This is one of the reasons why we have financial disasters.
Because we have an utterly corrupt corporate press that is too busy defending the Too Big To Fail banks when they are supposed to be informing and protecting their viewers.
Yesterday a Goldman Sachs employee exposed his former employer in a powerful resignation letter published in an op-ed at the NewYorkTimes. Immediately, the Goldman Sachs smear machine began. What has taken place among the American Financial Press in the last 24 hours has been an utter disgrace. The American financial press got caught with their pants down, and their decision to echo Goldman's attack against whistleblower Greg Smith is the perfect example of why our financial news media is a big part of the reason we have these economic disasters in the first place. To serve and protect the big financial players, that is the motto of the financial press.
Frankly, everyone in the financial press who participated in this extended smear campaign on behalf of Goldman Sachs should be laughed out of the business of journalism. This isn't journalism, this is stenography on behalf of Goldman Sachs.
You see, when Greg Smith openly stated that Goldman Sachs has no shame and couldn't give a second of thought to what was good for their clients, he could have said the same thing about the American corporate media. Our media is supposed to inform consumers, and yet here is Goldman Sachs, the biggest bank ever, robbing their clients blind left and right, and doing so blatantly for the past few years, and yet those exalted financial journalists have been totally asleep and silent on that matter. They aren't doing their jobs. If they were doing their jobs then every American would know the truth, that Goldman Sachs and the other Too Big To Fail banks have made an enormous fortune off of taking huge risks and then shifting that risk onto taxpayers and their unsuspecting clients when it is ready to blow up in their face. Socialism for Goldman Sachs, all of the risk and consequences for you. This isn't a secret, much more informed observers than I like Ron Suskind and others have been saying this for years, but the Pro-Goldman Sachs wing of the financial press has been asleep, and thus complicit, as millions upon millions of Americans have suffered as the banks profit from their risks and everyone else deals with the consequences. Bank of America just got out of a $25 billion dollar fraud settlement case, one that was a slap on the wrist in the eyes of many, including myself, and where is the financial press? Silent, drunk, asleep, useless, and then here comes along Greg Smith stating in an almost disappointed tone saying "Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them.", and what does the financial press do at what seems to be Goldman Sachs direction? They smear him.
Pathetic . . .
I didn't know "God's Work" was screwing over your clients. I though that was Mammon.
Over the past 24 hours, ThinkProgress.org has amassed several examples of the corporate financial press echoing the Goldman Sachs talking points on Greg Davis, in several instances the most childish manner possible, just go below the orange squiggle of pitchforks and outrage for more . . .
Who wants to play "Let's pretend the unethical cesspool isn't the problem!"
– The Wall Street Journal reported that “people familiar with the matter” said that Smith is just miffed that his bonus was small: “The circumstances of Mr. Smith’s departure aren’t entirely clear. When Goldman doled out annual bonuses earlier this year, Mr. Smith’s small payment became a point of friction, according to people familiar with the matter.”
– Forbes’ Nathan Vardi wrote that Smith is just “having a midlife crisis“: “Smith is not the first person who wants to tell his former bosses to shove it. He is also not a whistleblower.”
The financial prognosticators at CNBC decided to mock Smith, saying that he would go form a media firm with Rolling Stone writer and staunch Goldman critic Matt Taibbi and the characters from Sesame Street. CNBC also compared Smith to Tom Cruise’s character in Jerry Maguire, airing the clip of that film when Cruise asks “who’s coming with me?” repeatedly, with no one actually going with him.
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thinkprogress.org
Did any of these hacks report what Smith actually said, like this . . .
"It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off."
nytimes.com
Does our press report THAT? No, instead they report what "people familiar with the story" said as the Wall Street Journal did or they behave like snotty 15 year old popular girls in high school the way CNBC chose to portray this event, but when it comes to taking something simple and flipping it on it's head so you can attack all of your enemies at once while playing the victim, Fox News truly is Number One in the business . . .
GASPARINO: I don’t think we can underplay the political significance here. This is different than the New York Times business staff going out and doing an investigate report on what this guy said, you know, using it to develop anecdotes…This is The New York Times, as an institution, this is an op-ed, raising its gun and pointing it at Goldman Sachs. And there’s a political issue here, I believe, many people believe on Wall Street, that it’s playing up to the Occupy Wall Street people, the President’s class warfare rhetoric. This is a political hit job, in many ways…You have to ask what The New York Times’ motives are. This is a political hit job…And remember, what has the New York Times been on a roll about? Occupy Wall Street. Class warfare.
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thinkprogress.org
Yes, it's all actually an Obama conspiracy theory according to Fox, with the goal of promoting class warfare and selling more copies of the New York Times to Occupy Wall Street protesters, because we all know how much faith Occupiers put into the New York Times.
Watching the financial press fall over itself to attack Greg Smith and totally paper over why he chose to leave Goldman Sachs this way is a massive disservice not only to both their readers and viewers, but to America itself. To maintain real freedom we must have an informed citizenry, but most of our press is not free, it has fallen under corporate capture, and it seeks primarily to defend its' big business patrons and to serve their needs, not the primary need to inform the reader. The only way Goldman Sachs and these corrupt financial firms can survive is if the press does their utmost to make sure the average American is as ignorant as possible to the obvious crimes that are taking place, whether they are the intentionally shitty deals that Goldman Sachs sells or the ongoing foreclosure fraud scandal that Bank of America has been neck deep in. When Greg Smith blew the lid off of Goldman Sachs he also blew the lid off of our corrupt, silent and complicit corporate press, who should have been warning us that Goldman, BoA and the other Too Big To Fail banks have been rigging this game from the very start.
The last 24 hours of water carrying on behalf of Goldman Sachs and the rest of the corrupt culture on Wall Street that our financial press has engaged in is damning proof of the fact that these media outlets are just as corrupt as Goldman Sachs itself. At the bottom of this is the simple fact that the Banksters couldn't get away with it without the help of the corporate media, and this last sad episode is just more proof that the corporate financial press is a total joke and just another sock puppet for the banksters.
And that is the truth . . .
In closing, Greg Smith had this to say to the folks he was leaving at Goldman Sachs . . . .
I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
With all due respect to Mr. Smith, I think we are way past the point where we should wait for Goldman Sachs to come to their senses. The good news is, the pitchfork and torches futures markets are looking surprisingly strong this quarter . . .
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