Goldman Sachs is just plain evil
They are evil as can be,
Goldman Sachs are such a liar
They say one and one makes three
When the funds they sold their junk to
Tanked, they went on a spree
Goldman Sachs is just plain evil
They are evil as can be. Joe Crow Ryan, song 2010
In our post-Lehman, post-subprime, post-bankster-bailout world, Goldman Sachs is a synonym for evil. The Corbett Report, ‘Meet Goldman Sachs the Vampire Squid’
‘They’re pathological.’ ibid. F William Engdahl
‘The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells of money.’ ibid. article Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone magazine
‘How Goldman Sachs basically created, did the great crash of 1929.’ ibid. Thom Hartmann show 2009, cited Galbraith
Goldman’s contribution to the subprime meltdown of the previous decade … ibid.
‘So for Goldman to get into the ten billion dollar cheque for bailout they had to go from a gambling house, an investment bank, into a nice commercial bank.’ ibid. Greg Palast, interview Democracy Now
The tissue of wanton criminality that permeates the very fabric of Goldman Sachs history. ibid.
‘Doin’ God’s work.’ ibid. Lloyd Blankfein
When Goldman Sachs becomes Government Sachs … well who is going to stop them and how? ibid.
Save this company, don’t save that one – who’s making those decisions? Oh that’s right, Hank Paulson, ex-Goldmanite. ibid.
Wait – did he say drain the swamp or to fill the swamp as quickly as possible with as many members of Goldman Sachs as can possibly be stuffed into it? ibid.
The economic chaos that we’re seeing right now on Wall Street and on Main Street and on Washington stems from many factors of course but among them are the ideas of Milton Friedman. The Shock Doctrine, 2009, Naomi Klein
The thesis of the shock doctrine is that we’ve been sold a fairy tale about how these radical policies have swept the globe, that they haven’t swept the globe on the backs of freedom and democracy, but they’ve needed shocks, they have needed crises, they have needed states of emergencies. ibid.
With the population in shock, Pinochet imposed the policies recommended by the Chicago boys: the removal of price controls, the sale of state companies, the removal of import barriers and cuts to government expenditure. Friedman later acknowledged the importance of the Chilean experiment. It didn’t work. ibid.
This savage stream of pure capitalism … came to dominate the world. ibid. Klein
Friedman enjoyed a friendly relationship with Nixon. Several of his Chicago School colleagues and disciples were recruited to work for the government. Donald Rumsfeld was one of them. ibid.
Thatcher’s profound unpopularity seemed to be proving once again that free-market fundamentalism was simply too unpopular, too directly harmful to many people to survive in a democratic state where governing requires getting the consent of the governed, unlike a military dictatorship. What pulled Thatcher back from the abyss and ultimately saved the project was a crisis – indeed it was the ultimate crisis: a war. ibid.
The majority of Russians opposed the Chicago Boys’ radical vision for their country. ibid.
Iraq: you had three distinct forms of shock that were all working together and reinforcing each other: you had the shock of the war which was immediately followed by economic shock therapy imposed under Paul Bremer … the shock of enforcement including torture. ibid.
By July 2007 there were more contractors than soldiers. ibid.
We are going to have to go out there and make them do it. ibid.
There’s a huge amount of anger and frustration in the United States and it’s been growing for years. Saving Capitalism, 2017
Robert B Reich: Saving Capitalism, For the Many Not the Few. ibid.
Most Americans now have severe doubts about the system … They don’t know exactly how it’s rigged. ibid.
If it’s organised for people, it can be a good and moral system. ibid.
There’s no such thing as a free market without the government making the rules of the game. ibid.
Where did all the money go? It went upward … So does political power. ibid.
Thousands of subsidies and tax-breaks going to corporations each year. These [corporate] subsidies are costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars every year. ibid.
A systematic changing of the rules of our financial system. ibid.
Manipulations of the rules of our economy are happening across our major industries … How do these industries manage to get rules that benefit them? ibid.
What is capitalism? Is it an economic system? Or is it an apparatus we can use to make more money for ourselves and take more money from others? The China Hustle, opening commentary, 2018
Before the dust had settled on the economic collapse in 2008, Wall Street had already figured out a new way to package garbage as gold: they were engineering an enormous fraud that spanned the globe, but this time the lies at the centre of the scam were 100% legal; this time the crime was based in China. ibid.
Roth wasn’t the only bank cashing in on the China boom. ibid.
Between 2006 and 2012 over 400 Chinese companies listed on US markets; 80% of them were reverse mergers. ibid.
All of the people we think of as gatekeepers – the lawyers, the bankers, the auditors, and people make good money to ensure the markets are clean – weren’t doing anything of the sort. They simply processed the necessary paperwork, took their fees and moved on. ibid.
The dark side of finance – short selling. ibid.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of Chinese reverse mergers that he’d sold were frauds. ibid.
How is money created? Where does it come from? Who benefits? And what purpose does it serve? For centuries the mechanics of the monetary system have remained hidden from the prying eyes of the populace. 97% Owned: Economic Truth, 2012
In 2010 the total UK money supply stood at £2.15 trillion. 2.6% of this total was physical cash. ibid.
Seigniorage: Profit made by a government by issuing currency. The difference between the face value of notes and coins, and their production costs. ibid.
When banks issue loans to the public, they create new commercial bank money. ibid.
‘It’s basically an accounting trick … banks create money.’ ibid. Professor Richard Werner
Between 1998 and 2007 the UK money supply tripled. ibid.
Banks are no longer restricted by how much they can lend. ibid.
‘It’s generally speaking when you have debts owned by the poor to the rich that suddenly debts become a sacred obligation more important than anything else.’ ibid. Dave Graeber, interview Democracy Now
The [indebted] country becomes a vassal state, allowing large corporations to exploit its natural resources and workforce. ibid.
The system is neither stable nor fair … The system is designed to make certain people very rich. ibid.
The banks caused the financial crisis and now the rest of us are being asked to pay for it. ibid.
‘The engines of corporatism cannot be altered. They are impervious to the will of those who they exploit; they are more powerful than the governments they control, and they have built within them an inevitable kind of mechanism for self-annihilation … ‘They turn everything into a commodity.’ Capitalism is the Crisis: Radical Politics in the Age of Austerity, Chris Hedges, 2011
‘They have carried out a coup d’etat. They have won and we have lost.’ ibid.
‘The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving different toward one another.’ ibid. Gustav Landaeuer
Profits at Largest 500 Corporations Grew by 81% Percent in 2010. ibid. online news
The disintegration of these social bonds plunges individuals into deep psychological distress. (Society & Poverty & Democracy & United States of America & Capitalism) Chris Hedges, lecture New York Sanctuary for Independent Media, ‘American Anomie’, Youtube 2.01.07, 2018
Our corporate coup d’etat and failed democracy has freed the oligarchic elite from all legal and moral constraints. ibid.