Taxpayers Help Goldman Sachs Reach Height Of Profit In New Skyscraper

Bloomberg:

In the first six months of 2010, about 6,000 employees of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will take a break from their spreadsheets and move across the southern tip of Manhattan to a new 43-story, steel-and-glass skyscraper.

The building was a bargain -- and not just because the final cost is expected to be $200 million less than the $2.3 billion price the company had estimated when construction began in November 2005. Goldman Sachs also benefited from the government's determination to avoid losing jobs in lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Read the whole story: Bloomberg

Comments

[my obama kos]

01:13 PM on 12/23/2009

We need a job stimulus instead of the usual empty talk. there is no economic recovery until healthcare is passed and people have jobs.

good articles: http://iamned111.blogspot.com/

[anfractuous]

07:51 PM on 12/22/2009

How ironic and commendable, that this article should appear on Bloomberg, since it was Mayor Bloomberg that, without latex gloves, lovingly massaged Lloyd Blankfein's scrotum in order to get him to remain in NYC. The argument can be made that the obscene bonuses paid by Goldman help keep the city afloat. But hundreds of millions dollars of concessions could have been better spent in revitalizing the manufacturing sector, which could absorb the hundreds of thousands of (optimistically) high school educated adults who are now languishing without hope, but quite capable of lashing out.

New York can not persist unless everyone is earning a livable wage, and we all know what "livable" means here. Bloomberg seems content in retaining a permanent, servile underclass. I love it when Lloyd Balnkfein is invariably described as the "son of a postal worker". So, the inevitable conclusion is that if you are not earning $60 million a year, and you come from modest means, you are inherently degenerate,and any complaint you register is merely sour grapes.

[US1st2009]

03:19 PM on 12/22/2009

thank you Christine Harper for a great piece of journalism. keep on them, there are far too few journalists out there willing to state and document the truth.

goldman sachs are financial terrori$t$ that should be tried for crimes against the American public.

[DBtv]

03:13 PM on 12/22/2009

Guillotine goldman sachs!

[DebtNavigation]

02:08 PM on 12/22/2009

I see a way Bin Laden could redeem himself...

[TJCole]

01:23 PM on 12/22/2009

Goldman Sachs, Uber Alles...!

[jumperpin]

12:49 PM on 12/22/2009

You folx just don't get it.

When a multi-millionaire CEO dabbles in global hedge funds/swaps, the trader gets a per-cent or so. Both of them buys that Korean flat-screen TV and employ illegals to do their yard work. Workers servicing this dutiful and thankless opulence can, in turn, charge their Wal-Mart purchases of Chinese imports. Burgeoning repossessions, foreclosures and bankruptcies further employ bill collectors, attorneys, tow-truck drivers and legions of India-based customer service personnel.

Do you see the multiplier effect?

[Troyxx]

12:53 PM on 12/22/2009

Wow, you got it exactly right.
Thanks. Great post!

[DBtv]

03:11 PM on 12/22/2009

Fanned for incisive analysis.

[RomeoMD25]

11:44 AM on 12/22/2009

The global warming scam passed by Congress. Goldman Sachs is in the middle of it, as usual– a potential trillion dollar sure thing.

And Former Vice President Al Gore who will profit from the cap-and-trade plan through his company, Generation Investment Management,–
Gore is joined by three former Goldman Sachs heads in their carbon offsets business.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine/7

[kmk04]

11:14 AM on 12/22/2009

NYmag has a pretty funny response to the Bloomberg article:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/12/goldman_sachs_basically_profit.html

[TJCole]

11:12 AM on 12/22/2009

Nationalize Goldman Sachs and break them up, for the sake of our Nation and World Peace...!

[lechatnoir]

10:13 AM on 12/22/2009

Why not move them straight to one of the FEMA camps and save us all time and $$.

[Palemoon]

10:07 AM on 12/22/2009

Goldman Sachs needs a new home while millions of Americans go homeless? No sweat, the government will make it happen because, yes, the American people ARE that gullible.

[TJCole]

11:13 AM on 12/22/2009

GS is a leader in those foreclosures and evictions...no less as well...

[wendynyc]

09:54 AM on 12/22/2009

Tallest towers in any downtown American city are the insurance and financial companies!

[party-of-one]

05:00 AM on 12/23/2009

The biggest investments are made by investors. What is your point?

[essbird]

09:25 AM on 12/22/2009

Yup. Pretty good piece. Saviors of us all, Masters of the Universe. From the article:

"To [CEO Lloyd] Blankfein, the 55-year-old postal worker’s son who earned $68.5 million in 2007, the firm’s ability to generate profits and reward employees is a boon to society.

“Our shareholders are pensioners, mutual funds and individual investors, and they’re all taxpayers,..The people of Goldman Sachs are one of the most productive workforces in the world.”
----------------------------------------
"What Goldman Sachs’s workforce produces is different from what employees do at other financial institutions, leading some people to question why the firm is entitled to taxpayer support. It doesn’t operate branches or automated-teller machines. Only millionaires can open checking accounts. Instead, Goldman Sachs exists to serve large corporations, governments, institutions and wealthy individuals.

It makes money for them and for itself by trading assets ranging from stocks and bonds to oil futures and credit derivatives. In the first nine months of 2009, more than 90 percent of the company’s pretax earnings came from trading and principal investments, which include market bets, stakes in corporate debt and equity, and assets such as power plants.

“People who know the industry and know Goldman Sachs know that it is a giant hedge fund, but it’s wrapped in an investment banking wrapper,” says Samuel Hayes, a professor emeritus of investment banking at Harvard Business School in Boston. The public “would be horrified to think that their tax dollars were going to a hedge fund.” "

[patsydecline]

08:26 AM on 12/22/2009

can't help but be outraged when i hear this in light of seeing a single mother on tv ,whose husband recently died, say i don't have health insurance... she instead told the reporter she buys life insurance so if anything happens, her 13 y.o. daughter wouldn't suffer...and then she begins to cry...

if this doesn't show how twisted and perverted our system has become, i don't know what will...
can only imagine the disbelief people reading/seeing this from other countries must think...

i only know that our humanity has moved aside for power and profit...
perhaps we are the ones who need to be rescued from ourselves...

[Troyxx]

12:57 PM on 12/22/2009

Yes, and those heartless monsters need to be locked up, before they take everything - jobs, HC, etc. etc. and people die in absolute misery. What goes around comes around and I want those creeps to suffer big time.