Lloyd Blankfein like every common criminal, when caught was making a case for giving him, Goldman, Morgan Chase, AIG, and Bank Of America more Wall Street second chances.
While being interviewed by Charlie Rose last night Lloyd’s lips moved but they didn’t utter anything close to “Mea culpa,” a Latin phrase which translates into English as “my fault.”
For the very few people left in America who haven’t checked into this story – the short version is; a slick hedge fund owner named John Paulson cobbled together a bunch of bad real estate loans. He named them derivatives, got a ratings agency to pass them off as okay, sold the mess to Goldman Sachs for cheap.
Then John bet the mess would go under, mortgages not be paid by borrowers.
Where it gets really dirty is Goldman, knowing they were bad investments, shorted them, bet they’d decline in value, and at the same time sold them to its investment clients for top dollar.
Any who missed last nights disgusting display of narcissism – king Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein who lead that parade of deceptive crime, might care to know the head disaster-maker of the American economy considers himself a victim.
But sadly it’s not at all what he or his gang should do. The initial intent of the stock market was to a) raise capital for industry and b) industry to create products, hiring citizens, thus creating jobs.
Since the day has come where these charlatans are simply shuffling cash around without financing any industry, just shoving billions back and forth stuffing their own pockets with all they can hold, it’s time to break them up, even into a Utility if necessary where windfall profits are capped.
When that possibility arose in the Rose conversation, it was the first sign of anything getting Lloyd’s real attention among his public appearances lately and I’ve seen them all.
At mention of the SEC, Blackfein finally conceded, “I guess we should and will be more transparent.”
“Or we won’t survive,” he added.
Let us hope not. Our other major danger lies with the people we have been electing being allowed to collect, even demand huge sums of cash from private interest lobbyists. Politicos over the years have become known to have grown fat with bribe money as they live off our taxes, Republicans, and equally, Democrats.
They feed off our life’s works, pigs at a tax dollar filled trough. Lesser forms of life then blood suckers. Unlike Market-maker or Politician, a leech lets go when it’s full.
