How Goldman Sachs Robbed You Of Five Billion Dollars

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Goldman Sachs Above the Law

James Hall, Contributor
Activist Post

No doubt, the chief crook on Wall Street is virtually immune from any law that brings lesser mortals to their knees. The latest outrage summed up nicely in "Relieve Goldman Sachs of Their Legal Exposure", passes with little notice in the establishment media.

Goldman Sachs got a rare 'reverse Wells notice' from the SEC, when they were told that a mortgage-backed securities deal which they earlier heard they would face prosecution for would not net them any civil enforcement. But that was just the beginning. Later in the day, they learned they would not face any prosecution from the Justice Department for the misdealings brought to light in a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report a year ago. 

In case you have not heard the details, the Eric Holder DoJ of criminal protection and selective prosecution, hit a new low.

In a written statement, the department said it conducted an exhaustive investigation of allegations brought to light by a Senate panel investigating the 2008-2009 financial crisis. 

'The department and investigative agencies ultimately concluded that the burden of proof to bring a criminal case could not be met based on the law and facts as they exist at this time,' the department said.

TARP was designed to bail out the insolvent banks. Goldman Sachs transformed itself into a BANK so that the firm could borrow from the Fed window.

America for Sale: Is Goldman Sachs Buying Your City?

Image source

Dylan Ratigan
Huffington Post

In Chicago, it's the sale of parking meters to the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi. In Indiana, it's the sale of the northern toll road to a Spanish and Australian joint venture. In Wisconsin it's public health and food programs, in California it's libraries. It's water treatment plants, schools, toll roads, airports, and power plants. It's Amtrak. There are revolving doors of corrupt politicians, big banks, and rating agencies. There are conflicts of interest. It's bipartisan.

And it's coming to a city near you -- it may already be there. We're talking about the sale of public assets to private investors. You may have heard of one-off deals, but what we'll be exploring with the Huffington Post is the scale and scope of what is a national and organized campaign to shift the way we govern ourselves. In an era of increasingly stretched local and state budgets, privatization of public assets may be so tempting to local politicians that the trend seems unstoppable. Yet, public outrage has stopped and slowed a number of initiatives.

The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families

(Part one of a four-part series)

Dees Illustration

Dean Henderson
Global Research

The Four Horsemen of Banking (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) own the Four Horsemen of Oil (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP Amoco and Chevron Texaco); in tandem with Deutsche Bank, BNP, Barclays and other European old money behemoths. But their monopoly over the global economy does not end at the edge of the oil patch. 

According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation.[1]

So who then are the stockholders in these money center banks? 

This information is guarded much more closely. My queries to bank regulatory agencies regarding stock ownership in the top 25 US bank holding companies were given Freedom of Information Act status, before being denied on “national security” grounds. This is rather ironic, since many of the bank’s stockholders reside in Europe.

Goldman Plunges, As Market Cap Shrinks By $8.3 Billion Just Since The Matt Taibbi Takedown

Image: StockCharts.com

Editor's Note:  Yes, Lloyd Blankfein is still with us after The Rapture . . . despite doing God's work. 

Joe Weisenthal
Business Insider

If you haven't been paying attention, Goldman Sachs shares have been in freefall.

They lost over 3% Friday amid a slew of headlines about imminent subpoenas related to Blankfein, the firm's activities during the crisis, and just generally for being the much-reviled Goldman Sachs.

The stock has lost over 10% in just the last week since Matt Taibbi wrote his latest takedown, costing the firm over $8 billion in market cap.

From its 52-week high  made earlier this year, the stock is off 24%.

At $134, it's only barely above its $129 book value, meaning that either A) people don't believe that the company's book value is real, or b) the value of the Goldman Sachs franchise has been reduced to $5/share, or just over $2.5 billion, based on 517 million shares outstanding.

The stock is only barely above where it was at its depths last summer, before it settled civil fraud charges from the SEC.

Panic time, and of course, another sign of the rapture.

RELATED ARTICLE:
5 Signs The End Is Near For The Criminal Banks

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How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis

Don't blame American appetites, rising oil prices, or genetically modified crops for rising food prices. Wall Street and The Fed are at fault for the spiraling cost of food.

Frederick Kaufman
Foreign Policy

Bankers recognized a good system when they saw it, and dozens of speculative non-physical hedgers followed Goldman's lead and joined the commodities index game, including Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Pimco, JP Morgan Chase, AIG, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers, to name but a few purveyors of commodity index funds. The scene had been set for food inflation that would eventually catch unawares some of the largest milling, processing, and retailing corporations in the United States, and send shockwaves throughout the world.

The money tells the story. Since the bursting of the tech bubble in 2000, there has been a 50-fold increase in dollars invested in commodity index funds. To put the phenomenon in real terms: In 2003, the commodities futures market still totaled a sleepy $13 billion. But when the global financial crisis sent investors running scared in early 2008, and as dollars, pounds, and euros evaded investor confidence, commodities -- including food -- seemed like the last, best place for hedge, pension, and sovereign wealth funds to park their cash. "You had people who had no clue what commodities were all about suddenly buying commodities," an analyst from the United States Department of Agriculture told me. In the first 55 days of 2008, speculators poured $55 billion into commodity markets, and by July, $318 billion was roiling the markets. Food inflation has remained steady since.

The money flowed, and the bankers were ready with a sparkling new casino of food derivatives. Spearheaded by oil and gas prices (the dominant commodities of the index funds) the new investment products ignited the markets of all the other indexed commodities, which led to a problem familiar to those versed in the history of tulips, dot-coms, and cheap real estate: a food bubble. Hard red spring wheat, which usually trades in the $4 to $6 dollar range per 60-pound bushel, broke all previous records as the futures contract climbed into the teens and kept on going until it topped $25. And so, from 2005 to 2008, the worldwide price of food rose 80 percent -- and has kept rising. "It's unprecedented how much investment capital we've seen in commodity markets," Kendell Keith, president of the National Grain and Feed Association, told me. "There's no question there's been speculation." In a recently published briefing note, Olivier De Schutter, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, concluded that in 2008 "a significant portion of the price spike was due to the emergence of a speculative bubble."

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RELATED ARTICLE:
5 Easy Ways to Protect Yourself From Food Inflation

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Senate report to reveal mortgage crisis details: WSJ

The Journal said the Senate investigation's findings
would likely expose bad blood between
Goldman and Morgan Stanley
© AFP/Getty Images/File Chris Hondros

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Senate will soon issue findings of a probe of the US mortgage meltdown that fueled the global financial crisis, with Goldman Sachs likely to face fresh embarrassment over its role, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, whose high-profile inquiry commission subpoenaed Goldman's and other executives last year, is due to release its report on the subprime implosion of 2007 and 2008.

The paper, citing people familiar with the matter, said the report was expected to release emails from securities firms that developed or sold subprime mortgages and financial vehicles including collaterized debt obligations (CDO).

CDOs were used to help Wall Street firms bet against the housing market. When the housing bubble burst, several of the top CDOs were downgraded to "junk" status, and their values plunged.

Goldman In Insider Trading Probe?

Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone

News leaked out today that the feds will soon be herding a whole pen full of Wall Street firms into court on insider trading charges, including, reportedly, our old friends Goldman, Sachs.

The basic charge here is that investment banks and other firms were leaking insider info about things like mergers to closely-allied hedge funds, who in turn placed the requisite bets on or against the companies in question.


The most interesting detail in the WSJ piece, to me, was a bit about an email sent by one John Kinnucan, a principal at an Oregon-based company called Broadband Research, to a number of his clients. The email reads, in part, as follows:

"Today two fresh faced eager beavers from the FBI showed up unannounced (obviously) on my doorstep thoroughly convinced that my clients have been trading on copious inside information… (They obviously have been recording my cell phone conversations for quite some time, with what motivation I have no idea.) We obviously beg to differ, so have therefore declined the young gentleman's gracious offer to wear a wire and therefore ensnare you in their devious web."

Aside from the amusing detail here in which Kinnucan brags about turning down an offer to cooperate with the feds (I ain't no stinking rat!) the thing to note here is the list of clients he sent this email to. Those include hedge-fund firms SAC Capital Advisors LP and Citadel Asset Management, and mutual-fund firms Janus Capital Group, Wellington Management Co. and MFS Investment Management.

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RELATED ARTICLE:
The Stock Market Rug is Being Pulled Out By Insiders

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Banksters Move to Gut Aspects of Financial Reform Bill

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
November 17, 2010

Now that the game of political musical chairs is over and Republicans will control the House next year, the banksters are busy at work whittling away at provisions contained in the financial regulation bill pushed through Congress earlier this year by the Democrats. As should be expected, the corporate media is mostly mum, although McClatchy ran with a story.

	Goldman and the bankers let Congress know who is in charge.

“Lobbyists for Big Finance are working hardest to neutralize the so-called Volcker Rule, which would force big banks to spin off their lucrative proprietary trading operations, in which they invest their own capital in speculative deals,” Kevin G. Hall writes for McClatchy Newspapers.

The measure is named after former Fed mob boss Paul Volcker. It prevents the banksters from betting against trades they made on behalf of their customers, a popular practice until the fuse was lit on the global economy beginning in 2008. Goldman Sachs sold customers overvalued mortgage bonds and then turned around and made secret bets those bonds would default.

Lobbyists are crawling all over the district of criminals like blood thirsty ticks on a swamp dog. They are working to “soften” requirements that Wall Street firms put more “skin in the game” by retaining more mortgage bonds on their books to guard against shoddy lending. They’re also trying to undercut the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to McClatchy.

Bailout watcher Elizabeth Warren said the Financial Protection Bureau is the strongest financial reform in Obama’s bill. However, considering the bureau’s proposed makeup, it is destined to rolled in like a Trojan horse. “The bureau will consolidate employees and responsibilities from a host of other regulatory bodies, including the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and even the Department of Housing and Urban Development,” the New York Times reported in September.

The Federal Reserve was established by private bankers — banks and associated businesses owned by the Rockfellers, J.P. Morgan, the Rothschilds, Lazard Freres, Schoellkopf, Kuhn-Loeb, the Warburgs, Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs — and exists solely to manipulate and control the nation’s money supply.

Goldman Sachs was a top Obama contributor along with Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. “Goldman’s connections to the White House and the Obama administration are raising eyebrows at a time when Washington and Wall Street are dueling over how to overhaul regulation of the financial world,” McClatchy reported in April. “Several former Goldman executives hold senior positions in the Obama administration, including Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Mark Patterson, a former Goldman lobbyist who is chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; and Robert Hormats, the undersecretary of state for economic, energy and agricultural affairs.”

From the very start, the Barry Obama administration was stacked like a crooked card deck withbankster insiders. Out of 14 top cabinet selections, 9 are affiliated with the Bilderberg group, 10 with the Council on Foreign Relations and 5 of are affiliated with the Trilateral Commission.

Now that the mid-term election is safely behind us, the elite plan to dump aspects of the so-called financial reform bill — like protecting consumers from loan sharks and shady investment hucksters — and continue their plan to slow motion implode the economy and take blindsided tax payers to the proverbial cleaners.

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Dollar set for sharp decline, Goldman forecasts

The dollar will embark on a sharp decline over the next 12 months, Goldman Sachs forecast on Wednesday, as policy makers in Washington look poised to press the trigger on another round of printing money.

Richard Blackden
Telegraph

The investment bank expects the dollar to drop to $1.79 against the pound in six months and $1.85 in 12 months. Sterling closed at $1.5891 in London yesterday. The euro won’t be spared either, with the dollar’s slump forcing it to $1.50 six months from now and $1.55 in a year’s time.

Powered by President Obama’s stimulus package and a rebound in inventories, the US recovery peaked in the final three months of last year and has been slowing ever since.

As the summer delivered a diet of weak economic data, the conviction has strengthened among a growing number of officials at the Federal Reserve that it should risk another bout of quantitative easing - printing money to inject into the economy.

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Will the Dollar Rebound Before Being Dissolved Into Global Currency?

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'Goldman Conspiracy' helps China defeat the U.S.

Paul B. Farrell
Market Watch

Goldman's "ultimate goal is hunting and killing China," warns Li Delin, the Chinese author of "The Goldman Sachs Conspiracy," a bestseller in China.

Li is not as visually dramatic as Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone picture of Goldman as a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." But Li's Chinese readers love his "Goldman Sachs knows when to go for your neck" like a "Manchurian tiger."

But is the Goldman Conspiracy really a threat to China? That's a joke, right?


It's the exact opposite. In fact, it should be obvious that China is actually a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of Goldman, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like Goldman's capital, talent and connections."

Then, eventually, in a generation, by 2040, China will suck the life out of Goldman. At the same time, back here stateside, China must be quietly cheering as America's "bloodsucking vampire squid" sucks the life out of our capitalism and democracy, as the Goldman Conspiracy's insatiable greed aggressively sabotages America from within.

Get it? China is very effectively using the out-of-control Goldman Conspiracy greed machine as a vital weapon in China's two-pronged global strategy against America, over in China and back here in America. And tragically, Goldman's insatiable greed is so blinding that Goldman has lost the ability to see the long-term consequences of its sad un-American behavior.

Today, the Goldman Conspiracy is America's unfortunate Black Swan, a Trojan Horse helping our enemy abroad, undermining our economy back home.

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Chasing Goldman Sachs: How the Masters of the Universe Melted Wall Street Down . . . And Why They'll Take Us to the Brink Again

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