The Masters of the Universe at Goldman Sachs are now so confident of their domination of America that they are publicly mocking the press, the government, and the people. They are doing this through shameless displays of market manipulation and disinformation. Any sane observer of the financial world would recoil in disgust at the following pranks.

1. Goldman drops out of their financial reporting the month of December 2008, in which they had significant losses, in order to conveniently shift to a different reporting calendar.

2. Goldman rushes through a $5 billion public offering based on cooked numbers and government subsides. The market responds with a vote of “confidence” by cutting 10% off Goldman’s stock price.

3. Goldman makes a show of intending to “return” $10 billion in taxpayer TARP money, while remaining silent about their continued issuance of huge amounts of debt GUARANTEED BY THE FDIC.

4. Goldman claims that the $12 billion of (taxpayer provided) CDO payments it received from AIG had no material affect on its financial performance. Uh-huh.

The long knives are out for Goldman Sachs. Government regulators, angry investors, consumer activists, blogosphere progressives, and most intelligent observers will long remember how one company used its legally corrupt operatives in the Obama administration to grab taxpayer funds to pay million-dollar bonuses to lying executives whose only ethos is greed. This firm deserves capital punishment. It may duck and twist and dodge for a few more years, but it is going to go down, and it will go down hard.

Goldman Sachs will be remembered like Enron: a textbook case of the pernicious and self-destructive conduct of an uncontrolled corporation.

We must give Obama credit for brazenly stating that the Federal Government cannot manage the banking system and must, instead, be managed by the banks. Here are his own words from a speech delivered today:

we believe that preemptive government takeovers are likely to end up costing taxpayers even more in the end, and because it is more likely to undermine than to create confidence. Governments should practice the same principle as doctors: first do no harm. So rest assured – we will do whatever is necessary to get credit flowing again, but we will do so in ways that minimize risks to taxpayers and to the broader economy. To that end, in addition to the program to provide capital to the banks, we have launched a plan that will pair government resources with private investment in order to clear away the old loans and securities – the so-called toxic assets – that are also preventing our banks from lending money.

Geithner and Summers told Obama that the fraudsters and grifters running the banks inspire “confidence” in the markets, and that nationalizing these institutions and firing their managers would create “risks to taxpayers.” Got that? Keeping the managers who wrecked our financial system in power is low-risk!

The Hippocratic oath reference (First do no harm) applies directly to the CEOs of the banks, because Obama is insisting on protecting their jobs and bonuses. It certainly does not apply to ordinary American citizens who are being foreclosed, fined, feed, and otherwise squeezed by bankers desperate to avoid collapse of their insolvent institutions.

This is the unadulterated bull$hit that passes for economic policy in the Obama administration, a government so completely dominated by Wall Street cronies that it can’t even INVESTIGATE the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression. Obama’s economic team has persuaded him that his administration can’t run the top five US banks better than the clowns who rendered them insolvent. This is a deliberate decision to reinforce failure, and it stinks of legalized corruption through a network of influence.

Capitulation complete; surrender accomplished. The banks are running America, and Obama is now their top PR man.

America’s loss of manufacturing prowess is widely lamented, but what is not widely understood is that our postmodern business culture has perfected the manufacture of a hugely profitable product: the loser. Losers are citizens who have been stripped of their independence by ignorance, poverty, addiction, and propaganda manipulation. Losers are a profitable product for the following reasons:

1. Losers are docile consumers, willing to buy almost anything, with low expectations for quality and service.

2. Losers can be loaded down with debt, because they can’t perform rudimentary arithmetic and will tolerate living as debt slaves.

3. Losers are politically passive because they are hypnotized by TV propaganda that tells them that they are OK.

4. Losers are easily addicted to highly profitable products and services like alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and fantasy entertainment.

5. Losers produce loser children, because they don’t value education and are too poor and stressed to raise their kids properly.

As the American economy contracts, the “winners” in our society will try desperately to increase the production of losers. If the supply of willing losers is insufficient, it may be necessary to turn the middle class into losers by debasing the currency and calling for national “sacrifice.” America’s winners, having perfected the manufacture of losers, will not readily abandon this highly profitable industry.

For those who don’t know what a Friedman Unit is, here’s the Wikipedia definition:

The Friedman, or Friedman Unit (F.U.), is a tongue-in-cheek neologism coined by blogger Atrios (Duncan Black) on May 21, 2006.[1]

A Friedman is a unit of time equal to six months in the future.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] The Huffington Post cited it as the “Best New Phrase” of 2006.[9]

The term is in reference to a May 16, 2006 article by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) detailing journalist Thomas Friedman’s repeated use[10] of “the next six months” as the period in which, according to Friedman, “we’re going to find out…whether a decent outcome is possible” in the Iraq War. As documented by FAIR, Friedman had been making such six-month predictions for a period of two and a half years, on at least fourteen different occasions, starting with a column in the November 30, 2003 edition of The New York Times, in which he stated: “The next six months in Iraq-which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there-are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time.”[11]

The term has been used in general to describe any pronouncement of a critical period for the U.S. occupation of Iraq.[12][7] Such pronouncements have been made by numerous politicians and military officials involved in the war.[13][14][15]

Now let’s hear from Obama, the candidate who promised to end the war in Iraq:

Obama-next 18 months critical for Iraq

07 Apr 2009 15:33:51 GMT

Source: Reuters

BAGHDAD, April 7 (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama, visiting U.S. troops in Iraq, told them on Tuesday that the next 18 months would be critical for their mission in the country.

“This is going to be a critical period, these next 18 months,” Obama said, referring to the Aug 2010 deadline for the withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraq.

“You will be critical in terms of us being able to make sure Iraq is stable, that it is not a safe haven for terrorists, and we can start bringing our folks home,” Obama told troops at Camp Victory, the sprawling U.S. military base on the outskirts of Baghdad.

18 months = 3 Friedman Units

Today’s New York Times front pages a bizarre story about Larry Summers and his very strange “job” at powerhouse hedge fund D.E. Shaw. It seems that Larry was paid a few million over two years for working one day a week at Shaw. What did he do to earn this money? Well, that’s never made clear in the article, but the writers are at pains to point out that it was all perfectly legal. Larry and his sidekick Tim Geithner are now cooking up deals that will let Larry’s hedge fund buddies make big profits using taxpayer money. And, yes, this is all perfectly legal. Larry Summers knows how to sell political influence to the highest bidder, and his hands always stay perfectly clean. He gets paid $135,000 for a ONE DAY appearance at Goldman Sachs, and a few months later he is making decisions in the Obama administration that favor Goldman Sachs. It is all perfectly legal.

Meanwhile, at DKos, the Presidential Guard looks for more neat pictures of Barak and Michelle wowing Europe as the crickets chirp. Summers? Who is Larry Summers?  

Sometimes an astonishing symmetry manifests itself across wildly differing categories of mass marketing phenomena. Consider the resemblances between President Obama and the Microsoft Vista operating system:

1. Backed by a powerful organization (Democratic Party/Microsoft, with a hugely successful earlier product (President Clinton/Windows XP)

2. Delivers a slick, impressive interface (great on photos and videos, with lots of charisma, especially with the Michelle skin/beautiful GUI, with translucent windows)

3. Consumes more resources than its predecessor (more defense spending, more corporate subsidies, more entitlement spending/faster CPU, more powerful graphics card)

4. Doesn’t meet advertised claims (no prosecutions of torturers, no sanctions on crooked businesses, no transparency of government/poor support of existing peripherals, sluggish performance, trouble with legacy applications)

5. Dislike of product increases with growing familiarity (declining poll numbers/shrinking sales)

6. All problems will be fixed in the next release (Obama 2012/Windows 7)

The Obama presidency is remarkably similar to the Vista rollout: a triumph of marketing hype and superficial attractiveness that masks a fundamental deficit of meaningful improvements. Consider that for the last week the world press has been celebrating the fact that the Obamas are BETTER LOOKING than the leaders of Europe. Marketing mission accomplished.

Everyone who ever watched the X-Files is familiar with the sinister figure of the “cancer man,” the chain-smoking head of the conspiracy to manipulate humanity for its own good (and that of its secret government).

The image of the cancer man is much in my mind these days as I ponder the question of how Geithner and Summers were appointed to determine Obama’s economic policies. After doing a bit of fruitless Google searching to answer this question, I realized that I already knew the answer. These men were put in place by people who wish to remain unknown, because their actions as the true controllers of the Executive Branch of the government of the United States are contrary to the beliefs of the American people and the founding principles of our nation.

When the cancer men selected Geithner and Summers they guaranteed that the interests of wealthy individuals and powerful financial corporations would be placed above the interests of ordinary taxpayers. Since the arithmetic of Democracy opposes such an outcome, they must operate in secret, and that is why there is no available anwer to the question of who proposed Geithner and Summers. What is even more interesting is that this question is not even raised in the press.

How do the cancer men conceal their role? They use the age-old devices of indirect action and influence that have corrupted politics for millenia. A key corruption mechanism is the “marker” system of exchanging favors. Ambitious and well-connected people keep a mental ledger book of favors done and received for and from powerful acquaintances. Dealing reliably with markers qualifies a player in this system for advancement to a powerful position. Geithner and Summers were appointed in exchange for loyal past service in protecting the interests of very wealthy and powerful people. They understand that people who accumulate these markers will be able to cash them in at the end of their public service for very comfortable living arrangements.

Similarly, the people who put Geithner and Summers on the (very) short list for Obama cabinet appointments were accumulating markers for future redemption. The beauty of the marker system is that there is no immediate quid-pro-quo to compromise the players. Temporal separation of corrupt action and subsequent reward sterilizes the transaction and frustrates investigation. Even if we could find every last phone log, email, and meeting transcript pertinent to the Geithner and Summers nominations, we would never find a direct inducement of bribery. All we would see is powerful people “suggesting,” through intermediaries, that these men would be “good choices” for Obama.

So I ask you all to ponder why nobody in the press knows who recommended Geithner and Summers for their jobs, and, more importantly, why nobody even cares about this question: Who are the people who control the Obama administration?

Who are the cancer men?

The uneasiness I have felt for months about the unraveling economy has come into clearer focus with the realization that America is entering a state of institutional anarchy. We are now in a situation where it is no longer clear who is in charge. The nominal supreme institution, the US Federal Government, is effectively being run by large private financial concerns. Superficially, the Obama administration may pretend to tell Goldman Sachs what to do, but on a practical basis, corporations like Goldman Sachs are directing the economic policy of the White House through a network of careerist influence that they don’t even bother to conceal.

We would not be in an anarchic state if the Government would simply capitulate, and put its economic affairs in the hands of the financial barons, but the fragmentary legal and political apparatus of our Federal system keeps making random and isolated challenges to the defacto authority of the financial oligarchs. It is like watching some great machine break down with a shower of sparks and short-circuiting, as misdirected energy continues to flow through a broken structure. Nationalization is off the table, not merely for political reasons, but because the Federal Government of the United States appears no longer to believe in its own competence. The financial corporations, having demonstrated incompetence, by contrast feel fully entitled to keep running the show.

Just who is in charge here? It’s not Obama. It’s not the bad boy plutocrats. Neither side is willing to take full responsibility. This is an anarchic state, and it will not be long before its pernicious consequences become more noticeable. Anarchy is worse than any system of government, and this awful realization is what will eventually drive us toward a resolution of the current crisis.

It has taken a few days, but a new great wall of Obama apologetics has been laboriously constructed at the great orange fortress of wishful thinking called DKos. Let us bask in the freedom of Democratic incorrectness that Docudharma provides to summarize the official apologetics. Here they are in Q&A form:

Q: Why did Obama appoint Summers and Geithner, men deeply implicated in the undermining of the financial system for years, to “clean up” this huge mess?

A: No progressive economist (e.g., Stiglitz or Krugman) could possibly have passed the guard dogs of the plutocracy in the US Senate. Dangerous Socialists like Nobel-prize-winning Princeton economist Krugman could never have been confirmed.

Q: Why is Obama allowing Geithner to shovel trillions in taxpayer money into the bottomless pit of Wall Street?

A: Geithner believes that an overpaid and rapacious elite can manage the US economy far better than colorless bureaucrats who are merely public servants. Thus, Geithner needs to give Wall Street’s predators another chance to gamble away the future financial resources of the republic. Obama hopes that Geithner may get lucky, but he can replace him with another plutocratic guardian if he “fails.”

Q: Why is the government not aggressively investigating the quality of the dubious “toxic” assets so as to have a sound basis for estimating the magnitude of the damage and properly guiding the recovery policy?

A: Obama believes that it is his highest duty to manage public perceptions for the greater good of America, and if that management task requires concealing the magnitude of underlying cause of the current financial disaster, then it is a patriotic act to conceal the truth. The less the public knows about the magnitude of the toxic bubble, the better.

Q: Why won’t Obama simply nationalize failed banks, fire the bad management, and rebuild the banking system in a manner that serves the public interest.

A: Presidents who attempt to discipline the plutocracy don’t finish their term in office. Obama’s job is to give the people hope by slightly reducing the scale of looting of public funds.

Q: How can the people maintain their confidence in Obama?

A: Every time Obama betrays the public trust and fails to honor his campaign pledges, the people will be reminded of how much worse a McCain administration would have been.

So there we have it. Obama, our national savior, is protecting the rich from the poor and the powerful from the weak, and all the while he is making us all feel better about having change we can believe in: the pocket change that is all most of us will own when this is over.

A sad thing is happening to Barak Obama. As it has during past periods of crisis, the American electorate sought the “necessary man,” a highly qualified leader to assume the powers of the Presidency. Obama has the personal qualities of intellect and character to address the great difficulties facing the nation. But as daily events are beginning to reveal, Obama’s presidency has been betrayed from within. All of the bold measures he promised during his campaign and in recent speeches are being steadily undermined by his own advisers and deputies. How can this be?

Over the last thirty years, the moneyed interests in the United States developed a sophisticated system of recruiting and co-opting large numbers of politically prominent or promising individuals. By means of selective promotions, institutional subsidies, book contracts, and many other forms of professional favoritism, the owner’s of our nation’s wealth, corporations and private fortunes, have effectively bought off the entire set of candidates for national leadership. As Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall said “I don’t care who does the electing as long as I do the nominating.”

The American plutocracy controls the mass media. It controls talk radio. It controls popular entertainment. But, most importantly, it controls the pool of individuals from whom Barak Obama chooses the officers of his administration. The otherwise inexplicable actions of Geithner and Summers are no mystery once one understands that they were recruited to be agents of wealth decades ago. The persistence of the Military Industrial Complex and the likelihood of fresh attempts to raid Social Security are not puzzling once one understands that anyone “qualified” to lead these agencies and survive confirmation hearings is an agent of the plutocracy.

The consequences of this situation are unfortunate for our new President. Having promised vigorous action, his growing impotence in the face of concerted resistance to his policies BY HIS OWN APPOINTEES will result in his public humiliation. The only way out of this trap is to replace the plutocratic hand-puppets in his administration with outsiders who would immediately be labelled as “dangerous,” “radical,” or “fringe” figures, the standard code words used to denounce leaders whose first loyalty is to our republic and not to America’s wealthiest.

Every time one of Obama’s promises to the American people is betrayed by a member of his own administration, our President is humiliated. His popularity will not survive such humiliation, and unless he makes abrupt changes in his inner circle, the hope he promised our nation will prove false.

A former unit of US conglomerate Halliburton agreed to pay 579 million dollars in criminal and civil penalties to settle a long probe into bribery in Nigeria, US officials said Wednesday.

Authorities said the agreement represented the second largest fine ever in connection with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Kellogg Brown & Root LLC pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges related to “its participation in a decade-long scheme to bribe Nigerian government officials” to obtain contracts, the Justice Department said.

SOURCE: http://rawstory.com/news/afp/K…

What else is new? KBR is still getting huge contracts from the US military in Iraq, while soldiers are being electrocuted by defective KBR-installed wiring. This is a familiar pattern. Big corporations get away with massive corruption by fingering a scapegoat and paying fines, then the corruption starts all over again. The article about the Nigerian payoffs neglects to point out that Dirty Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton while this scheme was being hatched. In how many companies can millions of dollars in bribes be paid without the knowledge of the CEO?

It is time for America to apply its enthusiasm for capital punishment to corporations. Corporation charters can not only be granted by government; they can be revoked. Congress should immediately pass legislation mandating the de-chartering and dissolution of any corporation whose officers have repeatedly been convicted of corrupt practices. This would do much more to reform our corruption-riddled country than the ritual wrist-slaps our courts are currently administering in the name of “justice.”