Must read of today, by: Darryl R. Schoon, Jun 25, 2009. Excerpt [my emphasis]:
News of Goldman’s Sachs’ triumph arrived when Reuter’s newswire reported on June 22, 2009: “Goldman Sachs on pace for record bonuses”. At a time when the US is struggling with the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s, Goldman Sachs has triumphantly weathered the crisis. That should be no surprise for Goldman Sachs created the crisis in the first place.
As capitalism collapses, its very foundation—the centuries old alliance between private bankers and public government—is feeling the pressure; and without the direct and indirect aid of billions of dollars in public dollars, the private bankers at Goldman Sachs would now be facing record layoffs instead of a record year of profits and bonuses.
As capitalism collapses, its very foundation—the centuries old alliance between private bankers and public government—is feeling the pressure; and without the direct and indirect aid of billions of dollars in public dollars, the private bankers at Goldman Sachs would now be facing record layoffs instead of a record year of profits and bonuses.
...GOLDMAN SUCKS…THE WEALTH OF AMERICA
The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess…a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.
From The Big Takeover, Rolling Stone Magazine, Matt Taibbi, 3/19/09
The emergence of Goldman Sachs in the US pyramid scheme of Ponzi-capitalism is not unexpected. Of all the Wall Street banks, Goldman Sachs effectively focused its efforts on influencing the political process in order to achieve its ends, a focus that has now handsomely paid off.
Because money controls politicians and bankers control money, bankers now control entire nations through their control of the money supply; and, of all the banks, Goldman Sachs has the most control and influence in the US. Economics is not rocket science, neither is political science—and neither, in fact, is a science.
Power in capitalist economies can best be understood when viewed as a franchise, a franchise which Goldman Sachs has been granted in America. Just as top Pentagon officials are routinely hired by US defense contractors for all the obvious reasons, Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms enjoy a revolving door policy regarding bankers who shuttle between Wall Street and Washington DC, ensuring that one filthy hand washes the other—“Hey, look, ma, no soap.”
Robert Rubin, Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Alan Greenspan, Stephen Friedman, Henry Paulson, Stephen Rattner, etc. are names that often arise in regards to the lucrative relationships forged in the sewer, i.e. the corridors of power, between Washington DC and Wall Street.
Lawrence Summers, now Obama’s top economic advisor, was paid $135,000 by Goldman Sachs for a one day visit in April 2008. This is how payoffs are made. Of course, Wall Street and Washington DC are quick to remind us that such payoffs are legal. Of course they are. All laws are legal, not matter how egregious the crimes they allow.
WAR PAPER MONEY GOLD AND GOLDMAN SACHS
Even the most powerful are vulnerable and the powerful know this most of all
The foundation stone of the ruling elites is their control and issuance of paper money. Over the years since paper money was substituted for gold and silver, the power of bankers and government has steadily grown.
Their power, however, is being threatened by their abuse of that which made their power possible. The accelerating debasement of paper money by bankers and government now threatens the power of each; and gold which was eliminated by public governments at the behest of private bankers now threatens the franchise of power and wealth of both bankers and government.
The greed of bankers is equally matched by the greed of government. Only the nature of the greed distinguishes the two. Bankers crave profits whereas governments crave power and it was the mutual pursuit of each that caused their dark alliance over three centuries ago.
King William of England, bankrupted by his wars with France and wanting more, agreed to allow private bankers to issue their paper script as England’s money in return for the banker’s credit that would allow him to wage more wars, credit which became debt to be assumed by the people of England as a national burden.
Nonetheless, as long as gold was considered to be the basis of money, commerce flourished during the 18th and 19th centuries even as England exerted control over much of the world through its ability to raise armies and navies on credit.
The unraveling of currencies began, however, when Europe abandoned the gold standard in the early 20th century as it edged closer and closer to war—wars are fought much more cheaply with paper money than with gold—and after two World Wars, all nations were bankrupted by the considerable cost of war—all nations except the US.
At the end of WW II, the US owned more gold than any nation previous, even more than England at the height of its empire. However, this was not enough for the US. Aspiring to exert global control just as had England one century before, the US would overspend its entire gold reserves in less than twenty years.
You can never get enough of what you don't really need.
Eric Hoffer
After WW II, because of its then enormous gold reserves, 21,775 tonnes (metric tons), the US dollar backed by gold became the world reserve currency. But in the next 25 years, the US would overspend its gold reserves by supporting a worldwide military presence in peacetime and could no longer convert its US dollars to gold by 1971; by so doing, all currencies of all nations then became but paper currencies of indeterminate value.
Ever since then, central banks and especially the US Fed have fought to maintain the advantage that paper money gives them. But, because the original basis of paper money, gold, had been squandered by the US government’s insatiable need for power, the paper-based franchise of power and money began to unravel after the 1970s.
The unraveling has been fought with all available resources by bankers and government for the considerable privileges of each are now at risk. Indeed, without central bank credit and paper money, most bankers and those who benefit by government largesse would be forced to seek gainful employment in order to survive.
In the battle to maintain their considerable franchise of money and power, Goldman Sachs has been at the forefront in actively supporting the suppression of the gold price; as any rise in the price of gold belies the value of the paper money by which governments and bankers are advantaged.
It is perhaps appropriate that Lawrence Summers, co-author of Gibson’s Paradox and the Gold Standard (a bizarre paper that fueled central bank efforts to suppress the price of gold in the 1990s) is now the top economic advisor to Barack Obama at the very time the US attempts to maintain its world dominion based on an increasingly unstable US dollar—a dollar no longer backed by gold.
For an in-depth explanation of the gold standard, free of the prejudices of those who personally benefit from the fraud of paper money such as Lawrence Summers, I suggest the Gold Standard University Live lecture series of Professor Antal Fekete, see http://www.goldvid.com/fekete/sales.html.
Goldman Sachs has been alleged by many to be at the center of the central bank conspiracy to manipulate the gold price. In 1999, when England announced it would sell the majority of its gold reserves at the very bottom of the gold market, the rumors were that Goldman Sachs had a 1,000 tonne short position in the market and couldn’t cover its short position if the price of gold moved higher.
In May 1999, Gordon Brown, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced the sale of 415 tonnes of gold, 57% of England’s gold reserves. This sale forced the price of gold lower thereby saving Goldman Sachs’ large bet that the price of gold would continue lower, albeit temporarily.
Goldman Sachs’ attempts to suppress the price of gold have not abated nor have the efforts of European and the US central banks even has gold has risen from $275 to over $900 in the last ten years. The Swiss central bank especially has been a large seller of gold whenever gold prices rise quickly.
Such efforts have not abated because the on-going credit crises now threatens to become a full-blown currency crisis; and, the paper money franchise by which bankers and governments exist is vulnerable as never before—a meteoric rise in the price of gold would spell the end of the fabled franchise of wealth and power.
Now in 2009, the US, the UK, their gold reserves almost depleted, and the world are on the verge of another Great Depression as the bankers’ crisis has turned into a global nightmare. At the same very time, however, Goldman Sachs is about to record profits enabling record bonuses while Gordon Brown is now the Prime Minister of England.
THE RISE AND DECLINE OF NATIONS:
ECONOMIC GROWTH, STAGFLATION, AND SOCIAL RIGIDITIES
By Mancur Olsen
Many have been puzzled by the mysterious decline or collapse of great empires of civilizations and by the remarkable rise to wealth, power, or cultural achievement of previously peripheral or obscure people.
Mancur Olsen 1982
Mancur Olsen’s thoughts about empire, economic growth, stagflation and social rigidities bear special reflection at this time. It is clear that the present times, while new to us, may not be new to the cycles of history, cycles which continue whether we are aware of them or not.
Although history happens in the aggregate, it is experienced personally and each of us has a different window on what is now transpiring. That the collapse of the US is unexpected to most is because most took refuge in denial, willingly believing the lies told them by those in power, lies that were compatible and acceptable to their unexamined and carelessly accepted world views.
The following comment should be considered by all, especially those in the US, who are now about to have their once well-ordered lives turned upside down and inside out by forces they do not understand:
…we're a country that, for the last decade, acquiesced meekly and quietly as our Government transferred huge amounts of national wealth to a tiny elite; launched a devastating war based on purely false pretenses; tortured, spied on us and literally claimed the right to invalidate law and the Constitution; and turned itself over to the highest bidders.
Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com, 3/21/09
And as long as the credit flowed, the band played on. The music is now about to stop" Source
