MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
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NO PRESIDENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY HAS HAD AN ADMINISTRATION MORE INFESTED WITH LA RAZA PARTY MEMBERS AND ADVOCATES FOR OPEN BORDERS, AMNESTY, NO E-VERIFY, AND ILLEGALS IN OUR JOBS, THAN BARACK OBAMA!
Go to http://www.MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com and read articles and comments from other Americans on what they’ve witnessed in their communities around the country. While most of the population of California is now ILLEGAL, the problems, costs, assault to our culture by Mexico is EVERYWHERE. copy and pass it to your friends.
*
THE OBAMA – GOLDMAN SACHS PARTNERSHIP AGAINST AMERICA
WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW ABOUT OUR ACTOR OBAMA THAT WE DIDN’T KNOW?
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).
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Virtuous Bankers? Really!?!
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
The Great Vampire Squid has gotten religion.
In an interview with The Sunday Times of London, the cocky chief of Goldman Sachs said he understands that a lot of people are “mad and bent out of shape” at blood-sucking banks.
“I know I could slit my wrists and people would cheer,” Lloyd Blankfein, the C.E.O., told the reporter John Arlidge.
But the little people who are boiling simply don’t understand. And Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, who unforgettably labeled Goldman “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” doesn’t understand.
Banks, Blankfein explained, are really serving the greater good.
“We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital,” he said. “Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle. We have a social purpose.”
When Arlidge asked whether it’s possible to make too much money, whether Goldman will ignore the people howling at the moon with rage and go on raking it in, getting richer than God, Blankfein grinned impishly and said he was “doing God’s work.”
Whether he knows it, he’s referring back to The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism — except, of course, the Calvinists would have been outraged by the banks’ vicious — not virtuous — cycle of greed and concupiscence.
Blankfein’s trickle-down catechism isn’t working. Now we have two economies. We have recovering banks while we have 10-plus percent unemployment and 17.5 percent underemployment. The gross thing about the Wall Street of the last decade is how much its success was not shared with society.
Goldmine Sachs, as it’s known, is out for Goldmine Sachs.
As many Americans continue to struggle, Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, banks that took government bailout money after throwing the entire world into crisis, have said they will dish out $30 billion in bonuses — up 60 percent from last year.
The saying used to be, whatever happens, the lawyers win. Now, it’s whatever happens, the bankers win.
Under pressure from regulators, who were trying to ensure that long-term performance was rewarded, the banks agreed to award more in stock, deferring cash payments.
But as The Times reported this week, the Goldman executives who got stock options instead of bonuses last year, at market lows, got a windfall — so it had nothing to do with bank employees’ performance.
“The company gave its general counsel, for example, 104,868 stock options and 14,117 shares in December, when the bank’s stock was around $78,” Louise Story wrote for The Times. “Now the bank’s shares have more than doubled in value, making that stock and option award worth nearly $12 million.”
As one former Goldman banker told Arlidge, the culture there is “completely money-obsessed. ... There’s always room — need — for more. If you are not getting a bigger house or a bigger boat, you’re falling behind. It’s an addiction.”
It’s an addiction that Washington has done little to quell. President Obama has not been strong on the issue, and Timothy Geithner coddles the wanton bankers whenever they freak out that they might not be able to put in their new pools next summer.
The bankers try to dismiss calls for regulation as populist ravings, but the insane inequity of it cannot be dismissed.
No sooner had the Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd announced his plan to overhaul financial regulation Tuesday than compensation experts declared it toothless.
The banks and their lobbyists wheedled concession after concession out of Washington and knocked down proposed inhibition after inhibition. Now the banks are laughing all the way to the bank.
“Saturday Night Live” was tougher on Goldman Sachs than the government, giving the firm flak about commandeering 200 doses of the swine flu vaccine — the same amount as Lenox Hill Hospital got — while so many at-risk Americans wait.
“Can you not read how mad people are at you?” demanded Amy Poehler. “When most people saw the headline ‘Goldman Sachs Gets Swine Flu Vaccine’ they were superhappy until they saw the word ‘vaccine.’ ”
Seth Meyers chimed in: “Also, Centers for Disease Control, you sent the vaccine to Wall Street before schools and hospitals? Really!?! Were you worried the swine flu might spread to the Hamptons and St. Barts? These are the least contagious people in the world. They don’t even touch their own car-door handles.”
And as far as doing God’s work, I think the bankers who took government money and then gave out obscene bonuses are the same self-interested sorts Jesus threw out of the temple.
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WSWS.org… get on their free NO ADS emails news!
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WALL STREET BONUSES RISE BY 40 PERCENT
By Patrick Martin
6 November 2009
The authors of the biggest financial catastrophe in world history—executives and traders at US investment and commercial banks—will see their year-end bonuses rise by an average of 40 percent compared to last year, according to a report issued Wednesday by Johnson Associates, a Wall Street-based compensation consulting firm.
Traders in stocks, bonds and derivatives are likely to significantly exceed even that lofty average, with projected bonuses 60 percent higher than in 2008, the company said. Wall Street is making the bulk of its profits this year from such financial speculation, not from more traditional lending to finance business activities in industry and commerce.
According to a Johnson Associates press release, “The improved trading performance we are seeing at investment and commercial banks this year is translating into significantly higher bonuses for traders.” It noted that results on trading of derivatives, the most volatile and lucrative form of speculation, were “solid.”
Bankers engaged in commercial and retail banking will see bonuses lower than 2008, as will most hedge fund operators and private equity firms, since the financial assets they manage are still well below the peak reached in late 2007. While the Dow-Jones Industrial Average is up 3,500 points from its low of March 2009, it is still some 4,000 points below the 2007 record level of more than 14,000.
In a considerable understatement, the bonus survey said that the banks were “outpacing [the] recovery of [the] broader economy.” In 2008, Wall Street firms awarded more than $20 billion in bonuses in the midst of the greatest financial crash since 1929. This year, according to the published estimate, the bonus pool could reach $28 billion.
The Wall Street Journal, in its article on the survey, reported, “A typical senior fixed-income trader can expect a total pay package of about $930,000 in cash and stock, compared with a package last year of about $695,000.”
The bonuses for executives at the leading investment houses are in seven and eight figures—Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, for instance, made over $50 million last year—while hedge fund operators have raked in as much as $1 billion compensation for a single year of “work.”
Spokesmen for the banks were at pains to justify the vast sums being paid out to the speculators under conditions of rising mass unemployment and wage-cutting for the working people, who are the vast majority and perform all the socially useful labor.
In a speech this week, John Varley, CEO of the biggest British bank, Barclays PLC, declared, “I must of course be sensitive to the views of many stakeholders that bankers are paid too much,” but added, “our shareholders and our customers expect Barclays to field the best people we can.” He concluded, “Our objective is to pay the minimum compensation consistent with competitiveness.”
This argument is hard to swallow after the wrecking operation “the best people” have carried out against the world economy over the past two years. Even in boom years, financial speculators do no useful labor. They create nothing of actual value to the human race, but have become expert in financial manipulations that increase, at least temporarily, the monetary value of the resources entrusted to their management by the capitalist ruling elite.
Just what Wall Street traders actually do for a living was underscored by the announcement Wednesday by J.P. Morgan Securities that it will forfeit $722 million in fees and penalties stemming from the bribing of government officials in Jefferson County, Alabama (Birmingham), to buy derivatives from Morgan and sell county bonds through it.
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged in a lawsuit that two former J.P. Morgan managing directors had funneled $8 million to friends of the county commissioners. Jefferson County is near bankruptcy from $3 billion in losses on the derivatives, mainly interest-rate swaps, while J.P. Morgan was still pressing it for another $647 million in fees on the purchases.
The former president of the county commission, Larry Langford, now mayor of Birmingham, was convicted last week of accepting luxury gifts and cash totaling $235,000 in connection with the scheme. He was automatically removed as mayor upon conviction.
The working-class population of Jefferson County faces a social calamity because of the financial crisis, with cuts in county programs, jobs and benefits. Meanwhile, according to the SEC, J.P. Morgan not only secured the county’s business by paying bribes, it added the bribes to the bill it presented to the county—effectively compelling county residents to pay the cost of the bribing their own elected officials.
As has been many times observed, the real scandal in American capitalism is not what’s illegal, it’s what’s legal. The crude local bribery in Birmingham, Alabama, has bankrupted one county. The vast and more sophisticated financial skullduggery on Wall Street—and in official Washington—is bankrupting an entire society.
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October 15, 2009
Goldman Sachs sets aside £10bn for pay and bonuses
By Holly Williams, Press Association
Investment banking giant Goldman Sachs said today it had set aside a mammoth $16.7bn (£10.3bn) so far this year in pay and bonuses as it revealed a 278 per cent leap in profits.
The group, which employs around 5,500 staff in London, revealed a 46 per cent hike in the compensation and benefits pool for the first nine months of the year.
The bumper rewards news comes after Goldman made net earnings of $3.19bn (£1.96bn) between July and September, up from $845m (£519.8m) in the third quarter of last year.
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latimes.com
WALL STREET
Goldman Sachs profit tops $3 billion on strong trading and less competition
Earnings of $3.2 billion fall shy of results in the second quarter but are more than triple those of a year earlier. The $5.25-a-share profit towers over analysts' $4.18 consensus estimate.
By Walter Hamilton
October 16, 2009
Reporting from New York
Throughout the last year's financial crisis and this summer's roaring recovery in the markets, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has burnished its image as Wall Street's premier firm, and its second straight quarter of blowout earnings kept the shine glowing.
The New York investment bank easily topped analyst forecasts Thursday, thanks to surging securities trading and reduced competition from beleaguered rivals. Third-quarter profit more than tripled to $3.2 billion from $845 million a year earlier. Its $5.25-a-share profit towered over analysts' $4.18 consensus estimate.
"It was just another fantastic quarter for them," said David Easthope, an analyst at Celent, a Boston research and consulting firm. "This quarter really reinforces the opinions that people have about Goldman Sachs."
Goldman's limited exposure to subprime-related assets helped it sidestep the billion-dollar losses that disabled some of its competitors. Its strong financial footing and willingness to take risk helped it seize opportunities as the crisis eased.
But Goldman also has been criticized for notching blockbuster profits and paying out huge bonuses -- especially so soon after repaying the $10 billion in government bailout money it received late last year.
Goldman earmarked $5.4 billion in the third quarter for bonuses and other compensation. It's tucked away $16.7 billion so far this year, a 46% jump from a year ago. That's an average of more than $527,000 for each of Goldman's 31,700 employees.
Through the same period in 2007, its best year ever, Goldman set aside $16.9 billion, or $565,000 per employee, for bonuses and other additional compensation.
As if knowing what a hot-button issue bonuses were, Goldman gave $200 million to its own charitable foundation in the third quarter, twice its charitable contributions in 2007.
The only blemish on Goldman's third-quarter earnings was that the company fell shy of its $3.4-billion profit in the second quarter.
Some areas, such as investment banking, also were comparatively weak.
Goldman shares slipped $3.65, or 2%, to $188.63 as some investors were disappointed that earnings weren't even better. So-called whisper numbers circulating through Wall Street predicted a $6-a-share profit.
"Our second quarter was a record in virtually every single business," said David Viniar, Goldman's chief financial officer. "So [the third quarter] was a fantastic quarter, just not as fantastic as the second quarter."
Several factors are helping Goldman.
Surging financial markets, especially for fixed income and commodities, boosted trading profits. Rivals' continued troubles and reduced appetite for risk sent customers to Goldman, giving it more ability to charge higher fees.
Goldman's minimal exposure to consumer-oriented businesses also let it sidestep some of the hits that have struck commercial banks as consumers struggle in a weak economy.
Overall, its results stood in contrast to those at Citigroup Inc., a Wall Street giant that is still operating with federal bailout funds. Citigroup eked out a third-quarter profit of $101 million only because it set aside less money than in the past to cover future loan losses.
But Citigroup reported a per-share loss of 27 cents because of charges associated with converting preferred shares held by the federal government into common stock. It had $8 billion in credit losses, down slightly from $8.4 billion in the second quarter.
Investors sent shares down 25 cents to $4.75 on Thursday.
Still, Citigroup raised eyebrows by setting aside only $802 million to cover expected future losses, a big drop from its $3.9-billion second-quarter provision and far less than analysts had expected.
That could foreshadow an improving economy, or it could force the company to take larger write-offs in the future.
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ARE YOU BANKING ON REAL REGULATION OF THE BANKERS?
WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW ABOUT OUR ACTOR OBAMA THAT WE DIDN’T KNOW?
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).
BARACK OBAMA HAS COLLECTED NEARLY TWICE AS MUCH MONEY AS JOHN McCAIN
BY DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT
July 1st 2008
Wall Street firms have chipped in more than $9 million to Barack Obama. Zurga/Bloomberg
Wall Street is investing heavily in Barack Obama.
Although the Democratic presidential hopeful has vowed to raise capital gains and corporate taxes, financial industry bigs have contributed almost twice as much to Obama as to GOP rival John McCain, a Daily News analysis of campaign records shows.
"Wall Street wants change and wants a curtailment in spending. It wants someone who focuses on the domestic economy," said Jim Cramer, the boisterous host of CNBC's "Mad Money."
Cramer also does not discount nostalgia for the go-go 1990s, when Bill Clinton led the largest economic expansion in history.
"It wants a Clinton like in 1992, but not a Hillary Clinton," he said. "That's Barack Obama."
For both candidates, Wall Street's investment and banking sectors have become among their portliest cash cows, contributing $9.5 million to Obama and $5.3 million to McCain so far.
It's a haul that is already raising concerns that, as the nation's faltering economy has become issue No. 1, the two candidates may have a hard time playing tough on issues like market regulation or corporate-tax loopholes.
"No matter who wins in November, Wall Street will have a friend in the White House," said Massie Ritsch of the Center for Responsive Politics, which crunched the data for The News.
Wall Street's generosity toward Obama, in particular, would seem to run counter to its self-interests.
In addition to calling for corporate and capital gains tax hikes, Obama has proposed raising income taxes on those earning more than $250,000.
But Wall Street is often motivated by something more than money - winning.
"In general, these are professional prognosticators," said Ritsch. "And they may be putting their money on the person they predict will win, not the candidate they hope will win."
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).
McCain's top five include Wall Street's Merrill Lynch ($230,310) and Citigroup ($219,551).
Obama's Wall Street haul is not the biggest ever. That distinction belongs to President Bush, who as an incumbent in 2004 raised $10,852,696 from Wall Street interests through April that year - about $1 million more than Obama.
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ARE AMAZED AT HOW UTTERLY BRAZEN THESE CORPORATE OWNED POLITICIANS ARE?
GET THIS BOOK!
Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies
by Michelle Malkin
Editorial Reviews
In her shocking new book, Malkin digs deep into the records of President Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and abuses of power throughout his administration.
From the Inside Flap
The era of hope and change is dead....and it only took six months in office to kill it.
Never has an administration taken office with more inflated expectations of turning Washington around. Never have a media-anointed American Idol and his entourage fallen so fast and hard. In her latest investigative tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin delivers a powerful, damning, and comprehensive indictment of the culture of corruption that surrounds Team Obama's brazen tax evaders, Wall Street cronies, petty crooks, slum lords, and business-as-usual influence peddlers. In Culture of Corruption, Malkin reveals:
* Why nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing the corporate world and influence-peddling industries from which they and their relatives have benefited mightily
* What secrets the ethics-deficient members of Obama's cabinet--including Hillary Clinton--are trying to hide
* Why the Obama White House has more power-hungry, unaccountable "czars" than any other administration
* How Team Obama's first one hundred days of appointments became a litany of embarrassments as would-be appointee after would-be appointee was exposed as a tax cheat or had to withdraw for other reasons
* How Obama's old ACORN and union cronies have squandered millions of taxpayer dollars and dues money to enrich themselves and expand their power
* How Obama's Wall Street money men and corporate lobbyists are ruining the economy and helping their friends In Culture of Corruption, Michelle Malkin lays bare the Obama administration's seamy underside that the liberal media would rather keep hidden.
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing (July 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596981091
• ISBN-13: 978-1596981096
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NO PRESIDENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY HAS HAD AN ADMINISTRATION MORE INFESTED WITH LA RAZA PARTY MEMBERS AND ADVOCATES FOR OPEN BORDERS, AMNESTY, NO E-VERIFY, AND ILLEGALS IN OUR JOBS, THAN BARACK OBAMA!
Go to http://www.MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com and read articles and comments from other Americans on what they’ve witnessed in their communities around the country. While most of the population of California is now ILLEGAL, the problems, costs, assault to our culture by Mexico is EVERYWHERE. copy and pass it to your friends.
*
THE OBAMA – GOLDMAN SACHS PARTNERSHIP AGAINST AMERICA
WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW ABOUT OUR ACTOR OBAMA THAT WE DIDN’T KNOW?
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).
*
Virtuous Bankers? Really!?!
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
The Great Vampire Squid has gotten religion.
In an interview with The Sunday Times of London, the cocky chief of Goldman Sachs said he understands that a lot of people are “mad and bent out of shape” at blood-sucking banks.
“I know I could slit my wrists and people would cheer,” Lloyd Blankfein, the C.E.O., told the reporter John Arlidge.
But the little people who are boiling simply don’t understand. And Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, who unforgettably labeled Goldman “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” doesn’t understand.
Banks, Blankfein explained, are really serving the greater good.
“We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital,” he said. “Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle. We have a social purpose.”
When Arlidge asked whether it’s possible to make too much money, whether Goldman will ignore the people howling at the moon with rage and go on raking it in, getting richer than God, Blankfein grinned impishly and said he was “doing God’s work.”
Whether he knows it, he’s referring back to The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism — except, of course, the Calvinists would have been outraged by the banks’ vicious — not virtuous — cycle of greed and concupiscence.
Blankfein’s trickle-down catechism isn’t working. Now we have two economies. We have recovering banks while we have 10-plus percent unemployment and 17.5 percent underemployment. The gross thing about the Wall Street of the last decade is how much its success was not shared with society.
Goldmine Sachs, as it’s known, is out for Goldmine Sachs.
As many Americans continue to struggle, Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, banks that took government bailout money after throwing the entire world into crisis, have said they will dish out $30 billion in bonuses — up 60 percent from last year.
The saying used to be, whatever happens, the lawyers win. Now, it’s whatever happens, the bankers win.
Under pressure from regulators, who were trying to ensure that long-term performance was rewarded, the banks agreed to award more in stock, deferring cash payments.
But as The Times reported this week, the Goldman executives who got stock options instead of bonuses last year, at market lows, got a windfall — so it had nothing to do with bank employees’ performance.
“The company gave its general counsel, for example, 104,868 stock options and 14,117 shares in December, when the bank’s stock was around $78,” Louise Story wrote for The Times. “Now the bank’s shares have more than doubled in value, making that stock and option award worth nearly $12 million.”
As one former Goldman banker told Arlidge, the culture there is “completely money-obsessed. ... There’s always room — need — for more. If you are not getting a bigger house or a bigger boat, you’re falling behind. It’s an addiction.”
It’s an addiction that Washington has done little to quell. President Obama has not been strong on the issue, and Timothy Geithner coddles the wanton bankers whenever they freak out that they might not be able to put in their new pools next summer.
The bankers try to dismiss calls for regulation as populist ravings, but the insane inequity of it cannot be dismissed.
No sooner had the Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd announced his plan to overhaul financial regulation Tuesday than compensation experts declared it toothless.
The banks and their lobbyists wheedled concession after concession out of Washington and knocked down proposed inhibition after inhibition. Now the banks are laughing all the way to the bank.
“Saturday Night Live” was tougher on Goldman Sachs than the government, giving the firm flak about commandeering 200 doses of the swine flu vaccine — the same amount as Lenox Hill Hospital got — while so many at-risk Americans wait.
“Can you not read how mad people are at you?” demanded Amy Poehler. “When most people saw the headline ‘Goldman Sachs Gets Swine Flu Vaccine’ they were superhappy until they saw the word ‘vaccine.’ ”
Seth Meyers chimed in: “Also, Centers for Disease Control, you sent the vaccine to Wall Street before schools and hospitals? Really!?! Were you worried the swine flu might spread to the Hamptons and St. Barts? These are the least contagious people in the world. They don’t even touch their own car-door handles.”
And as far as doing God’s work, I think the bankers who took government money and then gave out obscene bonuses are the same self-interested sorts Jesus threw out of the temple.
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WSWS.org… get on their free NO ADS emails news!
*
WALL STREET BONUSES RISE BY 40 PERCENT
By Patrick Martin
6 November 2009
The authors of the biggest financial catastrophe in world history—executives and traders at US investment and commercial banks—will see their year-end bonuses rise by an average of 40 percent compared to last year, according to a report issued Wednesday by Johnson Associates, a Wall Street-based compensation consulting firm.
Traders in stocks, bonds and derivatives are likely to significantly exceed even that lofty average, with projected bonuses 60 percent higher than in 2008, the company said. Wall Street is making the bulk of its profits this year from such financial speculation, not from more traditional lending to finance business activities in industry and commerce.
According to a Johnson Associates press release, “The improved trading performance we are seeing at investment and commercial banks this year is translating into significantly higher bonuses for traders.” It noted that results on trading of derivatives, the most volatile and lucrative form of speculation, were “solid.”
Bankers engaged in commercial and retail banking will see bonuses lower than 2008, as will most hedge fund operators and private equity firms, since the financial assets they manage are still well below the peak reached in late 2007. While the Dow-Jones Industrial Average is up 3,500 points from its low of March 2009, it is still some 4,000 points below the 2007 record level of more than 14,000.
In a considerable understatement, the bonus survey said that the banks were “outpacing [the] recovery of [the] broader economy.” In 2008, Wall Street firms awarded more than $20 billion in bonuses in the midst of the greatest financial crash since 1929. This year, according to the published estimate, the bonus pool could reach $28 billion.
The Wall Street Journal, in its article on the survey, reported, “A typical senior fixed-income trader can expect a total pay package of about $930,000 in cash and stock, compared with a package last year of about $695,000.”
The bonuses for executives at the leading investment houses are in seven and eight figures—Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, for instance, made over $50 million last year—while hedge fund operators have raked in as much as $1 billion compensation for a single year of “work.”
Spokesmen for the banks were at pains to justify the vast sums being paid out to the speculators under conditions of rising mass unemployment and wage-cutting for the working people, who are the vast majority and perform all the socially useful labor.
In a speech this week, John Varley, CEO of the biggest British bank, Barclays PLC, declared, “I must of course be sensitive to the views of many stakeholders that bankers are paid too much,” but added, “our shareholders and our customers expect Barclays to field the best people we can.” He concluded, “Our objective is to pay the minimum compensation consistent with competitiveness.”
This argument is hard to swallow after the wrecking operation “the best people” have carried out against the world economy over the past two years. Even in boom years, financial speculators do no useful labor. They create nothing of actual value to the human race, but have become expert in financial manipulations that increase, at least temporarily, the monetary value of the resources entrusted to their management by the capitalist ruling elite.
Just what Wall Street traders actually do for a living was underscored by the announcement Wednesday by J.P. Morgan Securities that it will forfeit $722 million in fees and penalties stemming from the bribing of government officials in Jefferson County, Alabama (Birmingham), to buy derivatives from Morgan and sell county bonds through it.
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged in a lawsuit that two former J.P. Morgan managing directors had funneled $8 million to friends of the county commissioners. Jefferson County is near bankruptcy from $3 billion in losses on the derivatives, mainly interest-rate swaps, while J.P. Morgan was still pressing it for another $647 million in fees on the purchases.
The former president of the county commission, Larry Langford, now mayor of Birmingham, was convicted last week of accepting luxury gifts and cash totaling $235,000 in connection with the scheme. He was automatically removed as mayor upon conviction.
The working-class population of Jefferson County faces a social calamity because of the financial crisis, with cuts in county programs, jobs and benefits. Meanwhile, according to the SEC, J.P. Morgan not only secured the county’s business by paying bribes, it added the bribes to the bill it presented to the county—effectively compelling county residents to pay the cost of the bribing their own elected officials.
As has been many times observed, the real scandal in American capitalism is not what’s illegal, it’s what’s legal. The crude local bribery in Birmingham, Alabama, has bankrupted one county. The vast and more sophisticated financial skullduggery on Wall Street—and in official Washington—is bankrupting an entire society.
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October 15, 2009
Goldman Sachs sets aside £10bn for pay and bonuses
By Holly Williams, Press Association
Investment banking giant Goldman Sachs said today it had set aside a mammoth $16.7bn (£10.3bn) so far this year in pay and bonuses as it revealed a 278 per cent leap in profits.
The group, which employs around 5,500 staff in London, revealed a 46 per cent hike in the compensation and benefits pool for the first nine months of the year.
The bumper rewards news comes after Goldman made net earnings of $3.19bn (£1.96bn) between July and September, up from $845m (£519.8m) in the third quarter of last year.
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latimes.com
WALL STREET
Goldman Sachs profit tops $3 billion on strong trading and less competition
Earnings of $3.2 billion fall shy of results in the second quarter but are more than triple those of a year earlier. The $5.25-a-share profit towers over analysts' $4.18 consensus estimate.
By Walter Hamilton
October 16, 2009
Reporting from New York
Throughout the last year's financial crisis and this summer's roaring recovery in the markets, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has burnished its image as Wall Street's premier firm, and its second straight quarter of blowout earnings kept the shine glowing.
The New York investment bank easily topped analyst forecasts Thursday, thanks to surging securities trading and reduced competition from beleaguered rivals. Third-quarter profit more than tripled to $3.2 billion from $845 million a year earlier. Its $5.25-a-share profit towered over analysts' $4.18 consensus estimate.
"It was just another fantastic quarter for them," said David Easthope, an analyst at Celent, a Boston research and consulting firm. "This quarter really reinforces the opinions that people have about Goldman Sachs."
Goldman's limited exposure to subprime-related assets helped it sidestep the billion-dollar losses that disabled some of its competitors. Its strong financial footing and willingness to take risk helped it seize opportunities as the crisis eased.
But Goldman also has been criticized for notching blockbuster profits and paying out huge bonuses -- especially so soon after repaying the $10 billion in government bailout money it received late last year.
Goldman earmarked $5.4 billion in the third quarter for bonuses and other compensation. It's tucked away $16.7 billion so far this year, a 46% jump from a year ago. That's an average of more than $527,000 for each of Goldman's 31,700 employees.
Through the same period in 2007, its best year ever, Goldman set aside $16.9 billion, or $565,000 per employee, for bonuses and other additional compensation.
As if knowing what a hot-button issue bonuses were, Goldman gave $200 million to its own charitable foundation in the third quarter, twice its charitable contributions in 2007.
The only blemish on Goldman's third-quarter earnings was that the company fell shy of its $3.4-billion profit in the second quarter.
Some areas, such as investment banking, also were comparatively weak.
Goldman shares slipped $3.65, or 2%, to $188.63 as some investors were disappointed that earnings weren't even better. So-called whisper numbers circulating through Wall Street predicted a $6-a-share profit.
"Our second quarter was a record in virtually every single business," said David Viniar, Goldman's chief financial officer. "So [the third quarter] was a fantastic quarter, just not as fantastic as the second quarter."
Several factors are helping Goldman.
Surging financial markets, especially for fixed income and commodities, boosted trading profits. Rivals' continued troubles and reduced appetite for risk sent customers to Goldman, giving it more ability to charge higher fees.
Goldman's minimal exposure to consumer-oriented businesses also let it sidestep some of the hits that have struck commercial banks as consumers struggle in a weak economy.
Overall, its results stood in contrast to those at Citigroup Inc., a Wall Street giant that is still operating with federal bailout funds. Citigroup eked out a third-quarter profit of $101 million only because it set aside less money than in the past to cover future loan losses.
But Citigroup reported a per-share loss of 27 cents because of charges associated with converting preferred shares held by the federal government into common stock. It had $8 billion in credit losses, down slightly from $8.4 billion in the second quarter.
Investors sent shares down 25 cents to $4.75 on Thursday.
Still, Citigroup raised eyebrows by setting aside only $802 million to cover expected future losses, a big drop from its $3.9-billion second-quarter provision and far less than analysts had expected.
That could foreshadow an improving economy, or it could force the company to take larger write-offs in the future.
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ARE YOU BANKING ON REAL REGULATION OF THE BANKERS?
WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW ABOUT OUR ACTOR OBAMA THAT WE DIDN’T KNOW?
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).
BARACK OBAMA HAS COLLECTED NEARLY TWICE AS MUCH MONEY AS JOHN McCAIN
BY DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT
July 1st 2008
Wall Street firms have chipped in more than $9 million to Barack Obama. Zurga/Bloomberg
Wall Street is investing heavily in Barack Obama.
Although the Democratic presidential hopeful has vowed to raise capital gains and corporate taxes, financial industry bigs have contributed almost twice as much to Obama as to GOP rival John McCain, a Daily News analysis of campaign records shows.
"Wall Street wants change and wants a curtailment in spending. It wants someone who focuses on the domestic economy," said Jim Cramer, the boisterous host of CNBC's "Mad Money."
Cramer also does not discount nostalgia for the go-go 1990s, when Bill Clinton led the largest economic expansion in history.
"It wants a Clinton like in 1992, but not a Hillary Clinton," he said. "That's Barack Obama."
For both candidates, Wall Street's investment and banking sectors have become among their portliest cash cows, contributing $9.5 million to Obama and $5.3 million to McCain so far.
It's a haul that is already raising concerns that, as the nation's faltering economy has become issue No. 1, the two candidates may have a hard time playing tough on issues like market regulation or corporate-tax loopholes.
"No matter who wins in November, Wall Street will have a friend in the White House," said Massie Ritsch of the Center for Responsive Politics, which crunched the data for The News.
Wall Street's generosity toward Obama, in particular, would seem to run counter to its self-interests.
In addition to calling for corporate and capital gains tax hikes, Obama has proposed raising income taxes on those earning more than $250,000.
But Wall Street is often motivated by something more than money - winning.
"In general, these are professional prognosticators," said Ritsch. "And they may be putting their money on the person they predict will win, not the candidate they hope will win."
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).
McCain's top five include Wall Street's Merrill Lynch ($230,310) and Citigroup ($219,551).
Obama's Wall Street haul is not the biggest ever. That distinction belongs to President Bush, who as an incumbent in 2004 raised $10,852,696 from Wall Street interests through April that year - about $1 million more than Obama.
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ARE AMAZED AT HOW UTTERLY BRAZEN THESE CORPORATE OWNED POLITICIANS ARE?
GET THIS BOOK!
Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies
by Michelle Malkin
Editorial Reviews
In her shocking new book, Malkin digs deep into the records of President Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and abuses of power throughout his administration.
From the Inside Flap
The era of hope and change is dead....and it only took six months in office to kill it.
Never has an administration taken office with more inflated expectations of turning Washington around. Never have a media-anointed American Idol and his entourage fallen so fast and hard. In her latest investigative tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin delivers a powerful, damning, and comprehensive indictment of the culture of corruption that surrounds Team Obama's brazen tax evaders, Wall Street cronies, petty crooks, slum lords, and business-as-usual influence peddlers. In Culture of Corruption, Malkin reveals:
* Why nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing the corporate world and influence-peddling industries from which they and their relatives have benefited mightily
* What secrets the ethics-deficient members of Obama's cabinet--including Hillary Clinton--are trying to hide
* Why the Obama White House has more power-hungry, unaccountable "czars" than any other administration
* How Team Obama's first one hundred days of appointments became a litany of embarrassments as would-be appointee after would-be appointee was exposed as a tax cheat or had to withdraw for other reasons
* How Obama's old ACORN and union cronies have squandered millions of taxpayer dollars and dues money to enrich themselves and expand their power
* How Obama's Wall Street money men and corporate lobbyists are ruining the economy and helping their friends In Culture of Corruption, Michelle Malkin lays bare the Obama administration's seamy underside that the liberal media would rather keep hidden.
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing (July 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596981091
• ISBN-13: 978-1596981096
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