In today's edition of Bloomberg.com reporters Andrew Frye and Margaret cover Berkshire Hathaway's co Chairman, Charles Munger in statements he made concerning Wall Street and Goldman Sachs.Wall Street Bankers Share Blame for Europe Crisis, Berkshire’s Munger Says
Charles Munger, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) holds $5 billion of options on Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) stock, said the role of investment bankers in helping to mask Greece’s financial troubles was “perfectly disgusting.”Larry: disgusting, probably immoral and illegal as well.
“Wall Street to some extent is deliberately trying to profit from sin, and I think it’s a mistake,” Munger told reporters yesterday after Berkshire’s annual press conference in Omaha, Nebraska. “Why should an investment banker go to Greece to teach them how to pretend their finances are different from what they really are? Why isn’t that a perfectly disgusting bit of human behavior?”Larry: "Perfectly disgusting bit of human behavior". Yes, Mr. Munger it was and is.
Munger has criticized bankers for greed and said he opposes handouts for distressed borrowers in the U.S. The 87-year-old executive, who helped Warren Buffett build Berkshire, said that the Greek work ethic shares blame with bankers for Europe’s debt crisis. Goldman Sachs helped Greece raise $1 billion of off- balance-sheet funding in 2002 through a currency swap, allowing the government to hide debt.
Larry: Aiding a government to "hide debt" does not seem to ber very democratic nor is it very legal. Goldman Sachs is for hire as criminal enterprise aiding and abetting countries to defraud their own citizens. They did it here in the good ole USA, didn't they?
Greece “cheated on the accounting and the investment banks helped them cheat,” Munger said at the conference. “I don’t see why a bunch of Dutch and Germans should save them.”Larry: "cheated on the accounting....". Isn't cheating on the accounting called "cooking the books" and isn't cooking the books illegal almost everywhere? Isn't cooking the books fraud? Goldman then seems to be masters of "cheating" or cooking the books or just downright fraud! So why are they not being prosecuted?
My last question is for Mr. Munger. Why, Mr. Munger, if Goldman Sachs is so disgusting, displays disgusting human behavior, profits from sin (while doing G-d's work) do you invest $5 billion in them? Oh, that answer is simple.
Because you "own warrants, expiring in 2013, to buy $5 billion in Goldman Sachs’s common stock at $115 a share as a result of a 2008 preferred investment in the company. The bank closed at $151.01 on April 29 on the New York Stock Exchange. Berkshire made more than $1 billion in dividends and charges on the $5 billion preferred stock holding before Goldman Sachs redeemed the shares this year."
So, Mr. Munger, you hate them but love making money on their sins. Does that make you, Warren Buffet and your Berkshire Hathaway sinners as well?
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Everyone wants to know...WHEN IS ENOUGH, ENOUGH?
Friday, May 6, 2011
The Cost Of Doing Business
One reason that Wall Street bonuses are so large is that these firms commit fraud and basically lie, cheat and steal to make money while the Government voted into office to enforce the laws looks the other way:
when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed (Atlas Shrugged).
Several of his closest "advisors" are ex-Goldman Sachs employees. His Secretary of Treasury is the lap-dog of former Goldman CEO and thief extraordinaire, Robert Rubin. Rubin's mentally diminutive "Mini-Me," if you will.
http://truthingold.blogspot.com/2011/05/cost-of-doing-business.html
Friday, May 6, 2011
Republicans to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Drop Dead
In a new effort to guarantee the continued right of banks to loot and pillage, 44 Republican senators have written to Obama saying that they won’t approve of any head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ex what these Ministers of Truth choose to call a “restructuring” of the agency.
Nevertheless, this sorry episode again proves that the primary objective of most members of the ruling classes is preserving and extending their power. Every account of the crisis has shown that bad mortgage lending practices were a major culprit.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/05/republicans-to-consumer-financial-protection-bureau-drop-dead.html
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