Does Goldman Sachs ever think about the major role they played in originally bringing about the recession that we have been enjoying since 2008; about the borrowing of huge amounts of money to prevent insolvency; about their role in removing wealth from all other sectors of the economy into their own coffers; about their being able to successfully compartmentalize their actions and ethics so effectively?
Insight: Debt relief replaced with recession fear
By Neil Fullick - ReutersFormer Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said in a Reuters column there is a one in three chance of a U.S. recession. According to number crunching by Goldman Sachs, history suggests the economy is perilously close to tipping over the edge.
Signs are little better elsewhere. Italy and Spain are edging closer to the euro area debt danger zone, China's economy is slowing and Japan is mired in recession after the March earthquake.
The gloom is hitting the corporate world as analysts cut earnings forecasts globally, especially in export-led economies, and big banks have announced tens of thousands of job cuts.
"The odds of the economy going back into recession are at least one in three if nothing new is done to raise demand and spur growth," Summers said of the United States in his column.
"If these judgments are close to correct, relief will soon give way to alarm about the United States's economic and fiscal future."
The alarm bells may already be ringing. Most worryingly for financial markets, the U.S. administration's commitment to fiscal spending cuts could make any U.S. downturn worse.
Read the entire article here
7 COMMENTS:
Geithner out Corzine in?
Corzine is a big shot (he had equal responsibilities at Goldie as did Hank Paulson). He would not consider a low level job in DC. So it has to be Tsec that he is after.
Let the dust settle for a month or so on both the debt deal and the MS bond offering and we are going to see a new guy at Treasury. Another Goldmanite. Just what we need….
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/geithner-out-corzine
I read Wikipedia's biography on Jon Corzine and he looks like one of the good guys. I also read an interview with him by William Greider in Feb 2002 at http://www.thenation.com/article/interview-senator-jon-corzine?page=full
During the interview, he seemed to understand the need for regulation even in derivatives and this was well before the financial meltdown.
Of course, in the nine years since, he may have changed his stance.
Machiavelli never let you know what was on his mind...
Watch this..
Its The OLIGARCHY, Stupid
http://maxkeiser.com/2011/08/04/its-the-oligarchy-stupid/
The Global Economy’s Corporate Crime Wave
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sachs177/English
New Jersey Pays Goldman Sachs for Swaps on Nonexistent Bonds
Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- New Jersey taxpayers are sending almost $1 million a month to a partnership run by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for protection against rising interest costs on bonds that the state redeemed more than a year ago.
In New Jersey, the 3.6 percent fixed rate the trust fund is paying on the swap has pushed the cost to taxpayers of the original $345 million borrowing to 7.8 percent, the most the authority has paid since it was formed in 1985, according to records posted on its Web site.
The payments are draining money from a dwindling account that may not be able to support new projects because the $895 million in annual gasoline taxes and toll revenue dedicated to the fund will be needed to pay debt service on $10.3 billion in obligations. To help prop up spending, officials have suggested raising New Jersey’s 14.5 cents-a-gallon gasoline levy, the fourth-lowest among U.S. states, according to research by the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization.
“I’m sure there’s an explanation,” Corzine, 62, said during a brief interview as he left a contractors’ convention in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on Oct. 14. “They don’t just send money out.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aufmSRtDn0gg
Jon Corzine
The former co-chief executive of Goldman went into full-time politics in
1999, having lost the internal power struggle that preceded the company's
stock-market flotation in 1999. He has been governor of New Jersey since
2006, having spent the previous six years in the US Senate. His 2000 Senate
election campaign was then the most expensive ever in the US, and Corzine
spent $62m of his own money.
Explain this...?
New Jersey Pays Goldman Sachs for Swaps on Nonexistent Bonds
Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- New Jersey taxpayers are sending almost $1 million a month to a partnership run by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for protection against rising interest costs on bonds that the state redeemed more than a year ago.
In New Jersey, the 3.6 percent fixed rate the trust fund is paying on the swap has pushed the cost to taxpayers of the original $345 million borrowing to 7.8 percent, the most the authority has paid since it was formed in 1985, according to records posted on its Web site.
The payments are draining money from a dwindling account that may not be able to support new projects because the $895 million in annual gasoline taxes and toll revenue dedicated to the fund will be needed to pay debt service on $10.3 billion in obligations. To help prop up spending, officials have suggested raising New Jersey’s 14.5 cents-a-gallon gasoline levy, the fourth-lowest among U.S. states, according to research by the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization.
“I’m sure there’s an explanation,” Corzine, 62, said during a brief interview as he left a contractors’ convention in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on Oct. 14. “They don’t just send money out.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aufmSRtDn0gg
Meanwhile....
Jon Corzine
The former co-chief executive of Goldman went into full-time politics in
1999, having lost the internal power struggle that preceded the company's
stock-market flotation in 1999. He has been governor of New Jersey since
2006, having spent the previous six years in the US Senate. His 2000 Senate
election campaign was then the most expensive ever in the US, and Corzine
spent $62m of his own money.
We need candidates that are not part of the entrenched establishment...corzine does not fit bill!
Risk off Stocks to the Ultra-Risk of Bonds, The MIC, Comic-Congress
As the stock market goes down; people move into the ultra-risk of US
government and municipal bonds. Adjusted for risk US bonds need to
yield 8%-25% or more. No safety can be found in US bonds which are
keyed to confidence in the US government. Stocks are a function of
earnings, which are deteriorating and will continue to do so.
Challenging times are ahead. We need to cut Empire and transform our
War Department into a Defense department. If we were truthful about
accounting we could spend 1.7% of GDP, about the same amount per
capita as Canada. As far as social security is concerned, give me my
money back compounded. In a Fraud case against congress we are
entitled to be made whole.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wceT5BB3XTM&feature=youtube_gdata
CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
Corporate Crime, Russia, Peter Orszag and Getting Away with Murder
25 Corporate Crime Reporter 31, July 28, 2011
Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner were at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. yesterday for a discussion about their book – Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon.
During the question period, Blair Ruble, who heads the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, stood up to speak.
He told a story about when he was at a conference in Elagua, Tartarstan.
“I was pulled out of the conference, and was told the Minister of Economics was coming from the capital of Kazan to see me,” Ruble said.
The country had apparently invested some of its oil wealth with the U.S. government and the Minister was concerned about the lack of accountability after the collapse of the housing bubble.
“They had this oil revenue and they didn’t trust the Russian government,” Ruble said. “I was the first American he could find. We had lunch. After realizing I couldn’t help him he said to me – ‘When did you Americans become Russians?”
“My father was a federal prosecutor and my mother was a criminologist, and her speciality was Soviet criminology,” Rosner said. “As she read our book – she kept saying – Jesus, this sounds like the way it is done there. Every piece of it. You have an entrenched bureaucracy without accountability.”
Rosner said a “code of silence” protects those complicit in the recent collapse.
http://corporatecrimereporter.com/morgenson07282011.htm
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