Near a $TRILLION from Main Street to Wall Street

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Jaleho
by Jaleho
22-Sep-2008
 

As the US financial house of cards falls down everyone is trying to point to a single scapegoat. And, everything is named as a culprit, except for the wasteful war, American militarism, a system of government which is built to serve the interest of wall street crooks and the military-industrial complex which benefits from the most wasteful product of an economy, the war.

The gold-dollar equivalence was broken by the financial devastation that the wasteful Vietnam war brought about to Americans. Still, the rest of the world had to buy and keep dollar to be able to buy energy. The ensuing petro-dollar equivalence was enforced not by any inherent strength of dollar itself, it was propped up by the US military enforcing it around the world, by installing its puppets in oil rich countries, controlling pipelines and an economic and military weight which could punish anyone who deviated from the desires of the Big Bully. Following Iranian revolution, the US tried everything in its power to prevent a similar fate in Iraq and keeping a status quo in the oil producing Middle Eastern countries. Ironically, it was this desire of the US to keep its hegemony in the Middle East that led to the Iraq war debacle and the subsequent cracks in the petro-dollar equivalence which reveals the worthless status of the greenback.

On the other hand, while the war profiteers filled their pockets, the middle class Americans were being wiped, not even able to pay their loans, and compounding the already scandalous financial  schemes. The US government worked closely for the interest of wall street thieves who designed elaborate scams to enrich themselves  and the war lobby.

A good example to understand the intimate relation of the US government with Wall Street is to take a look at the career of Henry Paulson, the Treasury Secretary, and former chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs investment firm. BTW, Paulson is not unique in this story at all, the top executives of Goldman Sachs prior to him also had sensitive relations with the government.

Henry Paulson, after a job as Assistance Secretary of Defense went to work in Goldman Sachs. By 1999 he was the CEO of GS and his compensation package alone topped $35 million in 2005. In his last years as CEO, Goldman had huge increase in revenues, a large percentage of it thanks to commodity and paper trades which a good know how of the government decisions can afford.  Then Mr. Paulson, like many others from Wall Street, goes directly from Goldman Sachs back to the government. To accept the Treasury Secretary position, he needed to sell his stocks in Goldman Sachs, but since he's doing it to get a government job, he doesn't have to pay taxes on the stocks. Allegedly, (according to Fortune Magazine) Mr. Paulso sells $500 million of his GS stocks without paying a penny in taxes on them.

Now, we see Hank at the helm of the biggest financial bailout of the Wall Street. After Bear Stearns and Lehman went under, and following the weekend that Merril Lynch sold itself to Bank of American, we see Mr. Paulson nervously advocating $700 billion of tax payers money to save Wall Street. His Goldman Sachs sure seems to stay put for now by taxes that he didn't seem to contribute much of!

Anyway, Henry is just one example picked because of relation to present topic. In fact, he's one of the relatively clean ones when you compare him with outright thieves of Wall Street like Michael H. Steinhardt  or Michael Milken or many like them. AND, Paulson seems to be a lover of nature and unlike Mr. talk- only- Gore, Paulson puts a lot of his money where his mouth is. Environmentalist might not mind his having too much money to put it to that particular use. After all, a portion of their taxes is going to conservation, just passing through the Treasury Secretary's pocket :-)

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more from Jaleho
 
sadegh

Thanks for being

by sadegh on

Thanks for being understanding Jaleho...I really never intended to cause offense, only to thank you for your excellent comments...

Ba Arezu-ye Movafaghiat, Sadegh

 


Jaleho

That's fine Sadegh

by Jaleho on

I am used to the juvenile games that some people on Iranian.com play, and I never waste a second of useful time to to bring myself to their low level to even read their comments, let alone answer it. Just the same way that I try not to bother with any random dog barking in the street  :-)

The reason that I bothered to mention it was precisely my surprise that it came in the same form  from YOU, and that seemed to me so unlike you. Now I do understand that it was a typo. I often have left-hand and right-hand deciding which one go faster by themselves also.

No hard feelings. Continue writing your good stuff please, and I'll enjoy them as usual.

Thanks.


sadegh

Dear Jaleho...not sure

by sadegh on

Dear Jaleho...not sure whether you received my message beneath my recent article that the mispelling of your username was an honest mistake - I'm sorry if I caused you any personal offense but it's clear that it was an error since I thanked you for your comments immediately afterwards...I had slept very little the previous night and was typing very quickly, but I hope you won't hold that against me. Thanks again.

Ba Arezu-ye Movafaghiat, Sadegh

 


Jaleho

and the poor GS and MS

by Jaleho on

now have to pay a "price" for acquiring a bank holding status accorded to them by Fed:

the MILLION dollar paychecks would be subject to "scrutiny". But worse than that, Morgan and Goldman can not "up" each other's executive bonus and show off: ours got a $20 million package! You lose, our executives got a $40 million bonus, nah nah nah nah nah nah! 

 

Here's from an update from Forbes:

//www.forbes.com/business/2008/09/22/goldman-...

 

..."As of their last
quarterly regulatory filings, in June, Goldman had $71 billion in
short-term unsecured borrowings and $182 billion in long-term
borrowings. Morgan Staley had $32 billion in short-term unsecured
borrowings and $210 billion long term. Goldman and Morgan each had $1
trillion in assets, and shareholder equity of $45 billion and $34
billion, respectively.

Both Goldman and Morgan Stanley had been weighing the possibility of
gaining bank holding company status since last March, when the Federal
Reserve opened its emergency borrowing programs to primary dealers, a
group of Wall Street firms that included them.

In March, the Fed sent in observers to each of the companies to keep
closer tabs on their capital levels, funding and cash positions. The
presence of the Fed in these companies already helped speed the
approval process.

On Monday, a day after approving their applications, the Fed said
the action could take effect immediately rather than wait through a
customary 30-day comment and review period. In its order approving the
applications, the Fed said that "emergency conditions exist that
justify expeditious action on this proposal."

 


default

Jaleho, You are absolutely

by BigBoy (not verified) on

Jaleho,

You are absolutely correct that this is a wealth transfer from Main St. to Wall St. Paulson and his ilk are always conveniently at the helm when their "expertise" is required. Thanks for the interesting info about his personality.