Goldman CEO leaves a "peculiar voicemail message"

From Matt Taibbi:
Source:
www.rollingstone.com...


Your tax dollars at work, folks. Gotta love it:

If a company turns a decent profit despite bad markets, I have no problem with rewarding staff with larger bonuses (after all, they're responsible for the profits). What I do have a beef with though is the profit not being distributed equitably.

I work for one of the big players in investment banking, and the bonuses this year were ridiculously unbalanced. Despite having significantly less staff than last year, an additional $1B allocated to the bonus pool compared to last year, and turning a profit for the first time in roughly 2years, the bonuses recieved by pretty much all IT staff were at least 50% (or more) smaller than last year. At the same time, bonuses to senior execs were on par if not greater than last year.

I'm now seeing a very large percentage of IT workers looking for alternate employment (why stay when you can get $10-20k more for the same job, but with better hours somewhere else?). It'll be interesting to see how these top execs will make their money when all the good IT staff are gone and they're left with the underskillled cruft to keep the networks/applications/databases/workstations running. I'm already seeing severe skill shortages in a few teams due to the "pay them as little as possible, pat ourselves on the back about how smart we are and gorge on the profits" mentality. Don't be suprised if soon you start seeing articles about how businesses are finding it sooo hard to find skilled, motivated staff and being completely clueless as to why...

If this were a REAL business EARNING REAL MONEY that would be one thing. Their record profits are a result of selling the exact same kinds of TOXIC financial products that sent the economy into freefall in the first place. Their ponzi scheme is still rolling thanks to Congress and the Administration who didn't have the moral fortitude to reign in the big banks. When the next bubble bursts there will be no cushy bank jobs to come back to.

[edit on 24-2-2010 by Asktheanimals]

I have no problem with a company rewarding its employees commensurate with their performance. However, I have a MASSIVE problem when a company is a major player and catalyst in what amounted to market manipulation. Their actions, together with those of the other players in their industry, cost a great many people their jobs, savings, businesses, homes and health. The country --- that is the regular 'joe' --- has been eviscerated by their actions, obfuscation and arrogance. And if that weren't enough, then the US taxpayer had the honor to come in and bail-out their entire industry.

To me, this was tantamount to someone taking other peoples money, going to a casino and making boat-loads of money based on their ability to manipulate the rules. Then they went too far and lost everything. ut fear not, the government came in and made them 100% whole giving them mopney to get right back into the casino and make boat-loads more.

Yea, I have a HUGE problem with this a'hole's arrogance and the whole issue.

Save the world, eat a banker.

Seems as if the bonuses are blending into more of hush money as gsachs has been responsible largely for the economic destruction of Europe. This isn't 'You did a good job' money. This is 'You did what you were told, despite your better judgment' money. Very dishonorable, but then again, we are a country that doesn't value honor at all, unfortunately.

They need to leave the country. The walls and fortresses of their gated communities, and luxurious bunkers are not going to be strong enough nor will they be able to go out in public, enjoy a restaurant or attend a sports event. I hope they all leave soon.

If you are wealthy - no matter how you made your money, now is the time to dress it down and start giving back to your communities generously. The wrath is growing.

Did anyone see the final breakdown?
I was just wondering who got Greece.

I think next time we play Monopoly, someone else should get to be the bank.

No one begrudges a man an honest profit.

What these individuals have done is engaged in criminal activities. They are scum and thugs and certainly not business men. They are dishonest thieves that are responsible for untold misery and death.

To hold these "people" in high esteem is part of the scam. They want you to think they earned the fabulous wealth they enjoy. They stole wealth that they did not earn. It an age old crime generally punishable by death.

This planet literally craps out wealth in infinite amounts. There is no need for any individual on this planet to want. It is simply that elite families who control the planet feel that human labor is still better for them and their wealth/power/sex scam.

We can all thank the internet. It is allowing the citizens of Earth to finally behold the untold wealth that this floating jewel provides us. We simply have slough off the yoke that enslaves us to these vile families who live off our efforts. Time to get rid of the elite parasites.

Goldman has paid back the government the money they did not need in the first place with interest. Why is the media still so interested in how GS pays employees, or should I say this shill Matt Talibi and Rolling Stone? Those are better questions IMO.

The argument that Goldman paid back TARP money it didn't need so everything is fine and dandy is a very convenient, very transparent figleaf over a much larger, uglier truth.

Here's where the ugliness comes into play: The gov't buys AIG, which is a laughable company with a balance sheet resembling that of some Panamanian bank's Caymen account for Colombian Peso trade or something. It has hawked the family jewels long ago and has nothing exept its reptuation and a heck of a lot of shady derivatives insurance contracts like CDSs and much worse. Plus, its at the epicenter of all the investment banking and hedge-fund activity. So the governement starts pumping cash in there in the moronic attempt to "instil confidence."

AIG owes a LOT of money to a lot of people. Guess who gets to be the first in line, somehow, at the trough? I'll give you a hint: The name starts with GOLDMAN and ends in SACHS. Hmmm...what a remarkable coincidence? Meanwhile a bunch of other counterparites and AIG creditors are left twisting in the wind.

Picture it this way: The kindly old Doctor Uncle Sam sais poor old AIG needs a transfusion or is going to die. So you roll up your sleave, they jam an IV in there, and the bleed you to the brink of unconsciousness. Then they filter the fresh blood briefly through the corpse of AIG and out the other side into the gullet of Goldman Sachs. Mmm. Fresh taxpayer blood. Now, about those bonuses...

See how that works? Then, to add insult to injury the send you out into the waiting room to watch some clown like Cramer and his buxom cohost tell your how poor old Mr. Goldman Sachs is just so unfairly put upon and all this talk of taxpayer cash and vampirism is so uncalled for.. Oh and by the way its the nurse on the intercom. They might need another transmission of your lifeblood after all; think you could give another pint or two?



[edit on 2/24/10 by silent thunder]

This is the same CEO of GS who claimed the other day, banks were doing "Gods" Work.

www.reuters.com...

reply to post by silent thunder

---

Quite an interesting view, but not all entirely accurate IMO.

Still doesn't have anything to do with what GS pays their people for bonuses.

What's innacurate about it? Nobody will contest the following; the facts are in the open. Do some googling or check the ole' Bloomberg if you need backup (sorry too lazy to give links, mea culpa).

1) AIG is functinally insolvent. It has been taken over by the government with taxpayer money.

2) Some people AIG owes money to are going to get or have gotten their contracts fulfilled. At less than peak market value, but a nozero "value" was assigned to what was at first a totally illiquid market. The illiquidity of that particular market was a direct function of free-market capitalism at its best and why not? Because nobody in their right minds wants to touch the toxic garbage and nobody should thus have to pay for it. In a real market economy the "price" would be zero.

3) Many many parties that AIG owes money to will never see a dime or will be paid back in some form of compensation that is essentially worthless.

4) Those that have actually gotten something out of AIG have been Goldman Sachs and a few other large firms. Those who will get screwed include small-to-medium shops, small hedge funds, various funds, people with invested savings, and granny's schoolteacher pension fund full of muni bonds and "safe triple-A-rated stuff from good old fashioned stable companies like AIG." Please excuse me while I surpress an evil giggle, having seen something like this coming down the pike for some time, but in truth I'd rather be wrong than right, just because a lot of stupid people trusted stupid inistitutions and didn't bother to do basic reasearch. On some level I know a lot of them were swaggering d-bags and deserve what they got. But I cannot put up with the idea of grandmothers eating catfood for 20 years because their funds and life savings got smooth-talked from under them.

5) Everything paid out of AIG post-bubble has gone to Goldman and a few other whales. And its all taxpayer money. 100%.

6) You are correct that Goldman didn't want the TARP money and could easily pay it back. It wasn't the only surly company that was unethusiastic about Paulson's TARP bailouts. Wells Fargo almost derailed the whole scheme. And it goes without saying that the public has never liked TARP. But guess what: the real money can be made by the survivors in much bigger ways: proprietary trading, bleeding the EU dry, you name it. How about pushing securities to your clients while shorting them at the same time? Goldman has done all that. Oh, and let's not forget our "all Goldman, all the time" Fed and Treasury staff. Funny how that kind of stuff just seems to "happen." This is going way over the line in a free market. And I'm not only implicating Goldman; you've got Citi -- and that's a whole other can of worms -- among others.

7) My point is that when Goldman feasts off the corpse of AIG in partuicular it is getting PUBLIC MONEY. TAXPAYER MONEY. This is just wrong. They need to take total losses on all failed AIG-related contracts. Haahahahaha like that will ever happen. In the meantime, it's like tapping the vein of the taxpayer and drinking public debt like blood.

[edit on 2/25/10 by silent thunder]