Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Wall Street Insider Tells All! Goldman Sachs Executive Goes Public; Worst Fears About Your Friendly But Unethical Wall Street Profit-Mongers Confirmed!****************************************************************************************** Greg Smith, an executive director at the bank, resigned with a blistering editorial that accused the bank of losing its "moral fiber," putting profits ahead of customers' interests and dismissing customers as "muppets." The decline of the bank's culture, he wrote, threatened Goldman's survival after 143 years. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/brokerage/story/2012-03-14/goldman-sachs-exec-resignation/53524744/1

24 comments:

  1. While I subscribe to the New York Times, I just bumped it back to just weekend service ... so I just now heard about this.
    It apparently has shook up the privileged class down in lower Manhattan... and I find that strangely satisfying.
    :)

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  2. Me too, Chuck. Me too. It's not so much we learned anything new here, but it's a great confirmation. And adds all the more to the argument from serious people that we need more, not less, regulation of the investment industry.

    Bring us back our sovereignty!

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  3. I made the mistake *(euphemism) of commenting on a friend's page about LaFolette's campaign fundraising page (he's challenging Scott Walker) in Wisconsin. LaFolette's fundraising goal is $50K which I pointed out could be matched in .8 milliseconds by either Koch brother.... and what a sad commentary that makes about whatever happened to my country.

    He replied "Ha. This hasn't been your country for a very long time. It's a country of the plutocrats for the plutocrats...
    Indeed... we do need to regain some sovereignty for the people, not just people with money.

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  4. I just read about this too...I am glad he is telling it all....we knew all along they were robbing us blind for their own pocketbook...but now we see it in black/white....and yes we do need more regulations and stop this robbery of peoples money and deteriorating our country.

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  5. Vampire squid I like. I'm not sure that Goldman Sachs ever had any 'moral fibre' to begin with, it has always been a playground for the spoilt brats of the Greater Bilderbergian banksterocracy, the Muppet generation, the shallow and superficial cream of a money grabbing slime pool that has every 'serious' politician in the land slavering and salivating distastefully in the lobbies of the corridors of power, dancing to the hedge fund manager's tune.

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  6. Muppets? Not so much Honey Monster as Money Monster.

    Personally I'd like to see a 10% scumbag tax imposed upon all banks, drawn soley from senior bankers bonuses and wages and from the shareholder's profits. After all, shareholders are the benefitters of the blood money squeezed from the withering pockets of Joe Public.

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  7. 10% scumbag tax for energy company executives and shareholders as well. They are making record profits at a time when costs for the consumer are at an all time high.

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  8. I'll have to find out more about a LaFolette running for office in Wisconsin. That might be some good news.

    You said it , Chuck. As someone with a sign at a OWS rally put it, "I don't mind you being rich; I mind you buying Washington!"

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  9. Yes, Marty , and I'd like to see that articulated more often; perhaps we will when the general election starts and the media starts covering more Democrats and left-leaning challengers.

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  10. I'm skeptical about the "golden age" at G-S myself, AA. Mr. Smith might be employing a literary narrative device to contrast the old way of obfuscating against the clients and the public good with the total moral depravity and out and out mendacity that came in the Bush years.

    I suspect that whatever good works might have been going on at Goldman Sachs disappeared when it was clear that the Securities and Exchange Commission and other federal trade commission agencies went into the tank and the unregulated-economy models of the Al Greenspan and the gang at the "Chicago School" triumphed in Washington.

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  11. i agree. Totally.

    One wonder how the banking hierarchy gets away with anything less Oakie. But some of the plutocrats friends in Washington did manage to "change the narrative". Some of this I learned from the book "Pity the Billionaire" by Thomas Frank. http://dnoakes.multiply.com/reviews/item/88

    But you can put a lot of it down to short-term voter memory loss and that unique American desire by millions here to blame the government for doing something wrong--when they should be blamed for not doing anything, at the behest of lobbyists.

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  12. Its funny, I havent heard not a one of the republican candidates saying how they will change things for the better of all...instead they want to talk about defunding this or that and war on women's rights. Look what is happening to our gas prices? I know our president cant do anything about that...but the regulators on those that are manipulating the price per barrel is not into affect because the congress wont let it do the job to get those wall streeters who are betting and causing the price to sky rocket. Its all on the heads of congress that all has gone to shit in this country and I am hoping they all get voted out and some normal minded people get put in to do some good for our economy.

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  13. Don't those guys in politics and in big business realise that the working person is the goose that laid the golden egg and that even the rich and powerful will be jumping out of high-rise windows if they strangle the economy to death? OK, the very richest will simply move to China or Dubai, but their direct underlings are as vulnerable as anyone else if we have a Super-crash.

    I think one of the problems is that the public are manipulated beyond belief. How can we call the wealthy immoral when we buy lottery tickets with the aim of becoming multi-millionaires ourselves? How can we call them evil when we aspire to be rich and follow the American Dream? How can we call them the sole destroyers when we purchase their products and services?

    They and the politicians have to be cut-off at the knees and we have to go without to do that. Will the car driver use less petrol? Will the homeowner improve his home efficiency re energy useage? Will the regular Joe go without luxury goods? Will the tabloid reader choose books instead?

    I agree that doing nothing is the very sweet oxygen that the bastards who run things breath, whilst poisoning the rest of us. They are simply unnacountable because we have allowed them to become so.

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  14. I think the media deserve a little comeback too! And let's seize all the possessions of all people convicted of serious crime. It's about time that people who undermine our societies started to put something back.

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  15. I think we need to:

    Spread the word, as you are doing, Doug

    Purchase products and services from the least immoral (Even though it will cost more).

    Demand that politicians be accountable

    Demand that the media be accountable

    Demand that big buisiness be accountable

    Commit short-term and long-term to environmental necessities

    Question what we do in our daily lives that may hinder our society and what might be improved

    Boycot those odius "Greed is good" products like the millionaire lotteries and tv shows with large cash rewards. If we ignore them they will die and healthier things will replace them.

    Boycot the London Olympics after the British government has lied and lied about how much it is costing the public as they bring in huge cuts in benefit support for disabled people and attack pensions.
    They are not our Olympics, they are the Tories Olympics. Extortion.

    Campaign for a "Good citizen" concept whereby those who set the best examples are acknowledged (That includes some old dear cleaning floors for forty years and care workers). And a "Bad Citizen" concept which would be attached to anyone who acted in a way that could be described as Anti-American/Anti-British (ie criminals and other exploiters who suck the life out of our societies).

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  16. Incidently, my local council refuses to provide adequate recycling services in my area on the grounds of cost-cutting, yet they recently spent hundreds of thousands of pounds to bale out the debts of a badly run local sports team. Inappropriate? Or just Misappropriation?

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  17. I think all these are excellent principles, Oakie. I plant to reprint these on some of my other web pages.

    I'm sorry to hear about the London Olympics becoming so politicized. This "Tory Olympics" is something a lot more people need to take a hard look at as far as it extends to both our larger societies.

    Thanks.

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  18. Doug this morning I read this and then I looked at the bottom of the page and found that today was
    the death of Charlie Chaplin who's obituary apparently was posted in July in an error. Now this is a
    way of going out from a position and saying as it is. This might serve of some service I recall the
    bank while living there. But on the positive side the chairman of Starbucks does amaze me with
    his thoughts as he was on an interview which I watched last night on Morgan Piers on CNN.

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  19. I didn't see that interview Jack--I'll have to try and find it on CNN.com.

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  20. This was on the other day Doug he makes sence.

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  21. This was that interview and he does make sense Doug.

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