Tag: Lloyd Blankfein

May 01 2010

Clueless in Fantasyland

I didn’t know. It wasn’t me. I’ve never done that. It’s outside my scope. I didn’t do it. I had no idea. I was nowhere near the place. I don’t know how important it was. I never thought of it. I don’t know what drove the business.

I n-n-n-never… I didn’t. It wasn’t. I couldn’t. I wasn’t. It couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

Nooooo….. pleeeeze. You must believe me. I only run the place, Senator. I was in the executive washroom counting money and punching the clown with the big red nose. What the fcuk do you expect from me?

Snicker. I’m an idiot, you fool.

Nov 27 2009

Top Ten Reasons: NOT to Trust Wall Street

also posted on dkos

Wall Street is sick. And its illness is Unchecked Greed. … The bug is call OPM.

Their fever has risen so dangerously high, that the Wizards of Wall Street, the Captains of Industry, for the most part see your assets as their “playing chips”.

Your Money, is their Bread and Butter.

Exploiting and Levering OPM (Other People’s Money) is the key to their  Extreme Wealth.

This contagion on Wall Street has reached such a point, that one of those “Captains of Industry” has been speaking out against it.  He has been working to “right the ship” of speculative, reckless investing, using our OPM, as the collateral.

Jack C. Bogle, founder and CEO of the Vanguard Group, is one of those “old school” investors — you know, that we should be “investing in a better future“, NOT just a “better bank account“.

Jack has listed the symptoms of this wide spread illness — NOW if only we could find some “Doctors” wise enough to quarantine the Damage …

The Damage unregulated greed has done … before they try to “go for broke” AGAIN …

 

Nov 26 2009

The Invisible Hand: Too Big to Fail, vs Too Small to Notice

The Invisible Hand

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, says: “the reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there.” [7][8] Stiglitz explains his position:

Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, is often cited as arguing for the “invisible hand” and free markets: firms, in the pursuit of profits, are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do what is best for the world. But unlike his followers, Adam Smith was aware of some of the limitations of free markets, and research since then has further clarified why free markets, by themselves, often do not lead to what is best. As I put it in my new book, Making Globalization Work, the reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there.

…

Nov 22 2009

The President of the United States, 2009

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do. — Voltaire

Oct 18 2008

10% of $700 billion bailout to cover Wall Street banker pay and bonuses

One tenth of the $700 billion bailout to be footed by U.S. taxpayers is projected to go to the pay and bonuses of Wall Street bankers. The same captains of finance who sent the world into a financial meltdown are now going to be rewarded handsomely.

The Guardian has found that the Top Wall Street bankers are to receive $70 billion in pay deals.

Financial workers at Wall Street’s top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40.4bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in bonuses, for their work so far this year – despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash…

Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup will pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted widespread criticism. The government cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay will be curbed.