Goldman Sachs – covering the face of humanity?

Goldman Sachs is furious at what Matt Taibbi has written in Rolling Stone. This is apparently not absolutely fresh news but we heard the magic phrase for the first time this morning.

It’s from Taibbi’s article, “The Great American Bubble Machine”, in Rolling Stone about the place of Goldman Sachs in the modern world.

The memorable line is this description of Goldman Sachs:

“ The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

But then there is this, too:

“ Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

[ … ]

The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased.

Taibbi also claims that Goldman is at the root of the astronomical oil price rises over the last year or so because oil has been commodified in the Goldman Sachs way so that every barrel of oil was bought and sold 27 times before it ever reached its end user. That’s 27 times a profit has to be made – sort of like compound interest, and your economics teacher told you how good that is at increasing your bank balance.

You might think, as Goldman Sachs has suggested, that his article is “an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories” and so it might be — unless it is true. Taibbi certainly has filled his piece with checkable facts and figures, such as the astonishing reach of the company and its alumni, including: bailout czar, Paulson; Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton’s former Treasury Secretary and then chairman of Citigroup; John Thain, chief of Merrill Lynch; Robert Steel, head of Wachovia, who “scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in goldenparachute payments as his bank was selfdestructing”; Joshua Bolten, Bush’s chief of staff during the bailout; Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff; and Ed Liddy, whom Paulson put in charge of bailedout insurance giant AIG. Etcetera etcetera etcetera…

Not to forget, as it seems Taibbi does, that Malcolm Turnbull is also an alumnus of Goldman Sachs: chair and managing director of Goldman Sachs Australia (1997-2001) and a partner with Goldman Sachs and Co (1998-2001). All we need is another ex-Goldman Sachs partner to become PM of Australia …

Read the full Rolling Stone article

Stark reading, and enough material to keep him writing for 7 (online) pages, including this potentially even more worrying note:

“ They’ve been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they’re preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.

According to this, if you want to rule the world, join Goldman Sachs!