Goldman Sachs, also knows as Government Sachs, also known as Goldie Mac...has been taking hits from all sides after announcing incredible profits yesterday. There are now enough people that are taking aim that I can fill a diary with a small sample of the various RANTS...from a selection that runs from Glen Beck to the Wall Street Journal to... well just take a look.
This is actually getting to be fun stuff ... and I am sure glad I do not work for Goldman Sachs ... and well, it couldn't happen to a more deserving corporation.
Rant 1. Glenn Beck...Yes Glen Beck takes on Goldman Sachs with a blackboard talk for the hall of fame of blackboard talks.
Rant 2. Max Kaiser, financial analyst takes no prisoners. In a very restrained (hah!) performance (very entertaining) he says "Goldman Sachs are SCUM".
Rant 3. Matt Talibi (Rants a, b, and c)
a) Inside The Great American Bubble Machine
b) As interviewed on BNN (Canada's business news network - very different from CNBC)...LINK
c) see Bababing's diary - Matt Taibbi Pulls the Rug Out on Goldman Sachs - AGAIN...
Rant 4. Zero Hedge
Probably THE top "markets" blog out there right now. They have aggressively been charting the ins and outs of Goldman Sachs and how they "play" with the markets (manipulate?).
They currently have a nice GS spiderweb out diagram up a la Beck.
Rant 5. Goldman is now also becoming the target of "jokes"
Goldman Sachs in Talks to Acquire Treasury Department
Sister Entities to Share Employees, Money
In what some on Wall Street are calling the biggest blockbuster deal in the history of the financial sector, Goldman Sachs confirmed today that it was in talks to acquire the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
According to Goldman spokesperson Jonathan Hestron, the merger between Goldman and the Treasury Department is "a good fit" because "they're in the business of printing money and so are we."
The Goldman spokesman said that the merger would create efficiencies for both entities: "We already have so many employees and so much money flowing back and forth, this would just streamline things."
Mr. Hestron said the only challenge facing Goldman in completing the merger "is trying to figure out which parts of the Treasury Dept. we don't already own."
Goldman recently celebrated record earnings by roasting a suckling pig over a bonfire of hundred-dollar bills.
Rant 6: CNBC, Yes CNBC. Goldman is "special"
Link Here - Unfortunately having trouble with the embed.
Rant 7. From the Wall Street Journal .. yes even from them.
Goldman will surely deny that its risk-taking is subsidized by the taxpayer -- but then so did Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, right up to the bitter end. An implicit government guarantee is only free until it's not, and when the bill comes due it tends to be huge. So for the moment, Goldman Sachs -- or should we say Goldie Mac? -- enjoys the best of both worlds: outsize profits for its traders and shareholders and a taxpayer backstop should anything go wrong.
We like profits as much as the next capitalist. But when those profits are supported by government guarantees or insured deposits, taxpayers have a special interest in how the companies conduct their business. Ideally we would shed those implicit guarantees altogether, along with the very notion of too big to fail. But that is all but impossible now and for the foreseeable future. Even if the Obama Administration and Fed were to declare with one voice that banks such as Goldman were on their own, no one would believe it.
My Rant: All I can say is that it is about time that Goldman got some scrutiny. The fact that they sold derivative securities out one end of the company and then turned around and shorted them out the other end is pure evil (they knew they were selling shit, but they sold it anyway and decided to in effects ell it twice knowing they could buy it back later for pennies on the dollar, after it blew up).
Of course the best one of late is Goldman having a former software programmer arrested for theft of company secrets ... then the DA saying that if the program got into the wrong hands it could be used to manipulate the market....implying that Goldman had a software program that could be used to manipulate markets. Who'd have thunk it?
There are of course many more anti-Goldman rants out there (like a few diaries here as well). The ones I have listed all come from the past few days in what is starting to look like a tidal way, and when even Glen Beck jumps on board I start feeling pretty queasy.
To Zero Hedge - KUDOS