[Goldman Sachs] firm predicted that President Barack Obama's government could issue $3.25tn of debt before September, almost four times last year's sum. Goldman, a prime broker of US government bonds, is expected to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from selling and dealing in the bonds.
Can anybody say "conflict of interest?" Can anybody say "crony capitalism"? Can anybody say "banana Republic"? It really couldn't be more clear, could it? Goldman Sachs alumni in the government bail out Goldman Sachs in the "private" sector, bill the taxpayers, and then Goldman Sachs collects a commission on the transaction! And collect their bonuses. Always the bonuses.
Staff at Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm's 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms.
A lack of competition and a surge in revenues from trading foreign currency, bonds and fixed-income products has sent profits at Goldman Sachs soaring, according to insiders at the firm.
Nice work if you can get it.
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It's rather like an Escher drawing
Goldman-Sachs and friends fund the campaigns of Lyndon Baines Obama, the DINOcrats, and the Rethuglicans. They provide a friendly business environment, not only bailing out the Company, but ensuring its business selling the bonds that finance the cash flow for its bailout. The Company, in its gratitude, ensures the people with the Right $tuff get $elected again.
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
Please, let's not insult LBJ
Seriously. The President who handed the South to the Republicans for a generation to win civil rights legislation is made of different stuff than Obama -- though I could still be surprised! LBJ was a great figure with tragic flaws -- and the best and the brightest, the "creative class" of his day, were the ones who deked him into Vietnam, which was his tragic fall. IMNSHO. Not, again, saying that LBJ was a saint (!!) -- just saying that he was of a different scale, and his fall far more tragic, than today's politicians (including Clinton).
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
kelly b, why are you pairing LBJ and BO? Bcz they both took over
and stuck with unwise wars? Anything else?
LBJ fought fiercely for a huge liberal agenda; Obama starts from center right and goes rightward, with basically no fighting for anything. Oh, he did push big time for the supplemental war apending and more bailouts, this time for foreign banks. We're told he did behind the scenes arm twisting for the TARP bailouts and seems to be on board with Bernanke for pouring trillions somewhere (Big Somethings, probably banksters) through the Fed.
But, what do you see that caused you to write that?
LBJ did so much for modern America: civil rights, voting rights, open housing, immigration reform, environmental protections, consumer safety bills, cabinet departments of transportation and housing and urban development, cultural reforms like the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities and the Freedom of Information Act (which BO voted to weaken). The War on Poverty, Head Start, food stamps, elimination of urban slums, public housing, expanded social security, legal services and expanded welfare to needy citizens He reduced poverty from roughly 23 percent to 12 percent.
What changes!
His fall marked a true tragedy of epic proportions. Perhaps it marked a fall for our nation.
I speak as a Vietnam War protester who never really liked Johnson. But I did admire what he'd done for the country. Naively I figured we could get rid of the war president and we'd get another strong liberal Dem in office....
Hasn't happened yet. I believed Hillary would be the closest we could get to a full-on liberal for domestic issues....