"goldman sachs welfare kings driving ferraris"

Some really interesting reads. This can only be one thing imo - very US dollar negative and of course gold positive.

"Goldman Sachs Welfare Kings driving Ferrari's

Tim McCown
Philadelphia Progressive Examiner

I am rapidly losing my patience with Wall Street's sense of entitlement to rob us blind and our governments complicity in the theft. A New York Times editorial today began, "Unemployment is rising, foreclosures are surging and lending is still restrained." What the Times concluded is that things are much worse than people thought.

Some experts believe the real unemployment rate, counting those working part time who want full time work and can't find it and those who have stopped looking because they can't find work may be approaching 20%. The Times concludes that if the Obama Administration is serious about helping home owners in foreclosure than we need to revisit allowing bankruptcy judges to modify loans otherwise banks have an incentive to seek foreclosure because that is more profitable to them.

One of the reasons is that foreclosures allow banks to postpone taking a loss until the process is complete. This process that can take over one year.

Then there is Goldman Sachs, which represents the arrogance and sense of absolute entitlement that only Marie Antoinette could fathom. With this economic news they announced record profits and a willingness to pay out 18 billion to employee's in compensation. The problem is that as Les Leopold shows on Huffington Post in an article entitled Happy Days are here again ( Here = Wall Street ), it is you and I who will actually be forking out the 18 billion or $600,000.00 per employee.

Mr Leopold notes, " Firms like Goldman's created new fantasy finance products that eventually crashed the whole world's economy." To cover this they took out what amounts to insurance policies from AIG but because insurance has legal aspects and regulation, they called these insurance policies credit default swaps which are, of course, not regulated.

AIG had these with almost all of the Big Banks but found themselves unable to cover all the policies when things crashed. AIG was about to go down and take the world's financial industry with it. To avoid reliving the 1930's or worse we bailed out all of Wall Street.

With your and my money they paid Goldman's 100 cents on the dollar for toxic assets worth maybe 30 cents. That is one way Goldman's reaped the largess of our Federal Governments millionaire Welfare system."

Full article at

http://www.examiner.com/x-3629-Philadelphia-Progressive-Examiner~y2009m7d15-Goldman-Sachs-Welfare-Kings-driving-Ferraris

The Huffington Post article by Les Leopold, an excellent read, commences:

"I'm starting to wonder about the mental health of our nation when I read stuff like, "Analysts estimate that the bank will set aside enough money to pay a total of $18 billion in compensation and benefits this year to its 28,000 employees, or more than $600,000 an employee. Top producers stand to earn millions." (Update from Reuters: "That puts the average Goldman employee on pace to earn more than $900,000 this year. Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, senior officers and star traders will likely receive tens of millions of dollars."

Are we out of our minds? How can we sit by and let this happen?

Let's go over what I thought was reality. For the last decade or so, firms like Goldman Sachs created new fantasy finance products that eventually crashed the entire world economy. These products turned out to be a complicated series of bets, based on air. To cover their bets and their butts, many of the largest firms took out insurance policies from AIG. (They called them credit default swaps instead of insurance because insurance is regulated by law and the swaps are not.) By September 2008, just 10 months ago, AIG realized it could not pay off its bets. It was about to go under and pull down with it just about every major bank and investment house in the world, including Goldman Sachs which was owed nearly $13 billion by AIG. (See The Looting of America for more of the gruesome details.)

To prevent the world from sliding into Great Depression II, we bailed out AIG and virtually all of Wall Street. Nomi Prins, the expert author and a former Goldman Sachs managing director, estimates that the tax payer has provided Wall Street with approximately $13.1 trillion dollars in TARP funds, cheap loans and toxic asset guarantees.

As I see reality, Wall Street -- all of it -- is on the dole. Without our largess, every major firm would have gone into bankruptcy before Obama had taken office."

Full article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/les-leopold/happy-days-are-here-again_b_231455.html