The Business of Greed

Retep's Revenge

The Business of Greed – Goldman Sachs

June 2, 2011 By Retep

The Wallstreet giant Goldman Sachs has been subpoenaed by a prosecutor in New York. That’s right, finally the culprits who drove our economy into the ground while profiting billions are being asked some more questions. More questions since they lied in front of Congress all those months ago that is. In reality this doesn’t mean much of anything. They are being subpoenaed for information regarding the financial collapse. It has already been proven time and time again that Goldman Sachs and Wallstreet criminals are in fact too big to fail. Simply put, if these large investment firms go under, our economy goes with it. Wait though, hasn’t our economy already gone under? Aren’t there 40 million people on foodstamps? Aren’t 9% or roughly 14 million Americans unemployed entirely? Maybe it’s time for a change. A different way to generate and recycle capital to create a stable economy. Not even just a stable economy, but an economy that is useful to the general population and not only useful to the very rich. Senator Carl Levin released a report which you can find below that pretty much covers every aspect of the financial collapse. Why it happened, who caused it, how to prevent it from happening again.

“The free market has helped make America great, but it only functions when people deal with each other honestly and transparently. At the heart of the financial crisis were unresolved, and often undisclosed, conflicts of interest,” said Dr. Coburn. “Blame for this mess lies everywhere from federal regulators who cast a blind eye, Wall Street bankers who let greed run wild, and members of Congress who failed to provide oversight.”

In the 600+ page report, he explains how:

Goldman told investors that its interests were “aligned” with theirs when, in fact, Goldman held 100% of the short side of the CDO and had adverse interests to the investors, and described Hudson’s assets were “sourced from the Street,” when in fact, Goldman had selected and priced the assets without any third party involvement. New documents also reveal that, at one point in May 2007, Goldman Sachs unsuccessfully tried to execute a “short squeeze” in the mortgage market so that Goldman could scoop up short positions at artificially depressed prices and profit as the mortgage market declined.

Simply put, Goldman sold off their own bad investments (which they said were “sourced from the street”) to other investors knowing that they were not worth nearly as much as they sold them for, and then they bet against them and made money when their investors had to sell them off because those investors were losing so much money.

Some people claim that this collapse was in fact intentionally orchestrated and carried out for various international economic reasons. We can only speculate on those types of things at the moment, but one thing is for sure. The unceasing need for money and power was majorly at fault here. Greed. As a society we need to start exploring other options regarding the way that we conduct business. Clearly the way that we do it now will not allow to benefit the whole of humanity in the future. But hey, maybe that’s what the people who benefit from the system now have in mind. Maybe they’re scared of overpopulation and are trying to depopulate the globe through these covert means. Again, all purely speculative ideas. However that is exactly what is going to happen if we continue to let the business of greed dictate our political and economic cultures.

Download a summary of the report here
Download the full report here