And about Goldman’s future prospects. Lending is harder to come by, you see, whether for current financing, corporate restructurings or mergers. Even top creditworthy customers who need it are willing to pay top dollar to find it and get it. So it all works out fine in the end, for Goldman Sachs.

What’s good for Goldmans is good for the country, no?

Brother, can you spare a trillion?

Have you guys seen this site about Goldman Sachs, and the guy who started it is being sued by GS, and the court docs are all accessible. Some pretty good reporting, too…

http://www.goldmansachs666.com/

And they said, rightfully, that General Motors used accounting subtleties to smooth out its cyclical profits. Presumably, this is all legal, and unseemly or ugly are irrelevant attributes to the King of Wall Street. (I wonder what was kissed that turned into Goldman Sachs. Surely not merely a frog; it has legs.)

It does make one wonder what subtleties Goldman is suggesting to Prince Geithner in order to hide the size, the beneficiaries, and the lack of impact of our bail-out to Wall Street.

Interesting website, started less than a month ago to disseminate information about Goldman Sachs vast secretive influence over the bail-out and other aspects of US economic policy.

TARP payments to Goldman, which may have assisted it in “earning” $1.8 billion last quarter, amounted to about $25 billion. So how are those profits really profits, and what influence, if any, have we over Goldman for all those greenbacks?

That TARP money has the characteristics of a no-strings, no asset-backed credit card advance that Goldman can repay at will, with no fees or interest, never reveal what it did with it, and not be subject to government regulation. Too big to fail my ass.

Too failed to be big.

When Goldman Sachs inside heist man Paulson was laying it out for our congress folks last fall I just kept hearing the words of this Appalachian old timer Bill Clonch who always said that if anyone ever raped his daughter he would nail their balls to the barn floor and hand them a butcher knife and a pack of matches. And then say “choose” and walk out.

That’s what it seemed Paulson was doing. Nailing (you have to bailout the banks and the bankers) our nations balls to the Treasury floor and then telling our Reps “choose”. They could either burn the Treasury down or chop of the taxpayers balls. Neither choice was a good one but they had to do it now or later.

“They” had to do it to save Goldman and its brethren. Having formed an industry that sought out high risk like an alcoholic needs his next drink, they should have been sent to detox, not given a full wallet and a night on the town. Representative democracy isn’t what’s broken; it’s the representatives.

DIGG IS OPEN

Awful imagery, but you make a good point about how corrupt/twisted Paulson is.

Told my wingnut brother how corrupt I thought Paulson was back when they were crying wolf, to which he responded, “I don’t think Paulson is a crook, but I do think he and every interventionist politician, trying to “solve” the problem, will only postpone and exacerbate its ultimate solution: a big nasty recession.

I’ve read different amounts that Goldman, as counterparty got from AIG almost same day AIG got it from TARP. Anywhere from $10 Billion to $20 Billion (Late Feb or March ?).

But I don’t guess that figures in Goldman’s glowing, world-wide announcement of their “profit” for the so-called first quarter. /s

It is awful imagery but I think it works. Bill Clonch (passed on over) was an Appalachian with an imagination. No bullshit hard worker and did not mess around. If you were going to do him or his family wrong he was going to set it straight. I would like to have Bill put in charge of the Wall street rip off thugs. He would have taken them out to the barn and set them straight

I think some very old, cynical, corrupt man must be in charge of what’s going on.

Not necessarily David Rockefeller, but someone like him.

Someone for whom life is short and for whom only a few lives matter.

Someone who has the power to control, in essential ways, the President of the United States.

Thanks for the links. This site was interesting about Wells-Fargos profit report last week and the “corresponding” increase in stock price.

http://www.housingwire.com/200…..lls-fargo/

In contrast, I note that Goldman-Sachs (GS) was down 11.5% today when I checked it at Yahoo.com/finance.

Yes.

While it has been popular of late to say, in certain circles,”Gummint is the problem,” the real ‘problem’ might actually be the nature of the ‘character’ of those who would be ‘politicians’.

It was long-ago understood, in certain so-called ‘primitive’ societies, that those who lusted after power should never be allowed it.

Our ’sophisticated’ society, on the other foot, seems very s-l-o-w in realizing this universal truth.

One notes that President Obama today implied that people will be held ‘accountable’.

These are some of the proper noises to be made.

However, just whom Obama expects to be held to account, considering who is ‘advising’ him, is very unclear.

No surprise here. The goldmansachs666.com site, run by an individual broker-dealer, is being pursued by Goldman’s lawyers, Chadbourne Parke of Manhattan, with a demand that it cease and desist.

The apparent reasons include the allegation that the site confuses those looking for the real Goldman site – a laughable claim at best – and that it violates unnamed other intellectual property rights of Goldman.

The use of the name in the site’s address, I assume is their biggest complaint. Perhaps it was the combination of Goldman Sachs with “666″, the mark of the beast in the Book of Revelation, that got their attention. I hope that “fair use” exceptions permit the site to continue to use that name; it’s clearly an unconfusing parody of a well-known name. First Amendment rights should protect the kinds of speech I found on the site today.

Obama has lots of good ideas and programs and I’d like to see more of them put into effect. But “accountability” for public officials does not seem high on his To Do list.

“accountability for public officials does not seem high on his TO DO list”

You can say that again.

If folks did not watch Chris Matthews tonight I’ll put five bucks on that the wrestling match between Frank Gaffney, David Corn and Chris Matthews about Spain’s right to go after the Bush 6 will be all over the blogs tomorrow. This was quite the skirmish. Matthews blew a fuse (a good fuse).

Matthews said that Bush had said “we’re going over there to kick some ass”

The match was all about accountability. The clip of this encounter is not up at the Hardball site yet.

Goldman’s profit announcement fictitious as it is was made to pump up a public offering to raise money which it could use to pay back its TARP funds with. Not sure how stock warrants might crimp that play. But the important thing here to remember is that Goldman is, was, and always will be an investment bank. That it currently is a bank holding company just means it can draw on the Fed. It wants to pay back the TARP money principally because it wants to engage in more of the skullduggery for which it is famous and do so with less scrutiny.

If they’re making so much money, they don’t need any more of yours, amirite?

I’m all for Goldman giving back the money. What planet is Congress on that it would leave “I” Banks and their cousins unregulated, allow them to keep doing what they’ve been doing as if they hadn’t nearly brought down the global economy?

Oh, and evidently Goldman Sachs was (maybe still is?) a huge purchaser of oil futures back a year ago, in that decadent London Spec Market that has zero transparency.

No doubt the money’s been safely in the Caymans or some other tax haven with nude beaches and blind eyes for quite some time now.

FWIW: They might release “some sensitive details of the stress tests” of top banks:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04…..=2&hp

http://tinyurl.com/cjlu6t

More FWIW: “One of the leading figures of the savings and loan scandal {read: Neil’s Silverado} of the 1980s jumped to his death . . . .”

http://www.tampabay.com/news/b…..992277.ece

Good Post! Recommended!

Bob in HI

yeah give it back with interest. That is what I have to do when I borrow money

Story about Mike Morgan and goldmansachs666 at “Counterpunch”.
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney04142009.html

Goldman Sachs was the support letter for Dodd irt the infrastructure bank (go to bottom of article and click on the “here” link for the pdf – it’s the last page).

But the bank idea is meeting resistance in the past week.

Wonder if there is a relationship here?

Whoa, this guy who jumped was a major cockroach. These guys are all just common crooks.