The Goldman Diary

We are led to believe that the world is in recession but these bailed out bankers are still able to make huge profits and pay themselves vast sums of money.

You know a long time ago well maybe not so long the old Imperial powers looted their colonies without showing a drop of remorse.

Today the Imperial powers are dormant and have been overhauled by the financial institutions. These dragons of fiscal matters are today’s new colonists. These people care not a whit for countries or international borders they will rob and plunder wherever the treasure lies.

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Goldman Sachs’s Jon Corzine –8th April

The FBI report on the MF Global collapse that was sent to the bankruptcy trustee paints a damning picture of former Goldman Sachs chief executive, Jon Corzine.  Investors in MF Global lost $2.1 billion–a sure indication that these high-priced executives do not live up to their hype.  Why Corzine is not in jail is not a mystery but certainly alludes to fraud that goes unpunished in a corrupt justice system.

Corzine’s spokesman prefers to blame everyone else except the guy in charge.  Meanwhile, the wreckage of the economy and the bad faith in justice continues apace.

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THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2013

How Many Ways Does Goldman Sachs Get Preferential Treatment?

Let me count one of those ways:  Goldman Sachs (accidentally) obtained preferential treatment when it received the Federal Reserve FOMC minutes, which give important information regarding intended monetary policy, before the public did.The comments at the end of the following article show how little credence the “accidental” leak has with the public some of whom consider information leaks a feature of the system rather than a bug in the system.  There is a lot of cynicism from the public regarding all banks and their relationship with the Federal Reserve.

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The Guardian, Friday 12 April 2013 19.49 BST

Goldman Sachs paid its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, $21m last year – and granted him a further $5m in bonus shares in January.

The Wall Street bank handed Blankfein $13.3m (£8.7m) in restricted shares and a $5.7m cash bonus on top of his $2m annual salary last year.

His total 2012 pay was $9m more than in 2011, and the highest since the $68m he received in 2007, before the financial crisis struck.

The payout, disclosed in a filing with the US regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), makes Blankfein, 58, the world’s best paid banker.

On top of his annual pay Goldman granted him long-term incentive plan (LTIP) shares worth an additional $5m at today’s share price. But he will have to meet performance targets in order to collect the full amount, and the value of the shares could go up or down.

Blankfein’s top four lieutenants collected a total of $72m in annual pay, bonuses and share options last year.

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More Preferential Treatment for Goldman Sachs
Posted: 12 Apr 2013 09:20 AM PDT
When Goldman Sachs became a commercial bank in 2008 (in order to save itself from insolvency), it apparently came under commercial bank regulations. However, in 2010 Goldman bought warehouses of aluminum products as an investment even though “[u]nder US banking regulations, banks are barred from owning the physical commodity assets that they operate.”

But, of course, the Federal Reserve gave Goldman 5 years of grace (until autumn 2013) while it decides if Goldman is exempt from the rules. This is another instance of the two-tier system of justice in the US–one for banks and the other for the rest of us.

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Payments

Goldman Sachs bankers to reward themselves a staggering £8.3billion in bonuses- jan 2013
The bank will be first to unveil its rewards – an average of £250,000 a person
Increase, up from £230,000 last year, comes as families are struggling to make ends meet
Calls for restraint by politicians, who used taxpayers’ money to bail banks out, have fallen on deaf ears

Goldman Sachs paid its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, $21m last year – and granted him a further $5m in bonus shares in January. -April 2013

The Wall Street bank handed Blankfein $13.3m (£8.7m) in restricted shares and a $5.7m cash bonus on top of his $2m annual salary last year.

His total 2012 pay was $9m more than in 2011, and the highest since the $68m he received in 2007, before the financial crisis struck.

Cash bonanza anticipated for Goldmans workers as firm sets aside £2.75bn pay and bonus pot- April 3013

Bankers at Goldman Sachs – including its 6,000 London staff – are in line for another bumper year as results this week are forecast to show average pay packets of £85,000 for the first quarter alone.

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Goldman Sachs is Caught In Its Own Web of Deceit 18 Apr 2013 
A federal judge, District Judge Susan Wigenton, has upheld Prudential’s $270 million lawsuit against Goldman for fraudulent RMBS it sold to them.

A little bit of justice goes a long way when complete justice is denied.

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What Is Goldman Sachs Really Like?
19 Apr 2013
First, Goldman Sachs has paid its latest fine for RMBS fraud to Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP and according to the Bloomberg’s article:

“ABP sued New York-based Goldman Sachs in New York State Supreme Court in January 2012. The company alleged that it purchased certain mortgage-backed securities in reliance on false and misleading statements and that the securities were riskier than had been represented, backed by mortgage loansworth significantly less than had been represented.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Second, Professor Jeffrey Sachs calls the banks what they really are in an audio/video recoding posted at Market-Ticker. He is talking by telephone to a conference of academics discussing ending the fractional reserve lending system in order to repair the financial system by taking liquidity away from bankers who treat their banks as casinos for gambling. He calls the bankers cynical and full of conflicts of interest. Here is a partial transcript of what he thinks the banking system is:

“Prima facie, [it is] criminal behavior. It’s financial fraud on a very large [scale]; there’s a tremendous amount of insider trading…. [John] “Paulson worked together with Goldman Sachs to defraud massively many European banks which bought the toxic mortgages that Paulson had put together…. Goldman ended up paying a small fine and the chair of Goldman, of course, continued in his position and continued [to attend] White house State dinners.”

Other descriptors that Sachs uses for bankers and banking include:
“lawlessness,” “collapse of decency,” “a lot of them are crooks,” “nefarious behavior,”

Goldman Sachs should not be a commercial banking unit. That [it is] is sad.

The banking system is dysfunctional; there is a crisis of values that is extremely deep. Legal structures and regulators need reform. “I regard the moral environment of Wall Street people as pathological.” They bear no responsibility to others; they are tough, greedy, aggressive and out of control and have “gamed the system.” Regulators and the White House remain docile. Politics is corrupt to the core.

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Fraud*
According to the Collins English Dictionary 10th Edition fraud can be defined as: “deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage”.[1] In the broadest sense, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation. Defrauding people or entities of money or valuables is a common purpose of fraud, but there have also been fraudulent “discoveries”, e.g. in science, to gain prestige rather than immediate monetary gain
*As defined in Wikipedia