. I was also thinking about the cuts and layoffs that had affected people in my family. I doesn't seem to me that it's condescending to point out that people are not rioting in the streets. The gesture to Greenspan was a way for me to point out that the situation is even worse that we might think--people are so traumatized that they are, at least right now, just rolling over.

[Alain]

I apologize Jodi - I reread the comments and I am clearly being overly sensitive. I am being personally affected right now by health care bills and do not know what to do. I would take to the streets if I thought it would help. Thanks.

[Jodi]

omg, Alain, no apology necessary--I value your comments. I hope things work out with all the bills you are facing (and that the family member with poor health gets better and is not suffering).

[Alain]

Thanks.

[Larry Castellani]

Test post. Sorry. Am I here???