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Fraud*
According to the Collins English Dictionary 10th Edition fraud can be defined as: "deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage".[1] In the broadest sense, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation. Defrauding people or entities of money or valuables is a common purpose of fraud, but there have also been fraudulent "discoveries", e.g. in science, to gain prestige rather than immediate monetary gain
*As defined in Wikipedia

Sunday, October 28, 2012

The Hypocrisy of Goldman Sachs

The Salon article from which come the excerpts below hyperventilates on the hypocrisy shown by the 80 CEOs who are lobbying for austerity measures to reduce the deficit.  It is another view about what motivates firms like Goldman Sachs, besides money, of course.

The article lists the other CEOs:  Randall Stephenson, AT&T; Brian T. Moynihan, B of A; David Cote, Honeywell; Jeffrey Immelt, GE; Jim McNerney, Boeing; Arne Sorenson, Marriott; Alexander Cutler, Eaton; Lowel McAdam, Verizon; and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft.

Bernie Sanders cogent response to these CEOs is also included in the article.
Ten filthy rich, tax-dodging hypocrites
By Sarah Anderson and Scott Klinger, Alternet - Salon
. . . .
The irony is that CEOs in the coalition’s leadership have been major contributors to the national debt they now claim to know how to fix. These are guys who’ve mastered every tax-dodging trick in the book. And now that they’ve boosted their corporate profits by draining the public treasury, how do they propose we put our fiscal house back in order? By squeezing programs for the poor and elderly, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Fix the Debt claims their agenda is not just about spending cuts. But when it comes to their tax proposals, they use the slippery term “pro-growth reform” to push for cuts in deductions that are likely to include credits for working families and — you guessed it — more corporate tax breaks. Chief among these is a proposal to switch to a territorial system under which corporate foreign earnings would be permanently exempted (instead of being taxed when they are returned to America).
. . . .
3. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs 

Few corporations have been as dependent on U.S. taxpayers for their very existence as Goldman Sachs. The 2008 bailout of American International Group and the steady stream of low- and non-interest loans for the financial sector have kept the company alive.

CEO Blankfein says he’d accept a small increase in individual taxes for the wealthy in exchange for a comprehensive budget deal. But his corporate tax proposals would wipe out the revenue gains from rolling back the Bush tax cuts for top earners. Blankfein is a big supporter of the territorial tax system explained above. This is hardly a surprise, since Goldman Sachs already operates 37 subsidiaries in tax havens .

Blankfein has also used his position at the helm of the Financial Services Forum, a club for the CEOs of 20 top banks, to oppose financial transaction taxes — small levies on trades of stock, derivatives, and other financial instruments. Goldman Sachs has made as much as $300 million per year from the volatile high-frequency trading strategies that would be hardest hit by such a transaction tax. In early October, 11 European governments announced a plan to implement such taxes, with expected revenues in the neighborhood of $ 75 billion per year . But Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms have blocked U.S. progress on this major revenue-raiser.
Read the whole article here 

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