'Doing God's Work'
The world says they are guilty -
yet bankers protest their innocence
'Doing God's Work': Latest Report
Compare and contrast Capitol Hill's grilling of 'Golden Sacks' with the UK's absence of separation of powers, and its servile - toothless - Parliamentary committees beholden to the Executive.
Goldman Sachs did not make "big money" from betting on the collapse of the mortgage market, its chief executive insisted last night, after coming under fire from angry lawmakers and protesters on Capitol Hill.
On a day of political theatre that ranked among the most dangerous in the mighty investment bank's 141-year history, Lloyd Blankfein and a string of other Goldman executives were brought before Congress to answer claims that they bet against their own clients and contributed to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression ...Jeffersonians Were Right
charliesommers wrote:
Wednesday, 28 April 2010 at 03:43 pm (UTC)
At the onset of the founding of America Thomas Jefferson opposed the idea of an unregulated and powerful banking system. His logic was that putting huge amounts of money in the hands of a few would ultimately corrupt them and the resultant corruption would spill over into government.
Alexander Hamilton, on the other hand, thought that tightly regulating the banks would stifle business and the country would not prosper.
Looks to me like Jefferson was right. The banks are run by a bunch of power and money mad individuals who stoop at nothing to further their own ambitions. It's time to regulate some of them right into jail.
Independent 28 Apr 2010
Greek rescue blocked by hedge fund greed
... fears have grown in recent weeks that the hedge funds that are blocking the deal – which have been identified as including Vega Asset Management, Och Ziff, York Capital, GreyLock Asset Management and Marathon Asset Management – do not consider the prospect of a disorderly default by Athens as a financial incentive to allow a voluntary writedown deal to proceed.
This is because these funds are believed to have purchased insurance policies on their holdings of Greek bonds, known as Credit Default Swaps (CDS).
If Athens fails to pay its maturing debts in March, that would trigger large CDS payouts to these funds from the large financial firms that sold them the insurance ...
However, a hedge fund source denied that the behaviour of small investment funds was frustrating a voluntary deal – and possibly even forcing a default – arguing that the voluntary basis of the restructuring deal being pushed by the IIF and European leaders was "crony banking".
"Who will lose out if the insurance is paid out?" he said.
"The two biggest issuers are Goldman Sachs and AIG. They are effectively being given a bailout by not allowing Greek debt to default.
"Seven Goldman Sachs ex-employees are in European Union governments. This is crony banking at its worst." ...
Ind 18 Jan 2012 Bankocracy Log Corporate Technocracy The Merkozy PlanGoldman Sachs enters £8bn 'parallel pay universe'
Goldman Sachs faces backlash over $12.6bn staff pay pot
Goldman Sachs’ staff are in line to collect $12.6bn (£8.2bn) in pay and bonuses this year despite a fall in profits ...
Goldman is axing 1,000 jobs and cutting $1.2bn in costs by the middle of the year in an attempt to shield profits ...
One bright spot for Goldman in the quarter ... will be an increase in fees from debt and equity underwriting for clients.
And despite a tough year, Goldman topped the mergers and acquisitions league table in the UK, advising on deals worth $117.6bn .
The results will surely lead to Lloyd Blankfein ... being pressed to offer his thoughts on how Goldman will be affected by the new “Volcker Rule” ... (which) ... bans banks from gambling with their own money and limits the amount of capital they can invest in hedge funds and private equity investments ...
Tel 18 Jan 2012 A 'Greed is Good' Wealth Log Bankocracy Log
Goldman Sachs conquers Europe
... by putting a senior adviser at Goldman Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic ...
It is not just Mr Monti. The European Central Bank, another crucial player in the sovereign debt drama, is under ex-Goldman management, and the investment bank's alumni hold sway in the corridors of power in almost every European nation, as they have done in the US throughout the financial crisis.
Until Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund's European division was also run by a Goldman man, Antonio Borges, who just resigned for personal reasons.
This is The Goldman Sachs Project. Put simply, it is to hug governments close ...
The Project is to create such a deep exchange of people and ideas and money that it is impossible to tell the difference between the public interest and the Goldman Sachs interest ...
Ind 18 Nov 2011 Bankocracy Log Corporate State Log Euro Crisis Losing Democracy
Goldman Sachs let off paying £10m interest on failed tax avoidance scheme
Documents leaked to Private Eye magazine and published in full by the Guardian record that Britain's top tax official, HMRC's permanent secretary Dave Hartnett, personally shook hands on a secret settlement last December.
Hartnett is due to be questioned on Wednesday by the Commons public accounts committee.
The leaked documents suggest that a previous PAC chairman, Edward Leigh, was misled when he was told it was illegal to reveal details of such cases to parliament.
Leaked legal advice from James Eadie QC, which the Guardian also publishes today, says the opposite.
Hartnett has discretion to reveal such facts to the parliamentary watchdog, according to the advice.
Leigh said: "It just underlines the absurd culture of secrecy that still pervades Whitehall." ...
The £10m Christmas gift for Goldman was the culmination of a prolonged attempt by the US firm to avoid paying national insurance on huge bonuses for its bankers working in London.
The sum was pocket change to Goldman, whose employees received $15.3bn (£9.5bn) in pay and bonuses last year ...
Gdn 11 Oct 2011 Corporate Sociopathy Log Tax Dodgers Third MeltdownMinutes of meeting on Goldman Sachs settlement
Discussion of legal advice on disclosure to parliament
Goldman U-turn fuels surge in oil prices
Only weeks after calling the top of the oil market and advising clients to sell up, Goldman Sachs has performed a dramatic U-turn, pushing the price up to $112.10 a barrel in London yesterday ...
Ind 25 May 2011 Bankocracy Log FYB Log
Goldman Sachs Speculation
MP demands details of deal to let Goldman Sachs avoid tax
HM Revenue & Customs has failed to provide details of a deal that allowed Goldman Sachs to avoid millions in unpaid tax after other firms settled similar disputes, according to a prominent member of a powerful parliamentary committee.
The lack of disclosure in the long-running dispute with the US investment bank meant there was a danger the public would think there was "one rule for some companies and another for individual taxpayers", said Labour MP Chuka Umunna ...
Gdn 13 May 2011 Coalition Log Third Meltdown
Goldman Sachs 'Standortkonkurrenz' Tax Dodgers
Goldman Sachs CEO's pay nearly doubles despite slump in profits
An era of bonus "restraint" at Goldman Sachs came to a shuddering halt as the Wall Street bank doubled the pay package of its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, to $18.6m (£11.5m) for 2010 in spite of a slump in profits.
Blankfein, 56, who once quipped that his firm does "God's work", received share awards of $12.6m on top of a $5.4m performance-related cash bonus, a salary of $600,000 and additional benefits worth $464,000, according to documents filed by Goldman at the US Securities and Exchange Commission ...
Its bonus "pool" shared by 35,700 employees worldwide, including 5,000 in London, amounted to $15.3bn this year – equivalent to $430,000 per person ...
Gdn 02 Apr 2011
Goldman Sachs earmarks $13bn for bonuses
The Goldman Sachs bonus bonanza continued yesterday as the investment bank set aside $13.1bn for its wealthy employees to share for the work they have performed during the first nine months of the year.
That amounts to 43 per cent of revenues, with an average payment to each of its 34,500 staff of $370,706 (£234,000).
However, the best-paid bankers will earn considerably more because the workforce includes support staff who are paid just a fraction of the dizzying sums taken home by their bosses ...
Independent 20 Oct 2010 Wealth Log
Goldman Sachs has reported a sharp fall in second-quarter profits after being hit by the UK's bonus tax, a US fine and poor trading revenues.Goldman Sachs profits hit by tax, fine and poor trading
It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of sociopaths. Pass me the Kleenex.
Net income came in at $613m (£404m), down from $3.4bn a year ago.
But even ignoring the $600m accrued tax in the UK, and the US regulator's record $550m fine, underlying profits fell by nearly half.
The result was driven by a drop in revenues from Goldman's traders, which fell 39% from a year ago ...
Accrued employee compensation for the quarter - which includes the bonus pool - was $3.8bn, down 43% from a year ago.
This means that average accrued pay per employee at the firm for the first six months of the year was $273,000 ...
BBC NEWS 20 July 2010 Wealth Log
• Commodity speculators push cocoa to 33-year highHedge funds accused of gambling with lives of the poorest as food prices soar
• Bets 'risk the most vulnerable in the world starving'
The WDM's Great Hunger Lottery report says "risky and secretive" financial bets on food prices have exacerbated the effect of poor harvests in recent years. It argues that volatility in food prices has made it harder for producers to plan what to grow, pushed up prices for British consumers and in poorer countries risks sparking civil unrest, like the food riots seen in Mexico and Haiti in 2008.
Deborah Doane, WDM director, said: "Investment banks, like Goldman Sachs, are making huge profits by gambling on the price of everyday foods. But this is leaving people in the UK out of pocket, and risks the poorest people in the world starving.
"Nobody benefits from this kind of reckless gambling except a few City wheeler-dealers. British consumers suffer because it pushes up inflation, because of unpredictable oil and raw material prices, and the world's poorest people suffer because basic foods become unaffordable."
Guardian 19 July 2010Take the highest stakes, riskiest economic behaviour ever devised, and marry it to the most fundamental basic need of humankind, and you have the subject of this report.Food Speculation
Executive Summary
Over the past decade, the world’s most powerful financial institutions have developed ever more elaborate ways to package, re-package and trade a range of financial contracts known as derivatives.
A derivative is not based on an exchange of tangible assets such as goods or money, but rather is a financial contract with a value linked to the expected future price movements of the underlying asset.
Derivative contracts are traded on a growing number of underlying assets, from share prices, to mortgages, bonds, commodity prices, foreign exchange rates, and even index of prices.
Derivatives trading has been one of the most lucrative parts of the financial industry, but it is the increasingly complex, opaque and disconnected nature of these and similar products that ultimately triggered the collapse of the banks and the worst financial crisis in human history.
Of course, the financial crisis has been an economic disaster of seismic proportions for millions around the world, plunging many countries into recession causing millions to be thrown out of work, soaring public debts and cuts in vital public services.
But while betting on the value of sub-prime mortgages or foreign currency values undoubtedly leads to disastrous consequences, there is another area where the speculative behaviour of the world’s largest banks and hedge funds represents a threat to the very survival of people: food commodities.
In The great hunger lottery, World Development Movement has compiled extensive evidence establishing the role of food commodity derivatives in destabilising and driving up food prices around the world.
This in turn, has led to food prices becoming unaffordable for low-income families around the world, particularly in developing countries highly reliant on food imports.
Nowhere was this more clearly seen than during the astonishing surge in staple food prices over the course of 2007-2008, when millions went hungry and food riots swept major cities around the world.
The great hunger lottery shows how this alarming episode was fueled by the behaviour of financial speculators, and describes the terrible immediate impacts on vulnerable families around the world, as well as the long term damage to the fight against global poverty.
In the report we describe how the current situation came to pass, the risks of another speculation induced food crisis, and what specifically can be done by policymakers here in the UK as well as in the US and EU to tackle the problem.
But at its heart, The great hunger lottery carries a very straightforward message: allowing gambling on hunger in financial markets is dangerous, immoral and indefensible.
And it needs to be stopped before any more people suffer to satisfy the greed of the banks.
WDM: Full Report .pdf July 2010
Corporate Sociopathy Economic Democracy Fractional Reserve Banking Wealth LogWDM
Choc Finger's Big Bet
Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs: Annual Report .pdf
Goldman Sachs last night agreed to pay $550m (£356m) to settle the fraud charges that rocked the Wall Street giant, and admitted it had misled investors in one of the multi-billion dollar mortgage deals at the heart of the credit crisis.Goldman to pay $550m to settle SEC fraud case
Petty cash!
The penalty was the largest ever extracted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Wall Street's regulator, but the sum was lower than some in the industry had feared, and Goldman shares surged on the news ...
No Goldman executives will lose their jobs as part of the settlement, and Lloyd Blankfein, the company's embattled chief executive, stays in place ...
The payment – which will be split $300m to the US government, $250m to compensate Abacus investors – is small compared with Goldman's profits.
The company earned $13.4bn in 2009, and $3.3bn in just the first three months of this year.
Independent 16 July 2010 Corporate SociopathyRBS could sue Goldman ...
Clients Worried About Goldman’s Dueling Goals
As the housing crisis mounted in early 2007, Goldman Sachs was busy selling risky, mortgage-related securities issued by its longtime client, Washington Mutual, a major bank based in Seattle.
Although Goldman had decided months earlier that the mortgage market was headed for a fall, it continued to sell the WaMu securities to investors. While Goldman put its imprimatur on that offering, traders in the same Goldman unit were not so sanguine about WaMu’s prospects: they were betting that the value of WaMu’s stock and other securities would decline.
Goldman’s wager against its customer’s stock — a position known as a “short” — was large enough that it would have generated at least $10 million in profits if WaMu collapsed, according to documents recently released by Congress. And by mid-May, Goldman’s bet against other WaMu securities had made Goldman $2.5 million, the documents show.
WaMu eventually did collapse under the weight of souring mortgage loans; federal regulators seized it in September 2008, making it the biggest bank failure in American history.
Goldman’s bets against WaMu, wagers that took place even as it helped WaMu feed a housing frenzy that Goldman had already lost faith in, are examples of conflicting roles that trouble its critics and some former clients ...
NYT 18 May 2010 Corporate Sociopathy Log
Goldman Sachs boss faces an ambush at the AGM
In the absence of economic democracy, CEO's like Lloyd "I'm doing God's work" Blankfein can put two fingers up to "shareholder proposals" safe in the knowledge that fellow corporate investors will remain on side, on the understanding that the new "business standards committee" is empty corporate spin. This, after all, is the firm that worked both for the Greek government, and against it. All in the interests of corporate profit.He once joked that Goldman Sachs was “doing God’s work”, but yesterday Lloyd Blankfein came face-to-face with the Lord’s representatives on Earth.
A stream of Christian shareholders held him to account at the bank’s annual meeting in Manhattan, exhorting him to work “for the many, not just the few” ...
In hopes of deflecting further criticism from shareholders and the wider world, which he knew would be watching the meeting closely, Mr Blankfein said that Goldman would create a new business standards’ committee to conduct a comprehensive review of business practices at the firm and come up with recommendations to the board ...
Mr Blankfein looked remarkably more relaxed throughout than he did during his recent grilling by the US Senate.
He responded politely but rejected all shareholder proposals.
By the end, he looked unbowed, but relieved all the same that he had successfully got through another day in the spotlight at the Goldman Sachs circus.
Times 08 May 2010 Blog Corp Sociopathy Log Economic Democracy
Goldman trader’s email slur
In a series of damaging emails released yesterday, Tourre also compared the products to a “Frankenstein” monster that had “turned against his own inventor”.
Other emails that emerged yesterday showed Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s chief executive, boasting about the money the bank made from the housing market collapse.
“Of course we didn’t dodge the mortgage mess,” Blankfein wrote in November 2007. “We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts (bets against housing).” ...
Meanwhile, it has emerged that five senior directors of Goldman Sachs, including Michael Sherwood, the co-head of its London office, sold shares in the bank after the SEC first warned that it may take action over the fraud claims. The watchdog issued a “Wells” notice, an official warning, in July last year.
The executives sold shares worth $65.4m between October 2009 and last February. Goldman’s shares dropped almost 13% after the SEC claim was filed in court 10 days ago ...
Royal Bank of Scotland has been ordered to hand over thousands of emails and documents to the SEC as part of an investigation into its sub-prime mortgage business in America.
RBS, which is 84% owned by taxpayers, yesterday confirmed that it had been under investigation for more than two years.
RBS, through its Greenwich Capital subsidiary in the US, controlled about 6.2% of the market for collateralised debt obligations ...
Times 25 Apr 2010Fabrice Tourre defends his 'Frankenstein products'
US banks pouring millions into bid to kill Barack Obama's finance reform bill
Goldman Cited ‘Serious’ Profit on Mortgages
Goldman Sachs
Goldman may owe British taxpayers $841m
British taxpayers have a direct material interest in the outcome of the fraud case brought against Goldman Sachs by the US financial watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission ...
... the material fact to dwell on for now is that on 7 August 2008, just before Royal Bank was semi-nationalised, it paid out $841m to Goldman Sachs to settle a claim on credit insurance provided by ABN, the Dutch bank which Royal Bank had acquired (or to be more precise, it had bought a big bad chunk of ABN in the autumn of 2007).
Goldman then passed this $841m to the ultimate beneficiary of the insurance contract, the giant US hedge fund, Paulson & Co.
Now the SEC claims that the insurance contract would never have been written, and therefore the loss would never have fallen on RBS, if Goldman had told the truth about certain financially important elements of the investment product that was being insured ...
Robert Peston 16 Apr 2010Securities and exchange commission charges Goldman Sachs with conflict of interest in sub-prime mortgage asset sales ...Goldman Sachs charged with $1bn fraud over toxic sub-prime securities
The SEC's accusations are levelled against the firm as a whole and against a French employee, Fabrice Tourre, 31, who is now an executive director in Goldman's London office.
The allegations revolve around a collateralised debt obligation called Abacus 2007-AC1 that was created by Goldman three years ago and proved a spectacularly poor investment for clients. Within nine months, 99% of the mortgages in the package had been downgraded and investors lost more than $1bn. Paulson, in contrast, made a profit of about the same amount.
Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's enforcement division, said: "The product was new and complex but the deception and conflicts are old and simple. Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio." ...
Guardian 16 Apr 2010Eager to increase his bets against subprime mortgages, the investor, John A. Paulson, canvassed firm after firm, looking for new ways to profit from home loans that he was sure would go sour.Investor Who Made Billions Is Not Target of Suit
Only a few investment banks agreed to help him. One was Deutsche Bank. The other was the mighty Goldman Sachs.
Mr. Paulson struck gold. His prescience made him billions and transformed him from a relative nobody into something of a celebrity on Wall Street and in Washington.
But now his brassy bets have thrust Mr. Paulson into an uncomfortable spotlight. On Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil fraud lawsuit against Goldman for neglecting to tell its customers that mortgage investments they were buying consisted of pools of dubious loans that Mr. Paulson had selected because they were highly likely to fail ...
NYT 16 Apr 2010Goldman Sachs banker stripped of licence
Jeremy Warner on Goldman Sachs
Darling resists calls to ban Goldman from Treasury
Goldman to pay Tourre bonus despite fraud charge
Goldman Sachs implicated in shorting Lehman shares
Goldman doesn't get it
Goldman under fire on all sides
What really scares Goldman Sachs
The bank that thought it ruled the world
Goldman Sachs: a history of controversy
Top Leaders at Goldman Had a Role in Mortgage Unit
Goldman Sachs prosecution threatens to open the floodgates on Wall Street
Brown and Merkel attack Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs finds $5bn for pay and bonuses amid fraud investigation
For Goldman, a Bet’s Stakes Keep Growing
US regulators suspected Stanford in 1997
RBS lost £545m in alleged Goldman fraud
Goldman charge sends FTSE sliding
S.E.C. Accuses Goldman of Fraud in Housing Deal
Bankers are doing "God's work"
Public must learn to 'tolerate the inequality' of bonuses
Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs bankers on course for $19bn pay and bonuses
Goldman Sachs will ignite a storm of controversy in the new year when it reveals that its bankers are on course to collect pay and bonuses worth $19bn (£11.4bn), despite 2009 being the worst year for the US economy in 30 years.
The news comes as banks in Britain find themselves in the firing line after it emerged that 5,000 bankers stand to collect more than £1m each, sparking criticism from ministers who accused financiers of being out of touch as millions are thrown out of work amid recession.
City sources say that the pay and bonus pot at Goldman is based on projected figures from Thomson Financial, published on Friday, which show that the investment bank is expected to generate net income of around $45bn.
Analysts predict that 43% of that figure will be set aside for compensation to be distributed to the bank's 31,700 employees, 6,000 of whom are in London.
Remuneration as a proportion of net income is expected to be lower than the average of 46.7% in the 10 years to 2008, partly as a sop to US public opinion.
Brad Hintz, investment banking analyst at Sanford Bernstein, says: "Everyone inside the firm is aware there is more than enough money available to make everyone happy."
Goldman has enjoyed a bumper year thanks to booming debt markets, a recovery in the oil price and a rise in the value of equities since January, with some indices up by 20% ...
Observer 06 December 2009Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein: "I'm Doing God's Work"
Public must learn to 'tolerate the inequality' of bonuses
Goldman Sachs exec defends bonuses
Rescued bank's traders scoop £1.8bn bonuses
Retention bonuses back at Merrills
Bankers bag £7.6bn in bonuses
Bank lending to businesses fell by £14.7bn
The banks' jackpot is no surprise
Bank profits and bonuses: a checklist
Big bonuses? It would be wrong to stop paying them'
Banks defend bonus culture as profits jump