Goldman Sachs Doing "God's Work"?
The only thing worse than Goldman Sachs amassing close to $20 billion in bonus money for its executives based on various government subsidies and bailout measures is listening to senior executives there trying to explain it all away. The spin job has been coming from an unlikely source: The normally media shy Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein has been making the rounds lately, talking to selective reporters, including William Cohan, who recently wrote a book about the fall of Bear Stearns and now has the firm's complete cooperation as to write something on Goldman Sachs, the most prestigious of the Wall Street firms, even if it needed a bailout to survive last year's financial crisis..
Cohan's Bear book, the first of many financial crisis tomes (including my own) wasn't exactly a puff piece, but trading access for information is a time honored journalistic practice, and it's human nature to be nicer to someone who gives you information. So presumably we'll all find out from Cohan how, in the throes of the financial crisis, Goldman really didn't need the $10 billion in bailout money it received from the federal government as its stock cratered; that it was forced to take the cash from then-Treasury Secretary (and former Goldman CEO) Hank Paulson, or how despite its exposure to troubled insurance giant AIG, Goldman was miraculously "hedged," against losses, meaning that the fed's AIG's bailout last year didn't really help Goldman survive last year's panic. No, Goldman survived because it was built for survival.
Forget the absurdity of such claims, Blankfein has been on a roll of late, repeating them time and again, not just presumably to Cohan, but to a growing number of credulous journalists who will stomach just about anything to get a few minutes with the CEO of the Great Goldman Sachs, even if its greatness was put to the test last year.
Blankfein's spinning is reaching epic proportions. Several recent stories about Goldman have cast the firm as the Great Satan of the securities markets, or as Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi put it, the "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." No longer is Blankfein simply trying tell the world Goldman isn't the root of all evil; rather, old Lloyd is informing us all that Goldman is a source of goodness in the world. The exact quote, from the Times of London has Blankfein professing that as CEO of the vampire squid he's actually "doing God's work," simply by doing what banks get paid to do: Raising money for clients and investing in businesses.
Oh really, Lloyd? My brother is a doctor who works in the intensive care unit of an inner city hospital; he could have a cushy lucrative practice here in New York, but he likes helping people, and yet he has never once told me he's doing God's work even after he explained one afternoon how he had just saved a homeless man's life by massaging his heart.
Believe it or not, I happen not to fall into the camp of Goldman haters, where people believe the firm is behind every scandal and conspiracy and may have even created the swine flu virus so it could corner the market for drug stocks. (Though Goldman and several other firms did seem to have no problem obtaining for their employees the swine-flu vaccine, which is in short supply.) Indeed, as I show in my new book The Sellout, when it came to risk-taking over the last 30 years on Wall Street, Goldman did it better than any other firm on the Street. The folly that was found at a firm like Bear Stearns, with its CEO caring more about playing bridge and golf (and allegedly smoking marijuana) than tending to the firm's balance sheet, would never happen at Goldman Sachs.
But there is something truly unsettling about the new message coming from the firm, honed I hear from a phalanx of image consultants who are literally trying to re-write history as the firm gets ready to dole out its enormous bonus pool. And that's what all this spinning is about. For the record Goldman Sachs didn't take down the financial system last year -- Citigroup, Merrill, Lehman or Bear are much more responsible for that. And for the record every firm spins -- its called public relations, and Goldman will need all the PR it can muster as it decides in the coming weeks how much of the $20 billion it will hand out to its executives. My sources at Goldman say Blankfein won't be stingy because he needs to prevent top producers from bolting to hedge funds and private equity.
What makes Goldman so contemptible is that its level of spin has almost no basis in reality. We are supposed to believe Goldman wasn't bailed out; it didn't need the government's money when big investors where yanking funds from the firm and its stock was plummeting and now the firm is doing "God's work," even as government bureaucrats continue to subsidize how the firm makes most of its money -- through risk taking and bond trading, all on the backs of the US taxpayer.
Goldman, in case you haven't heard, has been classified as a commercial bank, meaning it can borrow cheaply to finance its risk taking, and can borrow from the Federal Reserve in a pinch. That's why it's amassing such massive profits. And yet not a penny of its massive bonus pool will be lent out to funding-starved small businesses. Think about that: The Federal Government run by the most Liberal Administration in years, is subsidizing big business at the expense to small business.
How did this bizarre scenario develop? Who knows, but it should come as no surprise that Wall Street -- Goldman in particular -- funneled far more money to president Obama than it did to his Republican challenger, John McCain. Maybe that's why the president has been eerily silent on the Goldman Sachs subsidy, even as Lloyd Blankfein tells the world he's doing "God's work."
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"The only thing worse than Goldman Sachs amassing close to $20 billion in bonus money for its executives based on various government subsidies and bailout measures is listening to senior executives there trying to explain it all away."
No, it was much worse watching this trainwreck coming and pleading with your Senators and Representatives to vote against TARP and other legislation that subsidized Goldman, while knowing all the while that they were bought and paid for.
At a congressional hearing under oath Blankfield told Congress that he earned $800.000 for
that year, the true number is around #50.000,000. Should he be indited?
Some signs that one is not involved in "Gods Work"
1. You tell a reporter you are doing "Gods Work".
2. You are being compensated well in earthly ways (Job can tell you god does not pay well here&now)
3. Your "work" is; trying to turn a dollar into a dollar and five cents.
4. There are layers of "security" between you and the people you "help"
5. You are selling things for profit, rather than giving of yourself, time and money
6. You are the one who makes the claim of doing "Gods Work" (instead of someone else)
7 New Jersey voters replace a former co-worker with a Republican
8 You are not being totally SELFLESS like Mother Teresa or the people who helped Otto Frank's family.
9. Assuming God is all knowing, it knows when one is full of carp!
10 You turn your nose up at the editorial @ http://www.suburbanempire.com because it is critical of you.
"Be not deceived. God is not mocked."
Deu 18:20: "But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die."
Ezek 22:25: "There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof, like a roaring lion ravening the prey; they have devoured souls; they have taken the treasure and precious things; they have made her many widows in the midst thereof."
Since "God" can be defined however one wants, "God's work" can also.
Al Qaeda is, after all, doing God's work.
"The folly that was found at a firm like Bear Stearns, with its CEO caring more about playing bridge and golf (and allegedly smoking marijuana) than tending to the firm's balance sheet, would never happen at Goldman Sachs."
That's what happens when you move your business across the river to New Jersey.
G0LDMAN HAS NOT PAID BACK ALMOST 85% of the MONEY IT RECEIVED FROM AMERICANS SO WHY ARE THEY EXEMPT FROM INCOME CAPS?
WHY ARE THEY EXEMPT?
http://www.businessinsider.com/dylan-ratigan-how-goldman-sachs-made-3-billion-a-year-after-we-bailed-their-lucky-@#$%&!-out-2009-10
G0LDMAN got the Following:
1. $10 Billion from TARP
2. $11 Billion from FED
3. $30 Billion from FDIC
4. $13 Billion from A1G pass through
Total = $64 Billion
They have paid back only the $10 Billion in TARP money or 15.26%! When and where is the other $54 Billion!
Time to LIMIT JPM AND G0LDMAN INCOMES just like CIT and BofA and the REST!
Are they using the FED Reserves PR Firm, the PR Firm that represented ENR0N?
LOL! Common Charley you can NO longer say this:
"Goldman Sachs, the most prestigious of the Wall Street firms, even if it needed a bailout to survive last year's financial crisis.."
$48 Trillion Tier Three (HIDDEN) during third Quarter as reported by OCC!
G0LDMAN took $20 billion in bonus money for its executives using AMERICAN Taxpayer Money when they would be Bankrupt without it and have $48 Trillion in T0XIC Derivatives Hidden “Off-Balance-Sheet” (see OCC)!
It worked for GW BUSH, why not Lloyd Blankfein?
Goldman Sachs needs some good PR, what better way than to call on the GREAT WIZARD IN THE SKY!
I think Blankfein has overreached himself with the "God's work" comment. The usual response is: "What god would that be, Mammon?"
I think he left the "L" out of God. I think he meant GOLD.
He is doing "GOLDs" work.
None of the big bank, big insurance, big corporations make money based on God so that is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.
They abandoned their own country and countrymen by allowing economic policies that have put so many people out of work, losing their homes, and pushing the middle class into the dirt.
They did it with no thought or regard to the consequences and knew if any consequence exists it would be paid by someone else, not them.
They don't have policies to reinvest in America and they don't have policies that require investors in corporations reinvest a certain percentage of profits in job growth for Americans.
They wouldn't suffer one bit if they gave up 1 to 2 percent of their profits to provide jobs so don't speak about God because God isn't about suffering and that is what they have done to the American people no matter what foolishness they think in their golden parachute mindset.
It reminds me of the days (not too long ago) when TV preachers used to tell their loyal viewers that God had decreed that we had to send in money to ensure that God's message would continue to be broadcast. But at least in that case, the viewers had a choice as to whether the money was donated - now the entire nation has been drafted into God's mission at Goldman Sachs & Wall Street, against our will and against the mandate from both liberals and conservatives last Fall..
wait...your description of the TV preachers sounds an awful lot like Republicans
In case you didn't notice, this is happening on the Democrat's watch. Yet more evidence that they are as deeply in bed with big business as liberal partisans like to believe the Republicans are - Take a look as the Pharma headline today for further evidence.
Blankfein's chutzpah is only rivaled by the public's gullibility. I hope the press continues the attempt to keep Goldman et al, and the Treasury, honest. Blankfein doing "God's work" is akin to the coal industry calling its products "clean". If Goldman comes out smelling like roses after they hand out their billions in bonuses, their PR firm deserves about half of that pot of money.
Charlie,
Your brother may never have claimed to be doing God's work, but if he were being vilified every day by both the media and the government, I suspect he just might consider pointing it out.
Moreover, I can guarantee you that, working in an ICU, Dr. Gasparino regularly uses equipment and medication that was researched and brought to market with funds raised by Goldman Sachs, and which would not be available but for the work of Goldman and its competitors.
When a cure for cancer is at last discovered, it will not be discovered by investment bankers or hedge fund managers. But those who do discover it will likely do so thanks to capital allocated by investment bankers and hedge fund managers.
God's work? Awfully close, I'd say.
Sean J. Ryan, CFA
Amen and hallelujah, brother Ryan! The vilification those on Wall Street are receiving is about the only thing they have earned honestly. It's time to put down the chalice of capitalism as a religion you've been drinking from and consider that maybe boundless greed with an occasional scrap tossed to companies that produce something useful like medical research may not be an entirely benign system after all.
Please. If the capital was spread around, local banks could do the same. Small start-up companies are all over the country, as should be those who dole out the capital. Besides, the $billions in bonuses could be spent on more strat-ups.
These Banksters are NOT investing in medical equipment, they are gambling with highly leveraged Derivatives.
Banksters HATE main Street, they love gambling.
Hedge funds destroy companies, they don't invest in them.
He's doing Gods work? Which God is he talking about? The God of thieves, the God of deceit , or the God of stealing from the poor to make the rich richer?
This is all good, article and comments, that is.
More pressing question is: When this dayly insult on our intelligence from Wall Street wiill stop?. Who is to stop it?
After I learned so much about banking in last year or so, living honest life and not to feel like being
somebody's joke requires an effort.
So that's what a takes, a little bit of heresy, and then CNBC notice's that these Wall St CEOs aren't right?
Not the near destruction of the world's economy.
Not the suspicious collusion with government and the handout (excuse me, bailout) of trillions of dollars.
Not the crafty way the previous Treasury secretary let their biggest rival fail while Goldman was spared?
Can't trust Wall St.
Can't trust the government.
Can't trust CNBC.
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