http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/13/news/economy/goldman_sachs_senate_report/index.htm
Goldman Sachs benefits from the financial crises:
http://business.time.com/2009/07/14/goldman-sachs-has-had-an-excellent-financial-crisis/
Goldman Sachs screwed Greece and the EU:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-06/goldman-secret-greece-loan-shows-two-sinners-as-client-unravels.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07-hA9DW-Po&
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-connor/goldmans-role-in-greek-cr_b_479511.html
Greeks are actually not bad people:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/17/richard-parker-greece_n_1524951.html
Goldman Sachs screws Oakland:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48413748/Oakland_Leaders_Enter_Battle_With_Goldman_Sachs
Goldman Sachs caused the great depression:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/130981-we-ve-been-here-before-goldman-sachs-1929-2009
Goldman Sachs helped cause every financial crisis since the great depression:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405
In one case, Goldman allegedly gave a multimillion-dollar special offering to eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who later joined Goldman's board, in exchange for future i-banking business
One of the truly comic moments in the history of America's recent financial collapse came when Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey, who ran Goldman from 1994 to 1999 and left with $320 million in IPO-fattened stock, insisted in 2002 that "I've never even heard the term 'laddering' before."
For a bank that paid out $7 billion a year in salaries, $110 million fines issued half a decade late were something far less than a deterrent —they were a joke.
For decades mortgage dealers insisted that home buyers be able to produce a down payment of 10 percent or more, show a steady income and good credit rating, and possess a real first and last name. Then, at the dawn of the new millennium, they suddenly threw all that shit out the window and started writing mortgages on the backs of napkins to cocktail waitresses and ex-cons carrying five bucks and a Snickers bar.
Take one $494 million issue that year, GSAMP Trust 2006S3. Many of the mortgages belonged to second-mortgage borrowers, and the average equity they had in their homes was 0.71 percent. Moreover, 58 percent of the loans included little or no documentation — no names of the borrowers, no addresses of the homes, just zip codes. Yet both of the major ratings agencies, Moody's and Standard & Poor's, rated 93 percent of the issue as investment grade. Moody's projected that less than 10 percent of the loans would default. In reality, 18 percent of the mortgages were in default within 18 months.
I ask the manager how it could be that selling something to customers that you're actually betting against — particularly when you know more about the weaknesses of those products than the customer — doesn't amount to securities fraud.
"It's exactly securities fraud," he says. "It's the heart of securities fraud."
In fact, at least $13 billion of the taxpayer money given to AIG in the bailout ultimately went to Goldman, meaning that the bank made out on the housing bubble twice: It fucked the investors who bought their horseshit CDOs by betting against its own crappy product, then it turned around and fucked the taxpayer by making him pay off those same bets.
Soaring food prices driven by the commodities bubble led to catastrophes across the planet, forcing an estimated 100 million people into hunger and sparking food riots throughout the Third World.
It began in September of last year, when then-Treasury secretary Paulson made a momentous series of decisions. Although he had already engineered a rescue of Bear Stearns a few months before and helped bail out quasi-private lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers — one of Goldman's last real competitors — collapse without intervention. ("Goldman's superhero status was left intact," says market analyst Eric Salzman, "and an investment banking competitor, Lehman, goes away.") The very next day, Paulson green-lighted a massive, $85 billion bailout of AIG, which promptly turned around and repaid $13 billion it owed to Goldman. Thanks to the rescue effort, the bank ended up getting paid in full for its bad bets: By contrast, retired auto workers awaiting the Chrysler bailout will be lucky to receive 50 cents for every dollar they are owed.
And here's the real punch line. After playing an intimate role in four historic bubble catastrophes, after helping $5 trillion in wealth disappear from the NASDAQ, after pawning off thousands of toxic mortgages on pensioners and cities, after helping to drive the price of gas up to $4 a gallon and to push 100 million people around the world into hunger, after securing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars through a series of bailouts overseen by its former CEO, what did Goldman Sachs give back to the people of the United States in 2008?
Fourteen million dollars.
That is what the firm paid in taxes in 2008, an effective tax rate of exactly one, read it, one percent. The bank paid out $10 billion in compensation and benefits that same year and made a profit of more than $2 billion — yet it paid the Treasury less than a third of what it forked over to CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who made $42.9 million last year.
This should be a pitchfork-level outrage — but somehow, when Goldman released its post-bailout tax profile, hardly anyone said a word. One of the few to remark on the obscenity was Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat from Texas who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee. "With the right hand out begging for bailout money," he said, "the left is hiding it offshore."
“Henry Paulson was Secretary of the Treasury under George W Bush. Before that he was board Chairman of the Board and CEO of Goldman Sachs”
“Robert Rubin was Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton. Before that he was cochair of Goldman Sachs.”
“Larry Summers, another Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton, was a consultant to Goldman Sachs”
“Former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers all came from Goldman, and current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner rose through the ranks of government as a Summers/Rubin protégé. One commentator called the U.S. Treasury “Goldman Sachs South.””
Counter-argument article: http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2009/08/07/matt-taibbi-is-just-plain-wrong-about-goldman-sachs/
Update Aug 2013:
Apparently, Goldman Sachs alumni are basically in every central bank: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-01/goldman-takeover-complete-glimpse-inside-bank-england-where-mark-carney-now-presidin
wtf...
Goldman fucking Sachs
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