Matt Taibbi: The People vs. Goldman Sachs

[bobbyw24]

May 11, 2011 9:30 AM ET

A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges

http://www.veteranstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/goldman-sachs.jpg

They weren't murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.

Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn't leave much doubt:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-people-vs-goldman-sachs-20110511

[HOLLYWOOD]

Never going to happen... Hell the Goldman Execs placed their bets exactly where the company was placing bets... SURE WINNER FOLKS! $554 million in winnings for the GS execs. Government is the puppet to the money masters. Finally, glorified $1 Billion Fine and it's back to business as: Everyone passes "GO" no one goes to JAIL. Eric Holder, Michael Mulcasey, Alberto Gonzales, and so on... there to protect the corporate masters and enforce the government hitman.

time political plug...
Didn't Mitt Romney just pickup a Mil or Two off of Wall Street?

Mitt Romney 2012: "Where ignorant republican voters are our best customers!"

[bobbyw24]

Never going to happen...

True.

I am thinking of buying: Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51xS0tzS3AL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/Money-Power-Goldman-Sachs-World/dp/038552384X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305135323&sr=8-1-spell

[Travlyr]

True.

I am thinking of buying: Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World

Looks like a good book to read.

Stripping the power from the Goldman Sachs gang is laid out by Dr. Edwin Vieira in excellent plan...
Legalize Honest Sound Money (http://thenewamerican.com/economy/commentary-mainmenu-43/7258-mending-our-monetary-maladies).

It's our best bet, yet.

[Brian4Liberty]

True.

I am thinking of buying: Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World


Waiting on that one myself.

Will theft, fraud, conflict of interest with regard to fiduciary responsibility, and perjury be prosecuted? Since they were the biggest donors to Obama, it's hard to see it actually happening.

[bobbyw24]

True. Charlie Gasparino did a book on the Obama-Goldman-Chase-et al connection.

Think Hollywood gave me the heads up about it

[Brian4Liberty]

True. Charlie Gasparino did a book on the Obama-Goldman-Chase-et al connection.

Think Hollywood gave me the heads up about it

Or my book report on it... ;)

I had been thinking about consolidating these posts into a blog entry:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?271280-The-Creature-from-Johnny-s-Half-Shell

[surf]

i hate to admit that i'm pulling for our gov't to inflict some real pain on these (enabled) douchebags at GS. as a guy that had previously been a reluctant institutional client of GS (management pressure to invest in pure-shit investments peddled to my bosses and not me) - i hated the firm then as much as i do now.

an appropriate monetary settlement would be massive - i'll be checking my mail box regularly for a check from Goldman....

[Brian4Liberty]

Now available as a Blog entry:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/entry.php?329-The-Creature-from-Johnny-s-Half-Shell

[bobbyw24]

Now available as a Blog entry:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/entry.php?329-The-Creature-from-Johnny-s-Half-Shell

Excellent.

I will be posting this to the listserv of the National Ass'n of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys

www.NACBA.org

[YumYum]

Isn't this what started the housing bubble?

A Renewed Crackdown on Redlining

In the wake of the subprime implosion, the Obama Administration has stepped up its scrutiny of disadvantaged neighborhoods' credit access

By Clea Benson

Community activists in St. Louis became concerned a couple of years ago that local banks weren't offering credit to the city's poor and African American residents. So they formed a group called the St. Louis Equal Housing and Community Reinvestment Alliance and began writing complaint letters to federal regulators.

Apparently, someone in Washington took notice. The Federal Reserve has cited one of the group's targets, Midwest BankCentre, a small bank that has been operating in St. Louis's predominantly white, middle-class suburbs for over a century, for failing to issue home mortgages or open branches in disadvantaged areas. Although executives at the bank say they don't discriminate, Midwest BankCentre's latest annual report says it is in the process of negotiating a settlement with the U.S. Justice Dept. over its lending practices.

Lawyers and bank consultants say regulators and the Obama Administration are scrutinizing financial institutions for a practice that last drew attention before the rise of subprime lending: redlining. The term dates from the 1930s, when the Federal Housing Administration drew up maps using red ink to delineate inner-city neighborhoods considered too risky for lending. Congress later passed laws banning lending discrimination on the basis of race and other characteristics. "The agencies have refocused on redlining because, in the wake of the subprime explosion and sudden implosion, they are looking at these disadvantaged neighborhoods and not seeing any credit access," says Jo Ann Barefoot, co-chair at Treliant Risk Advisors in Washington, D.C., which consults with banks on regulatory issues.

The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) requires banks to make loans in all the areas they serve, not just the wealthy ones. A Bloomberg analysis found the percentage of banks earning negative ratings from regulators on CRA exams has risen from 1.45 percent in 2007 to more than 6 percent in the first quarter of this year.

At the Justice Dept., a new 20-person unit dedicated to fair lending issues received a record number of discrimination referrals from regulators in 2010 and has dozens of open cases, according to a recent agency report. Potential penalties can reach into the millions of dollars. "We are using every tool in our arsenal to combat lending discrimination," Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Div., told a conference of community development advocates in Washington in April.

read more...http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_20/b4228031594062.htm

[YumYum]

By capitalism’s perverse moral logic, if a person sells toxic assets by knowingly misrepresenting them as sound, the fault lies not with the misrepresentation of the seller, but rather with the lack of due diligence on the part of the overly trusting borrower. When the assets prove worthless and threaten both the solvency of both the seller and the borrower, the logic says the party responsible for the misrepresentation has a moral obligation to demand redress from the government, “Buy my toxic assets at face value and make me whole so that I return to my trade in toxic assets, or I will be forced to stop lending and crash the economy.”

http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/greed-is-not-a-virtue

[buck000]

True.

I am thinking of buying: Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51xS0tzS3AL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/Money-Power-Goldman-Sachs-World/dp/038552384X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305135323&sr=8-1-spell

Cohan was on The Daily Show, and IIRC, Stewart got Oh, So Close to (imho) understanding where the root of the problem is:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-28-2011/william-cohan

I know Stewart's just a comedian, but he has a bit of sway with a number of people. He just seems to be all about instituting regulations to punish the big guys and protect the little guys, without (again, imho) understanding the system is created by the big guys and any regulations (that they probably author anyway) will have intentional loopholes or are otherwise to their advantage.

End The Fed.
;)

[NACBA]

Who's side is Rand on?

[Ronin Truth]

"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." -- Lord Acton