Comments on: Goldman’s Best Year Ever?

By: chas

chas — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:20:58 +0000

What did Goldman produce to make all these profits? Anything? Nothing? Or did they just increase their possession of medium of exchange (money)? How did they do that? By buying some paper assets low from one group & selling high to another?

Did they produce any jobs for middle class workers?
How do those profits help our country?

What are they going to exchange all that increased medium of exchange for? And who’s going to produce it? Guess who. Not them.

By: lambert strether

lambert strether — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:46:05 +0000

Here's an interesting true fact from Reuters: In this recession, the rich are giving up luxury goods and getting more health care. Wish I could do that. Either end of the equation.

By: lambert strether

lambert strether — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:43:29 +0000

Public option isn'it even pink.

By: lambert strether

lambert strether — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:40:33 +0000

The business objective of banks is for banksters to loot as much as they possibly can and get away clean. That's why one good way to have a sounder financial system is to turn the banks into regulated public utilities -- one solution proposed by Williem Buiter, among others.

By: Michael Brenner

Michael Brenner — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:28:59 +0000

I have yet to see any reference to how the $12 billion+ transfer from the Treasury to Goldman Sachs via the AIG bailout figures in their balance sheet. If divided into two equal tranches, GS would post big losses of billions in both the first and second quarters.

By: Marian

Marian — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:18:11 +0000

I like the ‘B of A’ abbreviation

By: pebird

pebird — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:59:56 +0000

I think we prefer to be outraged at myths because it gives us the impression that our outrage did something. “Look, no more welfare queens driving Cadillacs, my anger must have done something!” (uh…never were any).

Whereas with GS – we can’t even fathom what will be necessary – need something different than mere outrage.

By: Hoi Polloi

Hoi Polloi — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:26:02 +0000

GoldmanSachs is earning always, whether it’s in bull or crisis times. Both are most likely originated by themselves.

They are to big to fail and they have former employees in every level of financial institutes or government.

They insure their toxic business with a company which fails, but they know they get paid first when the taxpayer bails them out, once more.

GoldmanSachs is a MONSTER which has to be dismantled before it destroys the whole communtity and extorts more money from the tax payers.

This HAS TO BE STOPPED!!

By: Walt

Walt — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:15:29 +0000

I’m not sure if there is sarcasm at work; regardless, you are aware that “welfare mothers driving cadillacs” was myth perpetuated by Reagan as part of a strategy to appeal to whites at the expense of blacks (although more whites were receiving welfare)? Please see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen

By: Lavrenti Beria

Lavrenti Beria — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:51:44 +0000

He also holds to debt forgiveness in circumstances such as we are in, an innovative notion with a long history that just might help end our present travail. But that’s about as likely an expectation to have as looking for the truth from Barak Obama and the pond scum that so visibly surround him. One needs a background in bacteriology to plumb the depths of that abyss.

By: Wayne Martin

Wayne Martin — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:42:39 +0000

The last paragraph of this Guardian/UK article should be considered in light of Goldman’s “good year”:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jun/21/goldman-sachs-bonus-payments

Last week, the firm predicted that President Barack Obama’s government could issue $3.25tn of debt before September, almost four times last year’s sum. Goldman, a prime broker of US government bonds, is expected to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from selling and dealing in the bonds.
—-

What’s good for Goldman generally isn’t so good for the nation.

By: don

don — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:18:20 +0000

Are the earnings being reported with all assets marked-to-market? Why did Goldman become an FDIC-insured bank?

By: Top Posts « WordPress.com

Top Posts « WordPress.com — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:50:59 +0000

[...] Goldman’s Best Year Ever? A reader pointed me to this story in The Guardian citing Goldman insiders saying this could be the investment [...] [...]

By: TonyForesta

TonyForesta — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:53:17 +0000

I’ve never seen a welfare mom driving a Cadillac. I’ve seen them humbled in the grocery store performing works of mathmatical genious to feed their kids. I’ve also seen the predatorclass, and the heads finance oligarch, and Wall Street titans goating over $300.00 sushi dinners, and red Lamborgini’s. The welfare mom’s I have seen are desperate and enterprizing. The predatorclass titans on the otherhand are heartless, obdurate, cruel, and supremist. The predatorclass imagines they are safe and sound in their oppulent palaces, but they are wildly mistaken. History proves that when elites grow ugly and abusive, obdurate, uncaring, detached, – a real horrorshow rebellion births and grows, and in the end it is elites that end up running and hiding for their lives. We are fast approaching this kind of threshold. Either the predatorclass recognizes, appreciates, and accounts for the palpable, visceral pain and suffering their fellow poor and middle class Americas are hazarding and burdening and works to right these terrible unjust and illegal wrongs, – or the predatorclass will be the targets of a poor and middle class hurled into desperation and revolt. This moment is closer than predators think, and predators will not be safe, and there will be no law, and no end to the resistance and turbulence, and predators will be targeted and held responsible, and culpable, and there will be blood, a reckoning, and a balancing.

In a world where there are no laws, – there are no laws for anyone!

By: ken

ken — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:33:21 +0000

your analysis is on the money. The largest banks are grinning now, trying to establish a smoke screen. The motherload of defaults is about to appear in the commercial real estate markets. Nouriel Roubini is correct, we are participating in a ‘W’, a double-dip recession.