The Goldman Sachs Project to take over Europe nearly complete

[Octafish]

From an unbanned friend at Kos:



Sometimes a person or organization becomes so powerful and Evil that they appear cartoonish.
It might seem impossible to find a similar character outside of a James Bond movie or a cartoon about a mouse with an oversized brain. After all, who really wants to take over the world and has a plan to do it, right?

And yet, Goldman Sachs is on the verge of doing what Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Hitler and Napoleon tried and failed to do.

CONTINUED...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/26/1164745/-The-Goldman-Sachs-Project-to-take-over-Europe-nearly-complete

Gee. Controlling Europe's fiscal knobs may mean that austerity will never arrive on Wall Street.

[Ilsa]

1. How do we stop them?

Lawsuits? Will Congress make rules about these thieves moving into positions of government power?

[Octafish]

8. Congress are these thieves moving into positions of government power.

Blue Dog Heath Shuler just became director of lobbying for Duke Energy.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/27/3115256/nc-rep-heath-shuler-takes-duke.html

The money must be good.

[midnight]

10. I wonder if congress will.... They made so much money from these guys via insider trading...

[Cleita]

13. We could create an underground economy that doesn't

involve money and that bypasses the usual seats of money power. Present day deregulation and laissez faire economic policies that they put in place for their benefit could make it possible for the little people to do it legally. Any creative thinkers out there?

[Blanks]

28. I've always expected that's where 'Occupy' is going.

They just haven't figured it out yet. I don't think it can be done in a system without money, but rather by obtaining under-valued resources and converting them to things of value. We need a movement intent on reducing expenses on things like food, fuel and housing. So that people can work toward something without losing 'it all.'

We need a movement where people who recognize the value in things like trash, manure, discarded urban landscapes, empty factories, parking lots and vacated big box stores.

Schools that aren't utilized anymore can be converted to inner city entrepreneur incubators. The resources are out there to fight back; the leadership is just not there. The ideas are freely available, but instead of people agreeing and working toward a solution; there is bickering even among like-minded people.

That's why the bankers are winning; we can't stop fighting over the TPP, SS, Medicare etc. If we are fighting each other; we aren't fighting against 'them.'

[tama]

39. There are now

thousands of organic community gardens in the former food deserts of the rust belt cities. The movement you speak about is happening big time at grass roots level and mostly under the radar of corporate media, organically and naturally. Occupy is just one face of this movement of grass roots revolution.

[Blanks]

50. I know.

There is a PBS series that highlights a few communities (Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle etc.) that have tried to restore some areas to pre-development Eco-systems.

There is a series of TED videos that has architects discussing restoring communities to a more 'green' state. There is the work done by Will Allen in Milwaukee and Joel Saladin's farm. Local garden school lunch programs and edible community gardens in England.

The movement is widespread and active.

What's missing is a unifying organization. We all got taken to the cleaners by the bankers in the last recession; we need a plan to make what 'we' control have more value, and what 'they' control have less value.

Occupy was a nuisance to Wall Street, but they didn't do much damage to them. The movement needs to support businesses that they want to support and condemn businesses they want to condemn. We aren't going to do any damage to the people who control the money without working together at least some.

In the same manner that we all eat at Chick-fil-A and Papa Johns. Target someone and let them change or fall by the way side.

[tama]

51. Unifying organization

Specifically which centralist trotskyite splinter group carries the flag and correct dogma of all the correct answers that we all should gather under? The point is, there is no lack of "unifying organizations", there is a multitude of those competing against each other. The history of factionalism of the Left teaches that for a movement to be inclusive and massive and to make a real change, it needs to remain decentralized as whole, so it can also include centrally organized groups working towards same goals.

And as Occupy Sandy shows, the decentralized organization of Occupy movement can be extremely efficient not despite of decentralized form, but because of it's inclusive and open potential based on human potential of social capital.

Maybe you are right and this global decentralized revolution needs also a militant centralist organization, just like Zapatista revolution as a whole was and remains decentralized, but could not have happened without the militant centralist organization of EZLN in service of the revolution, not above it (as the future class of pigs more equal than others of the Orwell's Animal Farm. I don't know from where and how such organization could emerge. There are lots of plans and initiatives for EU, US etc. and global level conventions of local general assemblies, but I don't see them taking much wind or not becoming diluted and moderated compromises instead of more radical and militant. But maybe I'm wrong and the global networks already in place and developing are getting all the time more militant and e.g. general strikes are getting internationally wider, deeper and longer and will not so in distant future reach the point of being able to dispose the whole of the current ancien regime. And to create new forms of self-governance based on authentic grass roots democracy and autonomy able to respond creatively and effectively to our global environmental challenges.

That is one possiblity, maybe there are others.

[Blanks]

56. I don't know about 'militant'...

as much as like-minded. I think real change can be accomplished by a number of people agreeing to either take small actions or take no action (not eating Papa Johns Pizza for example).

It doesn't have to be something that everyone agrees on, because not everyone has to participate.

Just as the Tea Party took to the streets and the Occupy movement took to the streets; people want to make a difference. The two movements, though opposite in what they were supporting, had that in common; they were willing to take to the streets to make a difference. If you could get both groups to take to the streets to make a difference on a single issue; it wouldn't have to be a militant gathering.

I think the time is ripe for a lot of people to get together and make a difference on a single issue; what is going to be difficult is getting people to get behind a single issue on the same side. I expect it will happen though.

It could be any number of issues. Since we can all get together in virtual meeting rooms; I expect that is where such a movement would originate and be coordinated. The civil rights movement (for example) did not have message boards to coordinate their events. One can't help but wonder if women's suffrage would have moved at a different pace had there been twitter and Facebook at the time.

Folks are still pissed off at the bank bailouts, but whereas the Tea Party was angry at the government; the Occupy group was angry at the 1%. What if we were all pissed off at the same person at the same time about it. Then everyone decided that they were going to buy something to show their support (or not buy something). If that kind of action had the desired result; the individuals behind such an action might be willing to support other actions and be a force for change without the militant component.

[Hotler]

34. You amass 100,000 people in the street. Break into their gated communities and.....

drag their rich asses out of their mansions and lead them to the public square right to the French razor. (timbers of justice)
http://boisdejustice.com/Home/Home.html

[tama]

52. Or just

autonomous cells torch their mansions etc. guerilla style and wipe their bank accounts empty cracker style. So the newly homeless and poor join the humanity that they are creating without the escape with French razor.

[GiaGiovanni]

2. Thank you for this post

Goldman Sachs is a weapon of mass destruction. They are the means by which "austerity" will be implemented in Europe, against the wishes of its people and legitimate governments.

[Octafish]

21. Be selective in Indian consumer goods, warns Goldman Sachs

Actual headline found in searching for a report about Goldman Sachs as an economic WMD.

http://www.firstpost.com/topic/organization/goldman-sachs-the-woman-behind-financial-weapons-of-mass-destruction-video-xfxAMPXVU5Q-700-1.html

Now, regarding the WMDs, Goldman Sachs are entrenched with the Military-Industrial Complex, Big-Time:

Know your BFEE: WikiLeaks Stratfor Dump Exposes Continued Secret Government Warmongering

PS: Most importantly, you are most welcome GiaGiovanni! Thank you for understanding what it is we are up against.

[GiaGiovanni]

57. At 2:49 Masters blames CDS debacle on deregulation of banks, which WS lobbied for

Interesting and infuriating.

Masters: "Ironically, many if not all of the early pioneers* in credit derivative markets were, themselves, operating within the fabrics of regulated financial institutions, primarily banks. So I think part of the omission in the thinking was caused by the fact that the assumption was that all parties would be subject to the pre-existing regulatory framework that already governs banks.The sad thing is is that this wasn't the case."


*Remember that THE early pioneer in this was JP Morgan, the firm that taught Wall Street how to use these instruments and pulled out before the house of cards fell. (Rockefeller)

So essentially Masters is saying that it's the government's fault that Morgan and other WS firms created these financial WMD because Wall Street was relying on the government to regulate them (Bullshit! Ask Brooksley Born), all while Morgan and other WS firms were lobbying that same government to deregulate them.

Way to pass the buck, Snowflake.

[RepublicansRZombies]

3. these bastards are responsible for people literally starving

How do they live with themselves?

Thanks for this!

[Octafish]

22. Kleptocracy: Government of the Thieves, by the Thieves, and for the Thieves.

While not his words, William K. Black explained things this way to Bill Moyers:

"If you go back to the savings and loan debacle, we got more than a thousand felony convictions of the elite. These are not, you know, tellers or something. We today have zero convictions, zero indictments, zero arrests of any of the elite, non-prime lenders that, through their fraud, drove this crisis."

http://dailybail.com/home/massive-bank-fraud-bill-moyers-with-william-k-black-video-tr.html

William K. Black was a government forensic economist leading prosecutions of crooked savings and loans back in the late 80s and 90s. Today, the college professor can almost be considered an outsider. He states what he sees: The regulators and the regulated are the same people -- and they play both sides of the street.

To me, these are worse than gangster times.

PS: Most importantly: You are most welcome, RepublicansRZombies.

[CJCRANE]

4. Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank Of Canada will become Governor of the Bank of England

next year, (he's the pic at the top left).

He worked at Goldman Sachs for thirteen years.

(Just a quick headsup for those who didn't catch this news).

[Octafish]

23. Canada is a lot more conservative country, these days, you know.

Betcha it's coming soon to planet Earth as a whole.

Goldman's Global Domination Is Now Complete As Its Mark Carney Takes Over Bank Of England

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/26/2012 10:44 -0500
ZeroHedge

EXCERPT from Bloomberg:

Carney Leading Bank of England Seen as Scandal Remedy

London is losing so much trust as the global financial center that Prime Minister David Cameron may need to consider an unprecedented choice for Bank of England governor: Mark Carney, the Canadian who polices the world’s financial system and has no ties to the bailouts or rigged markets tainting Labour and Conservative governments alike.

The 47-year-old Carney, who received his masters and PhD degrees from Oxford University, is no stranger to the City of London after working there with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Now serving as governor of the Bank of Canada and the head of the Financial Stability Board, he is unscathed by the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis.

SNIP...

“Why not get a head that’s global? Bankers aren’t very popular, and a Canadian sounds like a good choice,” said Kent Matthews, a professor at Cardiff University and former Bank of England researcher. “It may well be that to restore credibility they have to look outside.”

So that's the strategy: play Carney off as a Canadian, instead of as Goldman. We wonder how many minutes the general public will be fooled by that particular strawman.

CONTINUED w LINKS...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-26/goldmans-global-domination-now-complete-its-mark-carney-takes-over-bank-england

Hosers. It doesn't have to be this way.

[RepublicansRZombies]

5. I dream of a day where THIS will be the top post on DU- this is THE most important issue

These guys are the reason we must 'face austerity or die' because they looted our treasury and are using it to take over the rest of the world.

[Fire Walk With Me]

20. They are being exposed, we are learning their tricks, and we are becoming sick of them.

I'd say you can determine which way the wind blows on this one.

[Octafish]

26. Well-connected Goldman Sachs uniquely positioned to fight fraud allegations

Instead of putting back the loot, they got We the People to pick up the tab.



Here's how:

Well-connected Goldman Sachs uniquely positioned to fight fraud allegations

By Kevin Bogardus and Silla Brush
TheHill.com - 04/22/10 05:00 AM ET

Having invested $18 million over the last decade lobbying members of Congress and millions more contributing to lawmakers’ campaigns, Goldman Sachs is uniquely positioned to fight the fraud charges the government has filed against it.

On Wall Street, the firm is the perennial kingpin, with both the biggest name and, often, the biggest profits. In Washington, Goldman is just as influential, with a robust lobbying presence, access by its executives to private White House meetings and a long list of politically connected alumni who have maneuvered through the revolving door between government and finance.

And now that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accused Goldman in a civil suit of defrauding investors, it is hoping that its carefully cultivated relationships and considerable influence will pay off.
“There is no better return on the investment,” said William Black, professor of law and economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “No one does it remotely, remotely as well as Goldman does. It has paid dividends for them in this crisis. So, smart business.”

Added Douglas Elliott, fellow at the Brookings Institution and former banker at JPMorgan Chase: “When you hear phrases like ‘Government Sachs,’ that is not good for them. But on the other hand, those relationships in Washington can pay off.”

The government’s fraud case does pose the clearest test yet to the 141-year-old bank’s storied political power, reputation and savvy. To succeed, the firm will have to do two things seemingly very much at odds: vigorously fight the charges, which it calls “completely unfounded in law and effect,” and continue to cozy up to Washington’s power players.

CONTINUED...

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/93687-goldman-sachs-is-uniquely-positioned-to-fight-charges

That's not even talking about the news media. Like the government, they pretty much own and operate that, too.

[HiPointDem]

6. kr

[Octafish]

41. Evidence of an American Plutocracy: The Larry Summers Story

By Matthew Skomarovsky • Jan 10, 2011 at 19:31 EST
LittleSis.org

EXCERPT...

When Rubin left Treasury in 1999 to become Chairman of the Executive Committee of Citigroup, he persuaded President Clinton to name Summers as his replacement. Citigroup was a new banking conglomerate made possible by laws Rubin and Summers supported and implemented at Treasury, and it paid Rubin over $100 million in the next ten years.

Another new business model Rubin and Summers made possible was Enron. Rubin had known Enron well through Goldman Sachs’s financing of the company, and recused himself from matters relating to Enron in his first year on the Clinton team. He and Summers went on to craft policies at Treasury that were essential to Enron’s lucrative energy trading business, and they were in touch with Enron executives and lobbyists all the while. Enron meanwhile won $2.4 billion in foreign development deals from Clinton’s Export-Import Bank, then run by Kenneth Brody, a former protege of Rubin’s at Goldman Sachs.

Soon after Rubin joined Citigroup, its investment banking division picked up Enron as a client, and Citigroup went on to become Enron’s largest creditor, loaning almost $1 billion to the company. As revelations of massive accounting fraud and market manipulation emerged over the next years and threatened to bring down the energy company, Rubin and Summers intervened. While Enron’s rigged electricity prices in California were causing unprecedented blackouts, Summers urged Governor Gray Davis to avoid criticizing Enron and recommended further deregulatory measures. Rubin was an official advisor to Gov. Davis on energy market issues at the time, while Citigroup was heavily invested in Enron’s fraudulent California business, and he too likely put pressure on the Governor to lay off Enron. Rubin also pulled strings at Bush’s Treasury Department in late 2001, calling a former employee to see if Treasury could ask the major rating agencies not to downgrade Enron, and Rubin also lobbied the rating agencies directly. (In all likelihood he made similar attempts in behalf of Citigroup during the recent financial crisis.) Their efforts ultimately failed, Enron went bust, thousands of jobs and pensions were destroyed, and its top executives went to jail. It’s hard to believe, but there was some white-collar justice back then.

Over the years Rubin’s connections and financial experience had made him an influential figure at Harvard, his alma mater. He helped oversee Harvard’s endowment before joining Treasury and had been a key fundraising link to big donors on Wall Street and in the Democratic Party. When Clinton’s second term ended in 2001, Rubin lobbied to get Summers the job of Harvard president, and then joined Summers on Harvard’s governing board the next year.

Summers’ presidency at Harvard was plagued with scandals, including some that didn’t come to light until years after he left, including his decision to invest a large part of Harvard’s endowment in risky interest rate swaps that ultimately lost the school more than a billion dollars. While his personal admonishment of professor Cornel West for recording a rap album made headlines, Summers quietly consulted with a hedge fund founded by Rubin proteges Brody (see above) and Frank Brosens, and after being forced out of Harvard in 2006 he began touring Wall Street more frequently, and made $5 million a year working one day per week at hedge fund D.E. Shaw.

CONTINUED...

http://blog.littlesis.org/2011/01/10/evidence-of-an-american-plutocracy-the-larry-summers-story/

[woo me with science]

7. K&R ^^^ Ignore the Third Way Kabuki and pay attention to this ^^^

[Octafish]

43. AIG and the Goldman Sachs Bailout

EXCERPT...

Why make the banks whole while requiring a waiver from AIG? It simply doesn't make sense. Especially since we're talking about taxpayer money.

The documents also indicate that regulators ignored recommendations from their own advisers to force the banks to accept losses on their A.I.G. deals and instead paid the banks in full for the contracts. That decision, say critics of the A.I.G. bailout, has cost taxpayers billions of extra dollars in payments to the banks. It also contrasts with the hard line the White House took in 2008 when it forced Chrysler’s lenders to take losses when the government bailed out the auto giant.

“Even if it turns out that it would be a hard suit to win, just the gesture of requiring A.I.G. to scrap its ability to sue is outrageous,” said David Skeel, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “The defense may be that the banking system was in trouble, and we couldn’t afford to destabilize it anymore, but that just strikes me as really going overboard.”

Could it have to do with the fact that the US Treasury Secretary at the time was Hank Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs? Or the fact that the US Treasury, Federal Reserve, and Goldman Sachs are all run by the same people?

SNIP...

Taxpayer money wasn't protected at all. Because if protecting taxpayers was one of their goals (which should have been their primary goal), they would have made the banks take concessions. But in no uncertain terms, everyone was focused on making the banks whole.

CONTINUED...

http://the-classic-liberal.com/aig-goldman-sachs-bailout/

[JackRiddler]

9. Kick!

[Octafish]

45. Who Rules America?

EXCERPT...

This document focuses on the "Top 1%" as a whole because that's been the traditional cut-off point for "the top" in academic studies, and because it's easy for us to keep in mind that we are talking about one in a hundred. But it is also important to realize that the lower half of that top 1% has far less than those in the top half; in fact, both wealth and income are super-concentrated in the top 0.1%, which is just one in a thousand. (To get an idea of the differences, take a look at an insider account by a long-time investment manager who works for the well-to-do and very rich. It nicely explains what the different levels have -- and how they got it. Also, David Cay Johnston (2011) has written a column about the differences among the top 1%, based on 2009 IRS information.)

SNIP...



CONTINUED w LINKS:

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

For some reason, everybody likes to hold the door open for these high net-worth individuals.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

11. Hmmm un-banned you say. nt

[Octafish]

47. An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%

EXCERPT...

The Upper Half of the Top 1%

Membership in this elite group is likely to come from being involved in some aspect of the financial services or banking industry, real estate development involved with those industries, or government contracting. Some hard working and clever physicians and attorneys can acquire as much as $15M-$20M before retirement but they are rare. Those in the top 0.5% have incomes over $500k if working and a net worth over $1.8M if retired. The higher we go up into the top 0.5% the more likely it is that their wealth is in some way tied to the investment industry and borrowed money than from personally selling goods or services or labor as do most in the bottom 99.5%. They are much more likely to have built their net worth from stock options and capital gains in stocks and real estate and private business sales, not from income which is taxed at a much higher rate. These opportunities are largely unavailable to the bottom 99.5%.

CONTINUED...

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/investment_manager.html

Sorry to be obtuse, Compay. Some should have more than their eyes wide shut.

[riderinthestorm]

12. As always Octafish, you post the truly important stuff. K&R nt

[suffragette]

14. Add in the ones with direct ties to (and ears of) the leaders of state

http://sync.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1710000#1711615


For example, more on Edward Sebastian Grigg (standing next to David Cameron in the picture and description linked above):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/feb/14/investment-bankers-biggest-media-deals

Sebastian Grigg, head of UK investment banking, Credit Suisse

Captured in white tie and tails alongside the prime minister in the infamous photograph of Oxford's Bullingdon club, Grigg, 45, is best known as a member of David Cameron's inner circle. Born the Hon Edward Sebastian Grigg, son of the 3rd Baron Altrincham, he fought unsuccessfully to win a parliamentary seat near Rochdale for the Conservatives in the 1997 general election. Lately, he has fundraised for fellow Bullingdon member Boris Johnson.

Since joining Credit Suisse as head of UK investment banking in 2007, he has worked cross-sector and alongside government. He earns a place in our top five for his decade at Goldman Sachs, where Goldman's private equity funds made several forays into media.

[woo me with science]

18. Yup, what the one percent REALLY don't want you to talk about

is collusion with government, whether overseas or right here in the US.

It is no accident that the threads around here that elicit the greatest swarming from our resident crew of Third Way apologists are any that make explicit the collusion between the one percent and our own government.

Corporate Democrats don't like threads about the corporate purchase of our government, political parties, and electoral system. And they *especially* don't like threads about the ever-expanding corrupt use of government to strip our civil protections, legalize the pillaging, and persecute whistleblowers and alert, protesting citizens.

[Cleita]

16. Tune into Thom Hartmann right now. He's talking about this.

You can stream here: https://www.freespeech.org/

[BadgerKid]

17. Bet that Romney loss has got to hurt.

Sounds like GS used Bain tactics.

[LeftInTX]

36. Just imagine if Romney would have won

He could have merged Bain with Goldman Sachs and bought us all out

[Fire Walk With Me]

19. K&R!

[TheUnspeakable]

24. k&r

[SomethingFishy]

25. Thom Hartmann was all over this today...

He's actually been talking about it for awhile...

[bullwinkle428]

35. Thom has been doing a KICK-ASS job at laying this all out.

By the way, I see what Octafish did in his OP...

[Marmitist]

27. They need to be exterminated.

Before they exterminate the rest of us.

[woo me with science]

29. Kick

[Egalitarian Thug]

30. K&R. Thanks for posting. A lot of us have been talking about this for many years

now. I'm afraid that most people will continue to ignore it, and thereby allowing the people that could actually do something about it to ignore it, until its too late.

[woo me with science]

31. Keeping it kicked. nt

[tex-wyo-dem]

32. k and r!

[Odin2005]

33. Dear God!

[LeftInTX]

37. This is really scary.

[banned from Kos]

42. Scary? Yeah, its scary crazy CT bullshit.

What if someone said "Harvard guys are taking over the country!" referring to Bush, Romney, and Obama?

This is just fucking stupid.

[HiPointDem]

48. lol. yeah, there is no ruling class.

[tama]

38. "Illuminati"

have funny way of exposing themselves in expressis verbis: Goldman sucks.

[midnight]

40. I guess that's why all over site, and congressional approval to borrow money had to be dispensed

with...

[Hutzpa]

44. This is not what most of you are thinking,

I see something else at play here.

[HiPointDem]

49. don't be mysterious, spit it out.

[Democracyinkind]

53. Don't you know that criticizing Goldman Sachs is

antisemitic? The world we live in...

[HiPointDem]

54. is that what was meant? ohhh But why not say so directly if that's what the poster believes?

[Democracyinkind]

55. To be fair, I don't know. Read it on other sites though

[Initech]

46. We should have let the banks fail. Goldman Sucks is a criminal enterprise.