Friday, December 2, 2011

"Goldman Sachs in Talks to Acquire Treasury Department" (great "Masters of the Eurozone" infographic) GS

From the Huffington Post:
In what some on Wall Street are calling the biggest blockbuster deal in the history of the financial sector, Goldman Sachs confirmed today that it was in talks to acquire the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

According to Goldman spokesperson Jonathan Hestron, the merger between Goldman and the Treasury Department is "a good fit" because "they're in the business of printing money and so are we."

The Goldman spokesman said that the merger would create efficiencies for both entities: "We already have so many employees and so much money flowing back and forth, this would just streamline things."...MORE

Sure, it's all fun and games, until somebody pokes an eye out.
The above link is from a rather more serious post at Docudharma:
The Goldman Sachs Project to take over the world

Sometimes a person or organization becomes so powerful and Evil that they appear cartoonish.   It might seem impossible to find a similar character outside of a James Bond movie. After all, who really wants to take over the world and has a plan to do it, right?

  So attributing truly Evil intentions to a public organization, and voicing those concerns, automatically puts one into the land of tinfoil-hat, konspiracy lunatics.

  And yet there is an ongoing theft taking place in global finance on such a scale that is threatening the concept of democracy itself, and Goldman Sachs has their fingerprints all over the crime scene.
  At what point do we suspend our disbelief and embrace reality? These guys really are Evil.


"We are doing God's work."
 - Lloyd Blankfein, CEO Goldman Sachs

  The Independent had a great graphic recently that displayed the New Reality in Europe.

  As the financial crisis has deepened in Europe, Goldman Sachs has taken over the halls of power.
gjohnsit :: The Goldman Sachs Project to take over the world
   For those of you new to this scenario (or a member of the Cult of the Free Market), that might sound like an altruistic company moving in to clean up the mess the politicians made.
But there is nothing altruistic about it. Goldman Sachs has massive exposure to troubled European debt ($4.16 Billion), and now they have people in place to make certain that they do not take losses on those bets. [ummm...Dr. Evil, that's not exactly a lot of money -ed]

 Goldman Sachs is expanding its influence in Europe so fast that there is open speculation where they might stage their next coup d'etat.

In England, Goldman Sachs was able to manage a sweetheart deal with the taxman, who decided they didn't need to consult a single lawyer before letting Goldman walk on a failed tax avoidance scheme.

The IMF strategy chief in charge of working with Europe's  bailouts over the past year was a former Vice Chairman at Goldman Sachs International.

 While a conflict of interest exists, that doesn't make Goldman Sachs Evil.
What makes them Evil is that Goldman Sachs helped create the crisis.
 Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government to mask the true extent of its deficit with the help of a derivatives deal that legally circumvented the EU Maastricht deficit rules. At some point the so-called cross currency swaps will mature, and swell the country's already bloated deficit.
 OK, so that's underhanded. But does that qualify as Evil? Not exactly. What makes it Evil is what Goldman Sachs was doing behind the scenes.
 While it arranged the swaps, Goldman also sought to buy insurance on Greek debt and engage in other trades to protect itself against the risk of a default on those swaps. Eventually, Goldman sold the swaps to the national bank of Greece.
  So they helped hide the Greek debt problem until it blew up, while betting against Greece, and when Greece finally imploded they put one of their guys in charge of "cleaning it up"...MORE