Octafish
Octafish's JournalEx-Goldman Trader Who Said $8 Million Bonus ''Too Low'' Involved in Fraudulent Activities
Turns out the guy missed out on another $5 million not because he was doing crooked things to make Goldman billions, but because he revealed the crooked things Goldman was doing to the press.
From the people interested in economic justice at World Socialist Web Site:
Former Goldman trader involved in fraudulent activities says $8 million bonus too low
By Andre Damon
WSWS.org, 21 June 2014
A former Goldman Sachs trader who helped the bank bet against toxic mortgage-backed securities it was palming off to investors is attempting to sue his former employer because he says his multimillion-dollar pay package did not reflect the billions of dollars the bank earned as a result of his trades.
Deeb Salem, the former head of trading for Goldman’s Structured Products Group, complained that he received an $8.25 million bonus in 2010, though he said informal comments made by company executives led him to believe he would get closer to $13 million that year.
Salem filed a petition with the New York State Supreme Court last week, demanding that he get an additional $7 million from Goldman, after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority—a Wall Street self-regulator—ruled in favor of Goldman in an earlier arbitration.
[font color="green"]Salem claims his pay was docked because, as noted in a written warning he received, he showed “extremely poor judgment” by bragging in print about trades that his trading desk had made under his supervision in his 2007 annual self-evaluation. It should be noted that Salem’s pay was docked not because he carried out illegal trades, but because he left a paper trail.[/font color]
SNIP...
[font color="red"]Salem’s report refutes the 2010 claim made by Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein under oath that “we didn’t have a massive short against the housing market, and we certainly did not bet against our clients.”[/font color]
CONTINUED...
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/06/21/gold-j21.html
I don't like the game when the refs get off the same bus as the opposing team.
Funny how that works.
Money and Power.
PDF Briefing Notes for Rumsfeld Visit to Baghdad
That is one of the things that most bothers me, Mnemosyne.
I was going to post an image of a starving child, but the children in the photos are too heartbreaking to use to make a point.
Another thing that's important to remember is what happens when "money trumps peace" becomes a regular way of thinking:
Belgian soldiers, part of the UN peace keeping operation, use enhanced interrogation technique on a Somali child.
Details:
Belgian military authorities launched an investigation into the atrocities following publication of a front-page story by Belgium’s Het Laatste Nieuws. In early July, Privates Claude Baert and Kurt Coelus, the two paratroopers photographed dangling the Somali child over a flame, were acquitted by a military court, which ruled that the incident — described by Baert and Coelus as a punishment for stealing — was "a form of playing without violence," according to prosecutor Luc Walleyn. And what of discipline from the UN, whose "Code of Personal Conduct for Blue Helmets" requires that peacekeepers "respect and regard the human rights of all"? Gould reports that a UN spokesman dismissed the acquittal of Baert and Coelus by insisting that "the UN is not in the habit of embarrassing governments that contribute peacekeeping troops."
SOURCE: http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/UN/peace.html
The sadness about this all weighs so heavily on my heart, I feel like "looking forward" etc. The reason I don't -- and you don't, Mnemosyne -- is that there are still so many kids starving, so many kids being tortured, so many kids without hope, we must keep going.
A two-team league and both teams named Dynamo.
Berlin und Wei?wa?er.
http://slapshot.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/28/hockey-night-in-europe-from-stasi-team-to-germanys-showcase/
Because that's where the oil is.
East African Oil – Hot Tip of the Decade!And for at least half a century, where the oil is is where the MIC goes. Consider Vietnam, where Texas oil man George Herbert Walker Bush went on CIA business:
CIA Helped Bush Senior In Oil Venture
By Russ Baker
WhoWhatWhy.com, Jan 7, 2007
Bush has long denied allegations that he had connections to the intelligence community prior to 1976, when he became Central Intelligence Agency director under President Gerald Ford. At the time, he described his appointment as a ‘real shocker.’
But the freshly uncovered memos contend that Bush maintained a close personal and business relationship for decades with a CIA staff employee who, according to those CIA documents, was instrumental in the establishment of Bush’s oil venture, Zapata, in the early 1950s, and who would later accompany Bush to Vietnam as a “cleared and witting commercial asset” of the agency.
According to a CIA internal memo dated November 29, 1975, Bush’s original oil company, Zapata Petroleum, began in 1953 through joint efforts with Thomas J. Devine, a CIA staffer who had resigned his agency position that same year to go into private business. The ’75 memo describes Devine as an “oil wild-catting associate of Mr. Bush.” The memo is attached to an earlier memo written in 1968, which lays out how Devine resumed work for the secret agency under commercial cover beginning in 1963.
“Their joint activities culminated in the establishment of Zapata Oil,” the memo reads. In fact, early Zapata corporate filings do not seem to reflect Devine’s role in the company, suggesting that it may have been covert. Yet other documents do show Thomas Devine on the board of an affiliated Bush company, Zapata Offshore, in January, 1965, more than a year after he had resumed work for the spy agency.
It was while Devine was in his new CIA capacity as a commercial cover officer that he accompanied Bush to Vietnam the day after Christmas in 1967, remaining in the country with the newly elected congressman from Texas until January 11, 1968. Whatever information the duo was seeking, they left just in the nick of time. Only three weeks after the two men departed Saigon, the North Vietnamese and their Communist allies launched the Tet offensive with seventy thousand troops pre-positioned in more than 100 cities and towns.
While the elder Bush was in Vietnam with Devine, George W. Bush was making contact with representatives of the Texas Air National Guard, using his father’s connections to join up with an elite, Houston-based Guard unit – thus avoiding overseas combat service in a war that the Bushes strongly supported. -
CONTINUED...
http://whowhatwhy.com/2007/01/07/cia-bush-senior-oil-venture/
Which helps explain, for me at least, WTF we were doing wasting all those lives in Vietnam.
Your Military Industrial Complex at Work
On Dec. 8, 1992, after George Herbert Walker Bush was defeated at the polls by Bill Clinton with an assist from Ross Perot, he ordered the U.S. military into Somalia. Operation RESTORE HOPE was sold at the time as a "Humanitarian Mission," a phrase rarely used in conjunction with anything the guy did as president, as vice-president, as a Congressman from Texas or in his time at CIA for anyone other than his cronies and partners in crime.
What Poppy Bush's last new mission in Somalia did accomplish was to leave a crisis -- a huge dog turd in a burning bag of a crisis -- on the welcome mat at the front door of the White House for incoming President Bill Clinton. After that, things got off on the "right foot," from peace and prosperity for all to healthcare for the public and continued welfare for the wealthy. And the humanitarian mission? It quickly devolved into a fiasco of the first order, culminating in the disaster seared into the public consciousness as "Black Hawk Down."
Oh. Not that it's on tee vee or anything where millions might see it, but we're still in Somalia.
CIA whistleblower John Stockwell on the implications of the presidency of George H.W. Bush...
"It's a giant step toward the national security state." -- John Stockwell
https://archive.org/details/AV_153_154_155-COVERT_ACTION
Why aren't Bush and Cheney in prison?
Quick Brief for the prosecution:
They ignored warnings Bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States.
They lied the United States into War on a nation that had nothing to do with 9-11.
They used their government positions to enrich their cronies.
They turned the nation's spy agencies upon the American people, contrary to law.
They railroaded a Democratic governor into prison on trumped-up charges.
There are more, but that's a start. And I still would like to know why they aren't in prison.
So, why are these two free?
A Planet Full of Hitlers
The world's billionaires, led by the Bush "madministration," are acting like a planet of full of Hitlers. They are willing to invade whatever region in the world has what the world needs most -- oil.
Black gold. Texas tea. Petrodollars.
They figure they have all the money. And basically, apart from a Soros here and a Gates there, they do.
And thus, the world’s billionaires and their hounds of the BFEE want to spend it all before they die. And they have the plan and cash on hand to do so.
Consider the Bush agenda: All War. All the Time. Government spending for the MI-Complex, transferring trillions to the wealthy corporate owners, war and all.
These are the likes of the “industrialists” Mussolini, Franco and Hitler so loved.
And like the fascist trifecta, the American fascists of the BFEE have bought all the political power. Don't just think Tom Roach Motel DeLay and Mr. Friskie Frist. Remember Prescott Bush and Averell Harriman and Allen Dulles and Rheinhard Gehlen and Igor Orlov.
What can we do about it? They’ve bought all the legal power, built law schools for Federalist Society AND Opus Dei judges. Think Bill Eagle Eye Rehnquist and Antonin Fat Tony Scalia.
These turds of the BFEE have worked all the tax breaks and bankrupty laws for the rich. Uncle Sam reverse-Robin Hoods wealth to the top 1-percent of country.
And what do these rich turds who prop up Bush use their tax savings on? They certainly haven't invested it in making America a better place to work or live; they've invested in "off-shoring."
Lots of the tax money goes to buy more vacation homes, yachts and jet planes. Most goes offshore to the Caymans and Switzerland.
And of course they want more without having to pay for the damage to the environment. Farmland depletion in the USA. Rain forest depletion around the globe. Oceans getting acidic. Fish stock depletion. Global air pollution and water shortages.
Well. OK. Maybe a case can be made it’s the rich folk’s money. They can do what they want. But they should pay their fair share of taxes! After all, the rest of society helps keep them in their position. And its our brothers and sisters in the armed forces who are giving their lives to keep their oil and power and privilege.
Budget red ink means no money for middle class. No money for schools. No money for cities and suburbs and farms. No money for roads. No money for science and R and D. No money for the future.
And the media? What media? What Fairness Doctrine?
They cover up their materialism and venality with all the talk about Faith-based this and Conservative-values that. But the reality is these are sinister wolves and satanic bed-wetting bastards in sheep's clothing we are dealing with.
Wasn’t that what Bush really meant when he told Bob Woodward “History? Who cares about history? In a hundred years we’ll all be dead.”
Just like Hitler. And just like Hitler, Bush wants to take us all with him.
-- Octafish, May 12, 2005
Agree 100-percent, Larkspur.
If he's a stealth candidate, someone needs to tell him his cloaking shields are down.
If he's a man of integrity, who would do the progressive things in office -- I'd like to forgive his known public associations.
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