Goldman Sachs Pleads Not Guilty
Photographer: Jay Mallin/Bloomberg
Leaders of four of the biggest U.S. banks including, l to r, Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of The Goldman Sachs Group Inc., James Dimon, chairman, president, and CEO of JP Morgan Chase & Co., John Mack, chairman of Morgan Stanley, and Brian Moynihan, CEO and president of Bank of America Corp., are sworn in during a hearing before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) in Washington, D.C.
Wall Street acts as if nothing has changed, and with good reason; it hasn't. The financial services industry hasn't atoned for its role in the current economic crisis as of yet, and Lloyd Blankfein, head of Goldman Sachs, who posted record profits last year, setting aside $16.7 billion to pay employees, less than a year after receiving government assistance, during the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression, made it clear today, that they have nothing to atone for, as Goldman Sachs has done nothing wrong.
"We learn from the pain of our mistakes and Wall Street was spared any pain because of the government bailout and therefore it's important there be a self examination and I think we're well short of that at this moment." -- Former California State Treasurer Phil AngelidesToday, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a bipartisan, 10-member panel created by Congress to investigate and report on the financial crisis, commenced the first of two days of hearings on the causes of a collapse that led to a $700 billion U.S. government bailout of the nation’s banks. Blankfein and Angelides set the tone by engaging in a feisty exchange at the very beginning. Angelides told Dow Jones Newswires he wasn't satisfied with the executives' acceptance of their role in the financial crisis.
“Mr. Blankfein himself never admitted that there was any responsibility of Goldman Sachs to make sure the products themselves were good products. That’s very troublesome.” -- Philip Angelides
4 comments:
It's far from over. The plan is to run up the market by lying their asses off about the economy... everyone starts to trust again and invest.
Then the fuckers short the market and we're screwed once more.
Mark my words. This will happen.
The Wall Street compensation system (bonuses) is based purely on rising profits each year. The employees of these huge banks have no responsibility for the losses they incur or the long term wealth of the organization whatsoever.
If banks have huge losses ...just write everything off, issue more shares. Then the following year the fed prints excessive amounts of cash at 0% interest rates and loans it out at ridiculous rates and bing bang boom... profits our the ass... bonuses all around.
Taxpayer? Common shareholders? Suckers! .
There is no Ferdinand Pecora to get to the bottom of things?
"In the aftermath of the devastation of the 1929 stock market crash, some in Congress wanted answers. In 1933, the Senate banking committee launched an investigative commission to ferret out the fraud and corruption that led to the Great Depression. It hired a former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney with experience in financial crimes, Ferdinand Pecora, as its chief counsel.
Historian Ron Chernow described Pecora for the New York Times: "Born in Sicily, the son of an immigrant cobbler, Pecora had campaigned for Teddy Roosevelt and been imbued with the crusading fervor of the Progressive Era. As a prosecutor in the 1920s, he had shut down more than 100 ‘bucket shops' - seamy, fly-by-night brokerage houses - and this had tutored him in the shady side of Wall Street."
As Bill Moyers said:
These four are not the victims of one of the greatest bank heists in history - they're the perpetrators, bankers so sleek and crafty they got off with the loot in broad daylight, and then sweet talked the government into taxing us to pay it back.
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