Goldman Sachs is
expected to report record profits this week.
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi calls the giant
investment bank a "vampire squid," and notes how many
Goldman alumni were involved in last year's financial
bailout, which benefitted the firm.
Taibbi concludes:
It's early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young
politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment
bank called Goldman Sachs - its employees paid some $981,000 to
his campaign - sits in the White House. Having seamlessly
navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is
once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a
new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni
occupying key government jobs.
Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are
Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary
Gensler, both former Goldmanites. . . . And instead of credit
derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game
in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits - a booming
trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if
the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last
election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new
commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called
cap-and-trade.
Hope and Change!
