Articles about Goldman Sachs and HSBC

Ellipse

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
New York Post
July 19, 2009 Last updated: 4:43 am
Terry Keenan


CALL it the Goldman rally.

From the moment ace banking analyst Meredith Whitney turned bullish on the venerable firm Monday morning, through the after-glow of its blow-out profit report the next day, stocks were off to the races.

The Dow and S&P 500 put in their best winning streak since May, as pundits proclaimed that Goldman's record quarter on Wall Street meant that all is right again on Main Street.

Sadly, just the opposite is the case. In fact, to turn a famous phrase on its head, what's bad for America is good for Goldman Sachs.

How so? Well, a look at how Goldman makes its money tells the story. Although the firm morphed into a commercial bank to take advantage of a whole host of government handouts, Goldman is truly a trading machine, a hedge fund on steroids, with trading revenue accounting for 69 percent of gross revenue in the first quarter, according to an analysis by credit maven James Bianco.

Goldman gets the most attention for its deft handling of its own account, but a big chunk of its trading pie also involves the selling and trading of US government debt -- federal, state and local. Indeed, as one of the biggest primary dealers of US Treasuries, Goldman Sachs has a huge vested interest in the United States digging a deeper and deeper hole.

These days, trading Uncle Sam's IOUs is big business. It's also one of the few growth markets on Wall Street. The IPO business, private equity and mergers and acquisitions have yet to recover from the credit crash.

By Goldman's own estimates, the US will borrow a record $3.25 trillion in the current fiscal year -- almost four times as much as in 2008.

With its biggest competitors in this market (Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns) out of business, Goldman is a major toll collector on Washington's red-ink railroad. Whitney labels it a "debt tsunami" that will lift Goldman's fortunes going forward.

To put it bluntly, Goldman Sachs is a play on the bankrupting of America -- the more we borrow, the more they make.

That's their business and it's all perfectly legal, but the American public should know this side of the Goldman profit miracle.


The ability of Lloyd Blankfein, the Goldman CEO, to show profits of $3.44 billion in the latest quarter, while the company has set aside $11.4 billion this year to compensate its employees is truly remarkable. The firm did it through savvy trading and management, but also while competing on a playing field that has been cleared of many of its top competitors and so soon after Uncle Sam bailed them out with $10 billion of TARP money -- and millions more through AIG, all paid for by taxpayers.

It also did so by benefiting nicely from the Washington borrowing binge that was triggered in part by the banking crisis that started in Wall Street's own backyard.

Sure, someone has to trade and sell all that government wampum, and Goldman is as good a firm to do it as any. But come on guys, it isn't brain surgery.

The average American might not be getting a $10 million bonus this year, but he is smart enough to figure that out.


http://www.nypost.com/seven/07192009/business/good_for_goldman__bad_for_america_180130.htm
 
_http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aoYG0w.OwKuQ&pos=1

By Michael P. Regan

April 16 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stocks extended losses after the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Goldman Sachs Group Inc. with fraud.

Goldman Sachs, the most profitable firm in Wall Street history, tumbled 6 percent.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 0.8 percent to 1,201.98 at 10:40 a.m. in New York. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 44.06 points, or 0.4 percent, to 11,100.51.
 
I was told that when this was announced yesterday on WBAI (99.5FM) a general call for revolution was given and explained as necessary because psychopaths are in charge.

[quote author=occupywallst.org]The People vs. Goldman Sachs - Trial and March!

Posted Nov. 3, 2011, 12:08 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

On November 3rd, the People, the 99 percent, will hold A People’s Hearing of Goldman Sachs in Liberty Square Park and march on Goldman Sachs! The people will bring to justice perhaps the single most egregious perpetrator of economic fraud and corruption in the United States. The Hearing will include testimonials from individuals directly affected by Goldman’s fraudulent manipulation of financial markets, including victims of housing foreclosures, pension losses, public lay-offs and untenable student debt.

The proceedings will also include expert analysis from Ralph Nader, Cornel West and Chris Hedges. Following the 99-minute hearing the people will decide on a fair and deliverable verdict via our own process of consensus-based direct democracy – and we intend to deliver it ourselves – to the headquarters of Goldman Sachs at 200 West Street, eight blocks from Liberty Square. We will ask for something our judicial and legislative systems have so far failed to deliver – the return of billions of taxpayer dollars to the 99 percent and criminal sentences for those Goldman Sachs executives who carried out the fraud. The event will be broadcast live via the Occupy Wall Street Livestream, among other public media outlets.

The People’s Hearing will examine the collapse of regulations and political and economic controls that permitted Goldman Sachs to loot the U.S. Treasury. It will look at how we came to live in a country where it became impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs. It will ask why Goldman Sachs was allowed to enrich itself not only at the expense of millions of small investors but through its control of the bailouts and the regulatory process. It will demand to know why Goldman Sachs, one of the prime culprits in the destruction of the global economy, is permitted to continue to bankrupt countries such as Greece, creating massive human suffering, without oversight or control. The People’s Hearing will finally give Goldman Sach’s victims a voice.

Rolling Stone columnist Matt Taibbi described Goldman Sachs as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." The broad outlines of Goldman Sachs’ massive fraud are well documented. It put together a collaterized debt obligation (CDO) from mortgage-backed securities that the company assumed would fail. It sold these CDOs as assets and secure investments to pension and mutual funds as well as institutions and banks while betting against them through credit default swaps (CDS). A credit default swap, or CDS, is an insurance policy where the issuer makes up a loss if an asset goes bad. Goldman Sachs, in essence, sold toxic garbage to investors and when this garbage was exposed as garbage, wiping out tens of millions of individual investors who had put away money for retirement or college, Goldman Sachs raked in money from insurers. AIG, which insured these worthless CDOs, lacked sufficient funds to pay Goldman Sachs during the financial meltdown of 2008, a meltdown that evaporated some $ 40 trillion in worldwide wealth. Goldman Sachs, with numerous former officials ensconced in the Treasury department and government, simply looted the U.S. Treasury to pay itself. And they are sitting on our money to this day.

The firm has committed numerous acts of fraud that extend beyond our shores. Goldman Sachs was instrumental in helping Greek authorities hide its mounting government budget deficit by selling swaps to the Greek government in return for future revenue streams. The Greek government was able through this arrangement to mask the loan which would have raised its budget deficit above euro zone limits. The sleights of hand now threaten to see Greece go into default and could trigger a massive banking crisis through Europe. The crisis has seen the Greek government unleash draconian austerity measures that are taken out on the backs of students, the poor and the working class. Goldman Sachs is a global criminal syndicate.

Goldman Sachs, while its victims suffer from foreclosures and bankruptcy, has set aside $ 10 billion in compensation and bonuses for its chief executives this year. These bonuses are being paid out even as Goldman Sachs dismissed 1,300 employees with another 1,000 employees expected to lose their jobs by the end of the year. No one is safe from our oligarchic elite, not even the underlings at Goldman Sachs. We invite the newly unemployed from Goldman Sachs to join us.

The median paycheck in the United States, even while these corporate heads pulled in salaries that often equate to $ 900,000 an hour, fell by 1.2 percent to $ 26,364. The number of poor and unemployed is swelling while the number of Americans making $ 1 million or more climbed to 94,000, a 20 percent increase from 2009. Corporate profits now account for 88 percent of all income growth while wages account for 1 percent. The top one percent has, through fraud and the corporate control of the judiciary and regulatory agencies, accounted for about half of all income growth since the 1970s.

How is it possible that in a democracy the bottom 99 percent sees only half of economic growth? How is it possible that the economy does not work on behalf of the 99 percent? How is it possible that financial swindlers and liars continue to run our economy and our government?

Its time to bring justice to Goldman Sachs!

Outline of Event:
09:45 Guests and Panel are seated
10:00 Introduction to A People’s Hearing, Tony and Sandra Nurse, Occupy Wall Street
10:10 Opening Statement, Dr. Cornel West
10:20 Background of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Chris Hedges
10:20 Witness Testimonials
11:00 Proposal of Verdict
12:00 A Call to Action – March to Goldman Sachs[/quote]
 
_Yahoo News: Latest and Breaking News, Headlines, Live Updates, and More


[snip]

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.
 
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Well, when was leadership about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing at Goldman Sachs? Probably never, not since the firm was formed from what I know of their history.
 
Either this man can not see the pathology in front of him unless it is painfully obvious, or he is a clever psychopath, leaving the sinking ship and put up an interesting show while doing it. From what I have gathered, he created some noise around various circles, especially the clients of Goldman Sachs who are not happy to be called "Muppets" :)

Whatever his motivation may be, I found the letter interesting because this may cause Goldman Sachs to lose its clients and further show the pyschopathy evident in financial market to the masses. Author is already trending in twitter.
 
_http://news.yahoo.com/goldman-sachs-exec-publishes-scathing-resignation-letter-york-075726281.html
"My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics "


:lol2: :lol2: :lol2:
 
Biomiast said:
Either this man can not see the pathology in front of him unless it is painfully obvious, or he is a clever psychopath, leaving the sinking ship and put up an interesting show while doing it. From what I have gathered, he created some noise around various circles, especially the clients of Goldman Sachs who are not happy to be called "Muppets" :)

Whatever his motivation may be, I found the letter interesting because this may cause Goldman Sachs to lose its clients and further show the pyschopathy evident in financial market to the masses. Author is already trending in twitter.


Calling them muppets is ironically an objective fact. It is a name used daily in poker, and is where a lot of the studied players monies come from.


muppet A player who is unskilled or unversed on the rules of poker.
-http://www.pokerthrottle.com/GeneralPoker/PokerTerms.aspx


The truth does have a tendency to hurt though.
 
maryjk_99 said:
_http://news.yahoo.com/goldman-sachs-exec-publishes-scathing-resignation-letter-york-075726281.html


[snip]

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

This is BIG Joke. This guy is meekly looking for some political Mileage out of his resignation( what ever may be the reason). Goldman Sach's is a company that hires people on very strange examination, some suspect is pathological testing. Probably he wants to enter politics or some other cheap stunt.
 
Hello all.Happy new year
Maybe these articles articles have been already discussed here.
ENG:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213#ixzz2EywCnsTV
FR:
http://www.legrandsoir.info/le-scandaleux-arrangement-financier-avec-la-banque-hsbc-prouve-que-la-guerre-contre-la-drogue-n-est-qu-une-farce-rolling-stone.html

Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression:
http://zerohedge.blogspot.fr/2009/06/goldman-sachs-engineering-every-major.html

FR:
La grande machine à bulles
Par Matt Taibi (Rolling Stone), traduit par Jean Lasson sur Agoravox
http://www.agoravox.fr/actualites/economie/article/goldman-sachs-la-grande-machine-a-59168
Of course, after reading political porenology, law is really vulnerable pscychologique diversity of human nature.
 
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