Goldman Sachs, Obama, Money (as in, the taxpayers' money)

[brentspeak]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-ostertag/goldman-sachs-obama-money_b_177611.html

by Bob Ostertag

When Obama said he wanted bi-partisanship, this is probably not what he had in mind: Democrats and Republicans in Congress speaking in a united voice against corporate executives that have been equally cosy with Democrats and Republicans.

As in: equally cosy with Senator John Warner, that bad Republican, and Chris Dodd, who presented himself as a mild progressive in the last Democratic presidential primary.

As in: equally cosy with the Fed and Treasury under Clinton and Bush. As in: pretty darn cosy with President Obama himself.

Forget the bonuses at AIG. Chump change. Let's put what Goldman Sachs has been up to in plain English. Goldman Sachs had made a lot of esoteric financial transactions with AIG. Banks were collapsing at the time, leaving their investors with huge losses. When things started looking shaky at AIG, Goldman and other investors started calling in their claims, and pushed AIG off the cliff.

Now ask yourself: with banks collapsing, why would you push the one you had put so much money in to collapse?

Answer: because you had your boys on the inside in Washington, that's why. And your boys got a bail-out package for AIG which actually paid you more than your claims that broke the bank. What investors had demanded from AIG was collateral on debts. But they actually got with the bailout was the whole damn amount, 100 cents on the dollar.

To put it even more bluntly: if AIG had managed to not collapse and not require $180 billion in taxpayer money, Goldman Sachs would be sitting today with some very very shaky investments. But since AIG collapsed, the folks at Goldman cleaned up.

Or even more bluntly: Goldman used AIG as a funnel...