Recent photos reveal Goldman 'feeding frenzy' picnic

At right, Goldman Sachs executives enjoy the fruits of their labors (Ed Oudenaarden / EPA)

(Wall Street, VVP) — Recent photos obtained by Vox Verax Press show that Goldman Sachs executives celebrated their monumental profits in 2009-2010 with lavish picnics in the woods in upstate New York.

Touting that the revered Wall Street banking giant and U.S. government executive trainer had found a "no fail" way of making huge sums of money, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein said, "How could you go wrong? You tout and sell a highly convoluted, Rube Goldberg-style of investment that no one can understand, and then you bet against it at the same time knowing full well it's going to fail. You win on the way up, and you win on the way down. It's a classic 'win-win' situation. Even a chimpanzee can figure that one out."

Blankfein added that it didn't hurt to get friends and former Goldman executives in the government to approve gigantic taxpayer-funded bailouts to failing companies that Goldman did business with. "We covered our monkey-asses on that one," Blankfein continued. "We didn't get the bailout money directly. That would've looked bad. Instead, we got the government to give the money to AIG and some of those other suckers so they could pay us back for what they owed us. It was sheer genius! No wonder we had cause to celebrate."

And celebrate Goldman executives have. "We got all zee pineapple and mangos we wanted," noted Goldman "whiz kid" Fabrice Tourre. "And eet was kind of fun running around in zee forest wizzout any clothes too! Dom Perignon, eet goes great wees papaya!"

The Goldman Sachs Party

Progressive Ponderings by Joe Mayer

United States presidential campaigns today are extremely expensive. In the year 2000, all candidates combined spent $528 million; in 2004 it had risen to $889 million. By Sept. 21, 2008 Obama had spent $454 million and McCain $230 million. The 2008 total easily topped $1,000,000,000 (one billion dollars).

While $1 billion is an extremely large amount of money, it pales when compared with the revenues and profits of major U.S. corporations. Profits for some major corporations in 2007 (before the recent recession) included Exxon-Mobil at $40.6 B., GE at $22.2 B., Chevron at $18.6 B., Walmart at $12.7 B., and AT&T at $11.9 B.

These profits, year after year, produce one of the more inequitable societies in history. As more and more Americans are left behind in our economic system – the middle class shrinking and the number of poor rising – the wealth at the top continues to multiply.

Forbes Magazine annually publishes a list of America’s richest citizens. The following names and net worth are from its Sept. 2009 issue: Wm. Gates - $50 B., Warren Buffet - $40 B., Lawrence Ellison - $27 B., four Walton (Walmart) families - $19 to $21.5 B. each.

On Jan. 29, 2010, Bill Moyers had as one of his guests Zephyr Teachout, a professor at Fordham U. School of Law and a visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard’s Brennan Center for Justice. That night she stated: “Goldman Sachs is the smartest political party I know in this country.”

In one sentence she encapsulates the essence of wealth’s threat to our democracy. Some of our major corporations “earn” in a matter of weeks the equivalent of the cost of a major presidential campaign. Some of our wealthy citizens could pay for a major presidential campaign from the interest, dividends, and rents their investments earn in a year. Transferring these billions to Senatorial or Congressional campaigns allows them to control whole committees of the Senate and House.

Our financial elites were already purchasing favorable legislation before the latest Supreme Court decision allowing corporations and the wealthy unlimited influence on members of Congress. Unless citizens fight back with all the resources available, their access to the legislative process will be denied by the power of money.

This court decision, which sets the stage for the corporate takeover of our democracy, is NOT Constitutional law. It is a case of an ideological activist court whose decisions generate new laws. Indeed, a Goldman Sachs political party is sure to arise. Everything else in our nation is being given corporate names.

Goldman Sachs: The Grinch who stole Christmas?

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

From "Banks Bundled Bad Debt, Bet Against It and Won" by Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story of the New York Times:

“The simultaneous selling of securities to customers and shorting them because they believed they were going to default is the most cynical use of credit information that I have ever seen,” said Sylvain R. Raynes, an expert in structured finance at R & R Consulting in New York. “When you buy protection against an event that you have a hand in causing, you are buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and then committing arson.”

Santa, don't go down that chimney!

(See also "How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash" from McClatchy News Service here.)

Merry Christmas, everyone....

— From the guys at Vox Verax