Goldman's Top Ten Excuses

[don]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbLQb...layer_embedded

[Rajiv]

Re: Goldman's Top Ten Excuses

Then there was this from Matt Taibi - Will Goldman Sachs prove greed is God?

Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, once said his bank was doing 'God's work'. Photograph: Chip East/Reuters

So Goldman Sachs, the world's greatest and smuggest investment bank, has been sued for fraud by the American Securities and Exchange Commission. Legally, the case hangs on a technicality.

Morally, however, the Goldman Sachs case may turn into a final referendum on the greed-is-good ethos that conquered America sometime in the 80s – and in the years since has aped other horrifying American trends such as boybands and reality shows in spreading across the western world like a venereal disease.

When Britain and other countries were engulfed in the flood of defaults and derivative losses that emerged from the collapse of the American housing bubble two years ago, few people understood that the crash had its roots in the lunatic greed-centered objectivist religion, fostered back in the 50s and 60s by ponderous emigre novelist Ayn Rand.

While, outside of America, Russian-born Rand is probably best known for being the unfunniest person western civilisation has seen since maybe Goebbels or Jack the Ripper (63 out of 100 colobus monkeys recently forced to read Atlas Shrugged in a laboratory setting died of boredom-induced aneurysms), in America Rand is upheld as an intellectual giant of limitless wisdom. Here in the States, her ideas are roundly worshipped even by people who've never read her books oreven heard of her. The rightwing "Tea Party" movement is just one example of an entire demographic that has been inspired to mass protest by Rand without even knowing it.

Last summer I wrote a brutally negative article about Goldman Sachs for Rolling Stone magazine (I called the bank a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity") that unexpectedly sparked a heated national debate. On one side of the debate were people like me, who believed that Goldman is little better than a criminal enterprise that earns its billions by bilking the market, the government, and even its own clients in a bewildering variety of complex financial scams.

On the other side of the debate were the people who argued Goldman wasn't guilty of anything except being "too smart" and really, really good at making money. This side of the argument was based almost entirely on the Randian belief system, under which the leaders of Goldman Sachs appear not as the cheap swindlers they look like to me, but idealised heroes, the saviours of society.
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[c1ue]

Re: Goldman's Top Ten Excuses

Taibbi is doing great work, but boybands and reality shows are British.

[Rajiv]

Re: Goldman's Top Ten Excuses

Taibbi is doing great work, but boybands and reality shows are British.

Boy Bands? Reality Shows? British? It was David Letterman for "God's Sake" ;)

[chr5648]

Re: Goldman's Top Ten Excuses

We've been so desensitized to the fraud, it's now turned into a pop culture meme.

[Ghent12]

Re: Goldman's Top Ten Excuses

Wow, linking Ayn Rand to Goldman Sachs is quite a stretch, quite a stretch indeed.