"This isn't just a matter of a few seedy guys stealing a few bucks. This is America: Corporate stealing is practically the national pastime, and Goldman Sachs is far from the only company to get away with doing it. But the prominence of this bank and the high-profile nature of its confrontation with a powerful Senate committee makes this a political story as well. If the Justice Department fails to give the American people a chance to judge this case — if Goldman skates without so much as a trial — it will confirm once and for all the embarrassing truth: that the law in America is subjective, and crime is defined not by what you did, but by who you are."
MAY 11, 2011 9:30 AM ET
They weren't murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.
Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn't leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.
This article appears in the May 26, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available now on newsstands and will appear in the online archive May 13.
The great and powerful Oz of Wall Street was not the only target of Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse, the 650-page report just released by the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan, alongside Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Their unusually scathing bipartisan report also includes case studies of Washington Mutual and Deutsche Bank, providing a panoramic portrait of a bubble era that produced the most destructive crime spree in our history — "a million fraud cases a year" is how one former regulator puts it. But the mountain of evidence collected against Goldman by Levin's small, 15-desk office of investigators — details of gross, baldfaced fraud delivered up in such quantities as to almost serve as a kind of sarcastic challenge to the curiously impassive Justice Department — stands as the most important symbol of Wall Street's aristocratic impunity and prosecutorial immunity produced since the crash of 2008.
I always enjoy and am maddened by Taibbi's articles,
ReplyDelete"a million fraud cases a year" is how one former regulator puts it?!
Speaking of Squids interesting week in congress with BIG OIL CEOs invited to address a few questions. Defending Subsidies! How arrogant and " unAmerican" they are in their greed.
...greed is unAmerican?
ReplyDelete...from C-Span...
ReplyDelete"Republican Senators insist that the tax breaks encourage energy exploration and development while leading to lower prices for consumers. On Wednesday, GOP House members, in fact, passed legislation to expand off-shore oil exploration.
But Democratic Senators are calling on the oil companies to share record-breaking profits with taxpayers. They don't agree amongst themselves, however, on what to do with the estimated $2 billion-a-year savings over the next decade. Some would redirect the funds towards Green Energy development while others would apply them towards deficit reduction.
Not all Senate Democrats support cutting tax breaks for the oil companies. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) spoke on the Senate floor yesterday in opposition to another anti-subsidy bill being submitted by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).
With gasoline prices expected to drop by the end of the summer, Republicans suggest that support for the Baucus and Menendez bills will fall away as well."
Communism, terrorism, selling nuclear secrets: These activities have been historically described as "un-American" in congressional hearings.
ReplyDeleteLast week, James Mulva, chief executive of Houston-based ConocoPhillips, tried to add a new activity to the list: asking big oil companies to give up tax breaks.
The Senate Finance Committee pulled Mr. Mulva and honchos of BP America, Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Shell into a hearing where CEOs repeated their usual sound bites: Getting rid of their cherished tax breaks would mean higher energy prices, fewer oil-industry jobs, more dependence on foreign oil, reduced competition and lower returns for shareholders. (Such BULLshit)
Mr. Mulva went further, issuing a press release decrying "un-American tax proposals."
...Shirley you jest, they call in their benefactors to flog them in a public show...for, apparently, your benefit, think about it...your beloved congressmen are owned and are playing you...jeez...amerika is a corprotacracy, a fascist state - a conflagration of the state and business...they are not working for you, they are working to preserve their status quo...
ReplyDelete