Friday, October 16, 2009

Former Bank Regulator, William Black, on Democracy Now Yesterday

This is an important interview, highly recommended!


Meanwhile, it has been announced that President Obama has hired Adam Storch, one of the key people in siphoning public funds into Goldman-Sachs last year, helping to make G-S even bigger, so that they'll once again be able to argue that they're "too big to fail."

Storch, who is 29, will be in charge of the Security and Exchanges Enforcement Division.


Oh, boy! Here's some more information, via Glenn Greenwald:

This is all consistent with the observation of Desmond Lachman -- previously chief emerging market strategist at Salomon Smith Barney and IMF deputy director -- regarding "Goldman Sachs's seeming lock on high-level U.S. Treasury jobs," which he cited as but one of the many "parallels between U.S. policymaking and what we see in emerging markets."


In October of last year, a Goldman Sachs Vice President, Neel Kashkari, was named by former Goldman CEO and then-Treasury Secretary Hank Pauslon to oversee the$700 billion TARP bailout. In January of this year, Tim Geithner hired a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, Mark Patterson, to be his top aide and Chief of Staff. In March, President Obama nominated Goldman Sachs executive Gary Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates futures markets, even though (or "because") Gensler confessed to lax regulation during the Clinton administration over the very derivative instruments that caused the financial crisis. In April, Goldman hired as its top lobbyist Michael Paese, the top aide to Rep. Barney Frank on the House Financial Services Committee which Frank chairs.


According to ABC News in October, 2008, Goldman "spent more than $43 million dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions to cultivate friends and buy influence in Washington, D.C. since 1989" and their "bankers have been the country's top political campaign contributors this year." "They are almost in a class by themselves," said Sheila Krumholz, the executive director for the Center for Responsive Politics. As Michael Moore has been pointing out, Goldman was the number one source of funding for the Obama 2008 presidential campaign. The bailout of AIG -- which resulted in massive federal government monies to Goldman -- was engineered at a meeting between Paulson, Geithner and Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Last year, Goldman paid top Obama economics adviser Larry Summers $135,000 for a one-day visit to Goldman.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Still liking that "Change"?

They ALL need to go.

Anonymous said...

Before anyone gets too worked up, the guy complaining is an American Enterprise 'scholar', and was a policy drone from Solamon Smith Barney and the International Monetary Fund, neither of which organizations have a clean slate in the way of misguided and or just plain blatantly corrupt monetary policies and action.

The employer of the complainer, that repugnant think tank, the American Enterprise Institute is most often without credibility or scruples, being as though they're paid to peddle, and do peddle Republican Party failure policy.

Gee, a guy who is paid by the Republican machine is complaining about Obama.

Who'd a thunk it?

You're being punked, wake the hell up.

Anonymous said...

The whole country is being punked by the self serving congress- both parties being equally guilty.

If you can't see that, you have not been to DC lately.

Anonymous said...

There'll be no "Hope And Change" until we kick out all the crooks of both parties. The Tea Party people are realizing that...when are the Democrat's supporters going to wake up as well ? It's disgusting that crooks like Pelosi, Reid, Rangel, Dodd and Murtha are still in positions of power.

Anonymous said...

There is absolutely no way Pelosi Reid Dodd Murtha et al can be crooks because they are not Republicans.

Furthermore, Democrats are all perfect (obviously) because they are not Bush - and if you don't believe me you are wrong.