2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumMatt Taibbi: Vampire Squid goes to bat for Hillary Clinton
The Vampire Squid Tells Us How to VoteLloyd Blankfein charges for investment advice but his political wisdom is free
By Matt Taibbi * Rolling Stone * February 5, 2016
Lloyd Blankfein, Chief Executive Cephalopod of Goldman Sachs, issued a warning about the Bernie Sanders campaign this week.
"This has the potential to be a dangerous moment," he said on CNBC's Squawk Box.
The Lloyd was peeved that Sanders, whom he's never met, singled him out in a debate last week. "Another kid from Brooklyn, how about that," he lamented.
He ranted about how frightening it is that a candidate like Sanders, who seems to have no interest in "compromising" with Wall Street, could become so popular.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-vampire-squid-tells-us-how-to-vote-20160205#ixzz3zVzVgR00
ViseGrip
(3,133 posts)catnhatnh
(8,976 posts)or it is the Clinton's who are puppets and the media who are correct.
navarth
(5,927 posts)Dude.
Was that a typo?
ThreeWayFanny
(80 posts)Snotcicles
(9,089 posts)Thanks for posting 99th_Monkey.
polichick
(37,152 posts)They're mad because a tiny group of crooks on Wall Street built themselves beach houses in the Hamptons through a crude fraud scheme that decimated their retirement funds, caused property values in their neighborhoods to collapse and caused over four million people to be put in foreclosure.
And they're particularly mad that they got asked to pay for this criminal irresponsibility with bailouts funded with their tax dollars.
What the Clintons have done by turning their political careers into a vast moneymaking enterprise, it's not a value-neutral activity. The money isn't just about buying influence. The money also physically moves people, from one side of an imaginary line to another.
You will never catch Bernie Sanders standing in a room as a paid guest of a bank under investigation for ripping billions off pensioners and investors, addressing the audience in the first-person plural. He doesn't spend enough time with that kind of crowd to be so colloquial."
Big K&R!!
bvar22
(39,909 posts)saidsimplesimon
(7,888 posts)political priorities, imo. Thanks for the quote, bvar.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)It wasn't. It went into the hands of these guys.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)As usual, Taibbi is pitch perfect.
bread_and_roses
(6,335 posts)... This squares with accounts I heard after 2008, about the Treasury Department in the Geithner years. In one story I remember, it took a presentation from a major retail company about expected lower holiday spending levels to enlighten Geithner's staff as to the level of economic pain in the population. Until they saw the graphs from executives, they had no clue.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-vampire-squid-tells-us-how-to-vote-20160205#ixzz3zWB46LVQ
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
I still reel from the betrayal of the appointments of Geihner, Summers, et al
navarth
(5,927 posts)....and I am still troubled but the fact that Barack had these fuckers in his cabinet.
Gregorian
(23,867 posts)It might take a little more work to make a billion.
mopinko
(69,809 posts)nothing like sticking your head up from the crowd there. get used to that target that you just painted on your own back.
reformist2
(9,841 posts)Major Nikon
(36,814 posts)wendylaroux
(2,925 posts)Gumboot
(531 posts)Wall Street has not once 'compromised' with America during the last 35 years... has it, Lloyd?
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)navarth
(5,927 posts)Fritz Walter
(4,281 posts)Do they live in such opaque bubbles that they can't or won't see what's coming?!?
OK, one billionaire got the memo. He is their prophet in the desert. They dismiss him -- wrong kind of profit, don't ya' see? -- but at their own peril.
Here is Nick Hanauer's TED Talk, which falls on the deaf ears of the 1-2% but is going viral among the 98%:
https://embed-ssl.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocrats_the_pitchforks_are_coming.html"
cui bono
(19,926 posts).
Petrushka
(3,709 posts)Thank you!
saidsimplesimon
(7,888 posts)First rule in my corporate training, anger does not win friends or influence enemies.
The antidote to anger is action. So, let's score a big win for Senator Sander's in NH. The "establishment" has ignored our voices, let them face our votes.
Wall Street is not working for US. Goldman Sachs is raping Brazil by financing an unsustainable debt from derivatives investment. The Olympics in a mosquito and diseased infected land of mistreatment of the poor?
gregcrawford
(2,382 posts)... he just doesn't give a fuck. He is the very definition of a psychopath: manipulative in the extreme, deceitful for the fun of it, and utterly devoid of conscience or even the capacity for remorse.
One of his weasel traders was on British TV a few weeks ago (it's somewhere in the DU archives), and proceeded to astound the presenters with his ruthless delight in wreaking economic havoc. He also said something to the effect that governments don't rule the world, Goldman Sachs does.
I would love to see Squidman, and oily little assholes like that trader, frogmarched to prison for the rest of their evil lives.
passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)I don't have time for extensive searches right now. Thanks!
Marty McGraw
(1,024 posts)&feature=youtu.be
passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)I did see that. I just forgot the Goldman Sachs line.
appalachiablue
(41,056 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)ion_theory
(235 posts)Not so much the racial aspect, but that people bought up homes that they couldn't afford all over the country. It's their fault for not being able to pay back the loan. We had to bail out the banks because people stopped paying them. They've bought this hook, line, and sinker and it such a shame.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)They had balloon payments too. They promised they could refinance when those came due but that was a lie.
Then they took all of those mortgages and bundled them so sloppily that they couldn't track the deeds and wrote up securities after bribing the ratings agencies to give them a AAA rating. Then to top it off they bet they would fail.
Here is the part that really pisses me off. They got a bailout so they got paid but they are still hounding the people who took out those loans as if they didn't. Then there was a second and third quiet bailout that totaled the value of ALL of the real estate in the country.
But poor people, minorities and immigrants got the blame.
White males in suits never get the blame. The Beltway believes the world would collapse without them.
ion_theory
(235 posts)However, at the end of the day my rents look at that argument and still say, "well those people who took that loan for that house should have known the risk involved with taking that subprime loan." I really have no way of arguing that though cause in a way it is true. The banks completely fucked the economy, but a lot of people were tricked essentially. Unless my understanding is wrong which it may be. I'm a science degree not a business one haha..
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Then when the balloon payment came due the people's monthly payments doubled and then tripled and then quadrupled.
Whatever it took to steal their home.
He's another kicker. The banks would offer these subprimes to people drowning in credit card debt. They told these people their home was a goldmine in untapped equity. Why not use it to not only pay off all of those credit cards but take out an even bigger loan and go on a shopping spree? People bought big ticket items like major appliances, cars, big screen TVs, even went on vacation.
ion_theory
(235 posts)The banks found a way to fuck over as many people as they could, but plenty of people essentially say it is there fault for believing the banks and not taking care of their finances.
I completely think they were criminally taken advantage of, but the reply to that is people shouldn't have been that stupid to take on loans they couldn't pay back, whether they could refinance or not.
My main issue is I don't know how to logically argue that at the end of the day those ppl that lost there home were taken advantage of. Maybe it's a different way of looking at the world on my parents part, but they aren't dumb and still think that though the banks may have done wrong, ppl still fucked themselves over.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)bvar22
(39,909 posts)I believe Katrina and New Orleans was the first domino that started the crash.
I was in New Orleans immediately after the storm, and happened to meet a Real Estate agent walking down the middle of the street (there were no cars yet) with her binder. (It all seems like a bizarre dream now, just me and this woman with a binder standing in a post apocalypse wasteland.
No noise or motors running, none of the suburban A/C units running, no planes flying overhead, no lights, no other people, just miles of wasted homes )
I stopped her, and started asking questions about property value in this destroyed neighborhood.
I pointed to a house that had been knocked off its foundation, and asked her how much it was worth.
She opened her binder, found the address and a Pre-Katrina photo of this destroyed home, and told me it was worth $212K. I laughed because I though she was joking, but she was deadly serious.
I again pointed to the destroyed home sitting sideways, and said, " THAT is worth $212K???!!!"
I asked, "Who says so?"
She again pointed to the photo in her binder and replied, "The Bank says so. That is its value on the books."
It was then I had a moment of clarity. The banks were carrying many square MILES of destroyed homes on their books at inflated "Boom" refinanced prices....and I knew something bad was coming....worse than Katrina.
I called my wife in Minneapolis, and told her to start selling EVERYTHING.
It was time to get out. We sold everything, cashed out my IRA and paid the penalty.
We used the money to buy Bubble Proof ground in rural Arkansas, and moved there in 2006, right before The Crash.
...but I still believe the destruction of many square miles of over mortgaged "bubble" homes in New Orleans in 2005 is what started the house of cards to collapse.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Investors from all over started building these 16th acre housing tracts. Miles and miles of two story homes with a narrow walkway between them. We joke about the bathrooms facing each other so you can watch your neighbor take a dump. Awful cheap fittings selling for $350k apiece. Guess what? The price on some of these places crashed to $40k and STILL couldn't be sold. There are vast neighborhoods that look like a ghost town. The sea of yuppies that was supposed to buy them was a fantasy. This is the kind of place where daddy drives a cab and mommy deals blackjack at Caesars.
shawn703
(2,702 posts)No, we are done with Wall Street compromises, because the little guy ends up getting the short end of the stick.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)You are the ones not compromising. You have bought the election and legislative process. That isn't democracy!
mudstump
(342 posts)that you don't seem to grasp. Bernie's unwillingness to compromise with Wall Street is precisely why we are devoted to him. And, the fact that you are squawking about Bernie tells me that he is perfectly on track to overhaul this democracy.
MelissaB
(16,420 posts)K&R
AzDar
(14,023 posts)Vinca
(50,172 posts)He's the reason I keep renewing my Rolling Stone subscription.
Unknown Beatle
(2,672 posts)but then he notes that Sanders making public statements about Wall St, "has the potential to be a dangerous moment."
So which is it, you fucking hypocrite? Are you worried or not? It seems to me that you're greatly concerned but pretend not to be.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)And now Goldman owns their very own presidential candidate. How special.
When Bernie is elected I hope you shit your $5000 suit, you vampiric asshole.
appalachiablue
(41,056 posts)bvar22
(39,909 posts)and her daughter too!
stuffmatters
(2,574 posts)That would be soooo cool!
Love the the Geithner story.
If people who heard Hilary's GS speeches are already talking to Taibbi, it's pretty certain sooner or later those videos/transcripts will leak out. I fear that these speeches have the potential to be a devastating "47%" moment for Hillary Clinton and Democrats. Better to get them out now than after our party is locked into a Clinton nomination.
Plenty of Repubs (including Trump pals) were in those gilded GS rooms and heard her speeches. They're not going away.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)(read his cynical advice to Timmeh Geithner)
SHRED
(28,136 posts)JEB
(4,748 posts)saidsimplesimon
(7,888 posts)I remember the day when students were seen smoking MJ on the campus of the University of Michigan. AA2 local and campus police did not arrest those who preferred pot to alcohol. As I recall, possession of a joint was a local misdemeanor.
At the risk of losing my political "cred", a snip from a past remembered. Recreational use of Mary Jane is on the ballot in Arizona. What you do "behind closed doors" is not the government's business, imo.
As for the banksters, they're drunk on money and power. They will soon invest in the growing market.
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Kentonio
(4,377 posts)And I love him for it.
TubbersUK
(1,439 posts)99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)I guess it's a little late for him to say Clinton is dangeroustoo. lol