In other words, Goldman Sachs fraudulently committed accounting control fraud and sold rotten CDOs to investors under the guise of highly rated securities. Goldman Sachs perjured itself by denying betting against the mortgage market. Goldman Sachs does not have much to brag about when taking into account its foolish past behavior.
The protesters are doing a fine job pointing out how the banks of Wall Street, including Goldman Sachs, through their fraudulent actions have brought the economy to the brink of another recession.
Evan Newmark has picked out the wrong buffoons and missed Goldman Sachs's tomfoolery.
The WSJ's Evan Newmark, A Former Goldman Sachs Executive, Thinks Wall Street Protesters are BuffoonsRead the original article and comments here
By The Daily BailListen to this nonsense. Newmark, a former Goldman Sachs executive, thinks Wall Street protesters are buffoons. Surprise, surprise. We think someone needs to slap the smug grin from Newmark's face. In the above video, Marketwatch columnist David Weidner says that bankers, not protesters, are the ones who should have been arrested during Wall Street protests. Newmark chuckles as he disagrees, making no effort to hide his contempt for 'Occupy Wall Street', now in its 14th day.
This is not our first run-in with the former Goldman Sachs mangaing director, Hank-Paulson loving WSJ editorial writer.
Last year Matt Taibbi called Newmark a 'craven, bumlicking ass-goblin.'
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Newmark is wrong on several counts in the above clip, the most egregious example being his assertion that Wall Street bears no responsibility for the massive increase in the national debt, in stark opposition to accepted fact as Simon Johnson discusses below.
From Simon Johnson Destroys The Myth Of Jamie Dimon's Bernanke Complaint:
The realized downside risks, as handed to the taxpayer, should be measured not merely as the cost of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) or Federal Reserve rescue plans, but in terms of the increase in the national debt the financial crisis caused. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the financial crisis will end up increasing government debt by at least 40 percent of gross domestic product. (I’ve covered the details of this calculation elsewhere; this point is not controversial among fiscal experts.)
So, to turn Dimon’s question around, we know that previously low capital requirements led to social losses (those borne by taxpayers) in the trillions of dollars, as well as millions of jobs and homes lost, while the private gains were in the low billions.
6 COMMENTS:
Actress, comedienne and now author Roseanne Barr shares her solution for
dealing with the rich and how the banks could repay the money the U.S.
government bailed them out with in 2008.
"Part of my platform is, of course, the guilty must be punished and that
we no longer let our children see their guilty leaders getting away
with murder. Because it teaches children, you know, that they don't have
to have any morals as long as they have guns and are bullies and I
don't think that's a good message," Barr told Russia Today (RT).
"I do say that I am in favor of the return of the guillotine and that is for the worst of the worst of the guilty.
"I first would allow the guilty bankers to pay, you know, the ability to
pay back anything over $100 million [of] personal wealth because I
believe in a maximum wage of $100 million. And if they are unable to
live on that amount of that amount then they should, you know, go to the
reeducation camps and if that doesn't help, then being beheaded," Barr
said with a straight face.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/10/01/roseanne_barr_behead_bankers_rich_who_wont_give_up_wealth.html
What Is Risked When Prosecution Is Absent
I have long mused, in fact since the beginning of this blog, about one primary question:
What happens when the people discern that the government is nothing more than a band of felons instead of the cops?
Many considered this a rhetorical question. Those on the left sneered, those on the right looked at the argument and scoffed: Oh no, look, we busted Marco over there for drug running last week.
Ah, you did, but Wachovia you did not "bust" in a criminal sense, even though they admitted in court that they ran drug money for criminal cartels.
There was no prosecution. Instead there was a "deferred agreement", and the screaming in the media started only once it expired and criminal charges could no longer be brought.
The Ticker, on the other hand, covered it long before that time. Few others did, and there was no mainstream coverage and demand for prosecution at all.
The danger, as I have repeatedly pointed out, in the government's willful, intentional and repeated refusal to put an end to these abuses is that there is a point at which the people have had enough and will simply not sit for it any more, nor will they believe they can vote for a change and actually receive that change.
How many people voted for "change" in 2008 yet did not receive it?
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2732994
In new bombshell story, "Bloomberg Markets" reveals that Koch Industries
sold petrochemical equipment to Iran and paid bribes in six countries
By Patrick
Thanks
to our excellent contacts, we got hold of a copy of the still
unpublished November issue of "Bloomberg Markets" magazine, because the
cover story sounds more than just promising:
http://politicalgates.blogspot.com/2011/10/in-new-bombshell-story-bloomberg.html
The Long Arm of Debt Stretches into Condo Fees, Car Repos
Hedge funds, private-equity firms and other investors looking for new ways to bet on the battered housing market are hungry for securities created by bundling hundreds of deficiency judgments at a time, say distressed-debt brokers.
But deficiency judgments aren’t just for soured mortgages.
Lawsuits are also piling up against borrowers who still owe money to the bank after their car is repossessed, according to lawyers for people sued by lenders. In addition, homeowners living in condominium complexes battered by foreclosures are going after unpaid condo-association fees.
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2011/10/02/the-long-arm-of-debt-stretches-into-condo-fees-car-repos/
Consumer Debt
There's no need for a "grand haircut" - there's just a need for the government to quit allowing the lies to continue onward in the balance sheets of pension funds, banks and others.
You know, the "Kanjorski scam"? Yeah, that.
Reverse that and it's over.
Yes, we have to close banks if we do that. We have to admit the truth. We have to admit that pension funds who claimed 8% "growth" over long periods of time were pushing a pyramid scheme that was impossible to maintain and thus those "benefits" will not be paid.
We have to admit that the claims made to retirees and soon-to-be-retirees as a sop to allow our "2% inflation" were also lies, and that we thus must stop institutionalized inflation.
We have to admit that trees to do not grow to the sky and that the fundamental nature of exponents is that as long as debt grows faster than the economy you are in fact engaged in a pyramid scheme that must, mathematically, fail.
And we must demand that those so-called "economists", central bankers and media personalities who pushed this meme for the last 30 years come on-air, in person, and apologize for running this scam and the damage it has done to our economy.
Protect nobody except one group: Bank depositors under the FDIC limit.
Everyone else? You made your bets, you loaned money to people when you bought their bonds, and you should face the consequences.
The solution to this problem is simple, it is elegant, and it is mightily-resisted by the monied class, because they believe they're entitled to be protected from their own stupidity.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=195296
Four Biggest Banks in America have Huge Leverage
As a nation, U.S. banks have a total OTC derivative exposure of $250 trillion. So, the fact that just four U.S. banks have this much leverage and risk is astounding! The banks are listed below in order of size and approximate OTC exposure:
1.) JP MORGAN CHASE BANK NA OH
$78.1 trillion OTC derivatives
2.) CITIBANK NATIONAL ASSN
$56.1 trillion OTC derivatives
3.) BANK OF AMERICA NA NC
$53.15 trillion OTC derivatives
4.) GOLDMAN SACHS BANK USA NY
$47.7 trillion OTC derivatives
Considering that the total assets of these four banks are a little more than $5 trillion, I see a frightening amount of risk with a total derivative exposure of $235 trillion! This is nearly 50 to 1 leverage. On top of that, assets such as real estate or mortgage-backed securities can be held on the books at whatever value the banks think they can sell them for in the future. I call this government sanctioned accounting fraud, or mark to fantasy accounting. Who knows what the true value of the banks “assets” really are.
http://usawatchdog.com/four-biggest-banks-in-america-have-huge-leverage/
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