Goldman Sachs

[Liberty]

The Fed wouldn't reveal which financial institutions were receiving money. I would venture to guess Goldman Sachs has received a good chunk of this money. Wouldn't it be ironic if Goldman Sachs was using this money to short the U. S. markets?

[Bruno]

Without a doubt Goldman Sachs has benefited immensely. And the stacking of the deck of Goldman Sachs employees through out the Treasury, Fed, and the Central Banks around the world is finally being brought to people's attention.

A bright side of this economic collapse is that average Americans are actually hearing real economic issues, names, connections, and monetary policy discussed. Not to the extent that we would like as far as an Austrian School view, but word is getting out there and everyone's eyes have turned to the economy.

[cheapseats]

Someone from Goldman Sachs needs to go to prison.

I was looking to resurrect a thread called Heads Must Roll, begun by The Count.

If the American People will not step up to the plate and play hardball, even now, $#@! 'em.

The same guys who got us into this cluster$#@! are posturing to get us out, and getting paid big bucks for it.

We are as crazy people. Stark, raving mad.

[Lord Xar]

If AIG went under, who would feel the most hurt -- yes, you guessed it : Goldman Sachs.

Look up the relationship between AIG and Goldman Sachs.


How all this could take place with no oversite and no arrests definetively tells us how intrinsic and ingrained corruption is in Washington.

[jonahtrainer]

I was looking to resurrect a thread called Heads Must Roll, begun by The Count.

Figurative or literal? Both Jim Sinclair and Ron Paul seem to be fomenting the literal as Wall Street is full of sociopaths.

[cheapseats]

Figurative or literal? Both Jim Sinclair and Ron Paul seem to be fomenting the literal as Wall Street is full of sociopaths.

Literally. There is a thread I kept meaning to get back to, entitled something very like Heads Must Roll. It was begun by someone who, if memory serves, introduced himself as The Count in that very post.

Literally. For the record, I believe that capital punishment is necessary in a prosperous and civilized society. I believe that a firing squad constitutes the most cost effective and humane method of capital punishment. I believe that there are Traitors in our midst, including in our Government. Unless we wanna go ahead and agree universally that there are no countries -- that we are just one great big happy or unhappy world -- I believe that there is a level of traitorousness that not only should be but must be punished by death.

[HOLLYWOOD]

The Fed wouldn't reveal which financial institutions were receiving money. I would venture to guess Goldman Sachs has received a good chunk of this money. Wouldn't it be ironic if Goldman Sachs was using this money to short the U. S. markets?

US GOV, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan & FED, best friends since 1907 & 1913 respectively.

PS: The concern I have... is the undisclosed actual amount of FED money that went foreign.

[cheapseats]

It is my understanding that there are nine "anointed" banks. They all had to take money, so that revelation of WHICH of them actually NEEDED the money wouldn't further dampen stock prices.

[Danke]

It is my understanding that there are nine "anointed" banks. They all had to take money, so that revelation of WHICH of them actually NEEDED the money wouldn't further dampen stock prices.

I was at a dinner where someone mentioned a relative at Wells Fargo said something along those lines. Wells Fargo is in good shape and did not want the money, but the Fed. made them take it.

[Matt Collins]

Let's see some of who these guys donated to:


Obama, Barack (D-IL) Senate $884,907

Clinton, Hillary (D-NY) Senate $405,475

McCain, John (R-AZ) Senate $229,695

Romney, Mitt (R) Pres $229,675

Himes, Jim (D-CT) House $140,448

Dodd, Christopher J (D-CT) Senate $110,000

Giuliani, Rudolph W (R) Pres $109,450

Edwards, John (D) Pres $66,450

Specter, Arlen (R-PA) Senate $47,600

Emanuel, Rahm (D-IL) House $35,250


SOURCE:
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/reci...?id=D000000085

[cheapseats]

Excerpted from General Politics/Arrest the Gov'ment:

Originally Posted by heavenlyboy34
Sherman Antitrust Act, the Clayton Act, and the Federal Trade Commission Act – dating from 1890.

The Sherman Antitrust Act has stood since 1890 as the principal law expressing our national commitment to a free market economy in which competition free from private and governmental restraints leads to the best results for consumers. Congress felt so strongly about this commitment that there was only one vote against the Act.


The Sherman Act outlaws all contracts, combinations and conspiracies that unreasonably restrain interstate and foreign trade.


Sherman Act violations involving agreements between competitors usually are punished as criminal felonies. The Department of Justice alone is empowered to bring criminal prosecutions under the Sherman Act. . . . For offenses committed on or after June 22, 2004, individual violators can be fined up to $1 million and sentenced to up to 10 years in federal prison for each offense, and corporations can be fined up to $100 million for each offense. Under some circumstances, the maximum fines can go even higher than the Sherman Act maximums to twice the gain or loss involved.

Considering the hyperkinetic inflation of executive compensation, I submit that the million dollar maximum for individual violators is much much much too low.

I move for legislation encompassing seizure of ill-gotten gains, in addition to stints in federal penitentiaries.

[cheapseats]

I move that the CEO of every failed corporation and of every corporation bellying up to the taxpayer trough be hauled before the Grand Jury.

[cheapseats]

PLAN C IS FOR CELL
22 October 2008


Plan A was for America, if memory serves.

Over the course of this wild and wacky Campaign-O-Rama…a two-year spending frenzy that has served as our principal economic stimulus…I have actually heard the legendary American Dream redefined as “owning your own home.” See here, I thought it was more along the lines of starting with little or nothing and, through superlative effort/energy/aptitude/ingenuity coupled with extraordinary opportunity/serendipity/providence/timing…voila…a productive, fulfilled, happy and secure personage who commands the respect of and enjoys the benefits of Society. What do I know?

Which brings me to Plan B, for Bailout. I know the Great Bailout constitutes privatizing profits and socializing losses, I do know that much. I know that if crime pays, there will be more crime. And I know that, so far, crime pays.

That doesn’t work for me.

I dare claim universal recognition that it is rather harder to be honest than dishonest. It is rather more difficult to continually endeavor to do the right thing…when time and money are short and expediencies regularly present themselves…than to do whatever you please, whenever you please, however you please. A lotta people could get over a lot better if they did not feel morally obliged to tow the line. Government would tell us that not only can the Elite NOT tow any lines, but that they shall be REWARDED for unrestrained free-wheeling with other people’s money?

Like I said, that doesn’t work for me.

Ergo, Plan C…for Cells. Not the terrorist cells that have caused a certain amount of mayhem and that have, in my opinion, been marketed to create OTHER mayhem. Prison Cells. Note the distinction between prison cells and jail cells. I’m talking about federal penitentiaries, not country club jails that serve almost as much needed R & R after all that raping and pillaging.

For real, I have a plan. I not infrequently remind me of Lucy Ricardo…”I’ve GOT it!”

“What have you got?” Ethyl would reliably ask with telltale skepticism.

“A PLAN.”

I am not precisely sure about blogging etiquette, nor about the Findability Factor. I expect I will do myself a favor on both fronts by providing lots of links to correlate with my remarks. I actually DO have quite a lot of research…completely inefficiently clumped at present…and I expect I shall improve rather than deteriorate as a Citizen Journalist. I heard that term on what-passes-for-news…I kinda like it.

In the meantime, though, until I DO become more adroit, I will suggest that many of my remarks are intuitive and general and that demand to cite sources is usually the your-mother-wears-army-boots equivalent of “PROVE IT.” As well, I hear this on the radio, I read that in the coffee shops, this farmer talks about that, that driver talks about this…some of my remarks don’t have “sources” more specialized than My Life.

I declare that I am not a Liar. I’m a piece of work, to be sure…an acquired taste for a niche audience, and even THEN only in limited doses…but I am not a Liar. Easiest thing in the world to say. The next easiest thing is to spot a discrepancy between words and deeds. In real life, that’s the way it is, is it not? You come up against a new person in whatever context, you gotta decide whether they know what they’re talking about and whether they mean what they say. If a person’s word is no good, really, what more is there to say?

Liars lie. It’s what they DO. Babies cry, birds fly, people die and liars lie. Psychopathic Liars, several of whom are numbered among our Conscienceless Uber Rich, lie even when they don’t have to. It’s like chasing mercury.

Which brings me to Plan C, for Cells.

Must I dig up statistics to back up the assertion that America has the largest prison population on earth? MAYBE it’s the largest per capita but I don’t think so, I think it’s the largest in the world. Here is something I WILL pull from the dreaded Documents labyrinth of my computer, which has steadily deteriorated into an unsavory blend of the junk drawer in the kitchen and the wrong side of the tracks.



”When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness: when these things can be said, thn may that country boast its constitution and its government.”

Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part II, 1792

.

America…keenly principled and freshly independent…was one of Thomas Paine’s expressed inspirations in writing Rights of Man. Neither he nor any of our Founding Fathers would be anything but horrified by the State of the Nation, I’m pretty sure of that. I expect they would urge resurrection of public stockades.

If a dog poops on the living room rug, you don’t take the dog out back, point at the flowers and start hollering, “NO! Bad dog!” And you surely don’t, whilst pointing at the flowers, commence lip service to beauty, “We want to keep the living room rug as fresh as flowers so…NO MORE POOPING IN THE HOUSE!”

If a kid swipes another kid’s toy at the park, you don’t take him AND the swiped toy home, sit him down amongst all his toys plus the purloined toy and deliver a speech about sharing. And you surely don’t, whilst delivering the speech on sharing, give the kid an early birthday present.

I am DELIGHTED to hear of more and more calls for Executive Retribution…Mario Cuomo in New York, Keith Fimian running for Congress out of Virginia, a couple different Congressmen on C-SPAN. Otherwise, we’re not only letting them keep the toys they swiped, we’re giving them early birthday presents.

Let the punishment suit the crime. That is wisdom of the ages.

At the root of creative accounting and juggling books and scattering risk and bundling debt and fudging incomes and fibbing rates and winging appraisals lies Greed. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins, that is also wisdom of the ages.

In the couple years that I have been posting online, I have more than once been presented with the argument that a certain amount of Greed is good. Bollocks, to quote Christine Lagarde.

Greed is intense, selfish insatiable desire that exceeds need and warrant alike.

People also argue, rightly I think, that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. But it does NOT follow that the right amount of a bad thing is a good thing. Virtues can be rendered vices. Vices are not rendered virtues.

The offenses are assorted…collusion, insider trading, price fixing, tax evasion, fiduciary malfeasance, conspiracies in restraint of trade, racketeering…but they all trace to Greed.

As a paradigm for punishment, seizure of ill-gotten gains suits crimes attributable to Greed like it was bespoke on Jermyn Street in London.

We now know that when motivated by truly important matters, like the collapsing of America’s financial sector or the pulling of Terri Schaivo’s plug, Congress is able to pass landmark legislation lickety-split. Who can forget the Patriot Act?

When hard-core, bullet-ridden drug traffic hit Ireland, Ireland just said NO and, unlike us, meant it. Seizure of assets…not only those proven to be ill-gotten but those that could not be traced to legitimate sources…nipped that action virtually in the bud.

We can do the same here, AND make a dent in our deficit at the same time. Are you kidding me? We LOVE two-for-one specials.

But the Truth is, though they care about money more than anything, taking their money is not enough. Y’know why? Because they think they are above the law, at the same time that they are diabolically clever. Because their measure of self is obtained via their holdings, they will be motivated unto greater dastardliness to reclaim their greatness. I was once told by a Player that their idea of gossip is counting one another’s money.

Rather than get into long, drawn-out Marcia Clark-style legaleze over which assets were ill-gotten and which were honorable, seize everything except:

1.) the cost of running the family’s lifestyle and primary residence for one year

2.) one million dollars for when the Bad Guy emerges from his year in prison, hopefully reformed.

That is what I propose…seize their assets and send them to federal penitentiaries for one year; their families will be covered while they’re “inside” and they’ll have a million bucks to work with when they get out. Nuthin’ cruel or inhuman about that.

The sins of the father will be visited upon their sons. If families are AT the table, families are ON the table. It is sad about the children, I agree, but the Scoundrels should have given that more thought. Spouses, on the other hand, get no sympathy from me. Think aiding and abetting, think accomplices.

It can be hoped that a year in prison will teach humility, but that is out of our control.

This is not.

I heard on the radio within the past year that the literacy rate of our extraordinary prison population is…get this…THREE PERCENT. It doesn’t even seem possible. MAYBE it was the literacy rate of a convict subset, but I don’t think so, I think it was system-wide.

How on earth do we propose that illiterate people with prison records will earn a living, once they are returned to Society? It practically guarantees reversion to a life of crime and a return to prison. Three strikes, they’re out, you say? And they have two strikes against them at the gate? Who on earth hires illiterate ex-cons? Our credit is shot, so now we borrow trouble.

Like-minded people resonate with one another. Athletes, I think, have more regard for coaches who played the game. Soldiers, I presume, respond better to military officers than to gardeners. Alcoholics, I would know this, get through to other drunks.

Let the criminals teach the criminals. The Bad Guys are bad, not stupid. Let them spend one year in federal penitentiaries teaching those illiterate convicts their letters and numbers. How to fill out a job application, what is an interest rate, stuff like that.

I’ll bet half a dozen disgraced executives won’t have to be raped before there will be a long overdue call for reform of our Draconian prison system. Incarceration Incorporated is decidedly not Christian, it’s not American…it’s not even decent.

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