[Peace-discuss] [sf-core] Fw: Goldman Sachs, Greed is God?; Somali Pirates GS Subsidiary?

[C. G. Estabrook]

For the historical context to which David refers, see "The Many-Headed Hydra: 
The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic" (Beacon Press, 2001) by Marcus 
Rediker and Peter Linebaugh.

I'm happy to say that Peter and I joint-taught a course on Western civilization 
("That would be a good idea!" --Gandhi) at the University of Rochester thirty 
years ago.  --CGE


On 4/27/10 9:10 PM, Laurie Solomon wrote:
>
>
> Yes, I realized that it was a joke; but sometimes jokes carry a grounding for
> realities and truths. This, unfortunately, is the case with this. Just as the
> pirates are no different than the bankers, the Somalis are also not unlike
> our naval quarantines and blockades of shipping in international waters aimed
> at countries that we do not like or our over flights of sovereign nations
> without their permission, disrupting communications, bombing civilians and
> targets, spying, or landing military or paramilitary personnel.
>
> *From:* unionyes <mailto:unionyes at ameritech.net> *Sent:* Tuesday, April 27,
> 2010 6:28 PM *To:* sf-core <mailto:sf-core at yahoogroups.com> ; Laurie Solomon
>  <mailto:ls1000 at live.com> *Subject:* Re: [sf-core] Fw: Goldman Sachs, Greed
> is God?; Somali Pirates GS Subsidiary?
>
> It was a joke of course, However, what the Somali Pirates were actually doing
> was the functions of a country's coast guard, patrolling and regulating
> illegal toxic dumping and illegal fishing in Somali waters. Granted they
> expanded it to the point where they were indiscriminate. That is, wanting to
> collect " duties " on any ship in Somali waters. Besides, I always liked
> Pirates. In what they call the " Golden Age " of Piracy in the Caribbean
> during the 17th and 18th century, Pirates were a very multi-racial,
> democratic, society and only robbed from the wealthy. David J.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- *From:* Laurie Solomon <mailto:ls1000 at live.com>
> *To:* unionyes <mailto:unionyes at ameritech.net> *Sent:* Tuesday, April 27,
> 2010 5:57 PM *Subject:* Re: [sf-core] Fw: Goldman Sachs, Greed is God?;
> Somali Pirates GS Subsidiary?
>
> The Somali pirates are not as stupid as the US press has made them out to be.
> Of course given the imbalance in legal sanction, one would not ever find the
> bankers claiming to be what they really are - e.g., pirates. So why shouldn't
> the pirates claim to be investment bankers or their agents? Makes sense to
> me.
>
> *From:* unionyes <mailto:unionyes at ameritech.net> *Sent:* Tuesday, April 27,
> 2010 4:02 PM *To:* Undisclosed-Recipient: ;@smtp103.sbc.mail.re3.yahoo.com
> <mailto:Undisclosed-Recipient:%20;@smtp103.sbc.mail.re3.yahoo.com> *Subject:*
> [sf-core] Fw: Goldman Sachs, Greed is God?; Somali Pirates GS Subsidiary?
>
> Somali Pirates Say They Are Subsidiary of Goldman Sachs Could Make
> Prosecution Difficult, Experts Say
>
> April 26, 2010 NORFOLK, VIRGINIA (The Borowitz Report) borowitzreport.com
>
> â?" Eleven indicted Somali pirates dropped a bombshell in a U.S. court today,
> revealing that their entire piracy operation is a subsidiary of banking giant
> Goldman Sachs.
>
> There was an audible gasp in the courtroom when the leader of the pirates
> announced, â?oWe are doing Godâ?Ts work. We work for Lloyd Blankfein.â?
>
> The pirate, who said he earned a bonus of $48 million in dubloons last year,
> elaborated on the nature of the Somalisâ?T work for Goldman, explaining that
> the pirates forcibly attacked ships that Goldman had already shorted.
>
> â?oWe were functioning as investment bankers, only every day was casual
> Friday,� the pirate said.
>
> The pirate acknowledged that they merged their operations with Goldman in
> late 2008 to take advantage of the more relaxed regulations governing bankers
> as opposed to pirates, â?oplus to get our share of the bailout money.â?
>
> In the aftermath of the shocking revelations, government prosecutors were
> scrambling to see if they still had a case against the Somali pirates, who
> would now be treated as bankers in the eyes of the law.
>
> â?oThere are lots of laws that could bring these guys down if they were, in
> fact, pirates,â? one government source said. â?oBut if theyâ?Tre bankers,
> our hands are tied.�
>
> The Los Angeles Times says Andy Borowitz has â?oone of the funniest Twitter
> feeds around.� ----- Original Message ----- From: <moderator at PORTSIDE.ORG
> <mailto:moderator%40PORTSIDE.ORG>> To: <PORTSIDE at LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG
> <mailto:PORTSIDE%40LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG>> Sent: Monday, April 26, 2010 10:20
> PM Subject: Goldman Sachs, Greed is God?; Somali Pirates GS Subsidiary?
>
>> 1.Will Goldman Sachs Prove Greed is God? 2.Somali Pirates Say They Are
>> Subsidiary of Goldman Sachs === 1. Will Goldman Sachs Prove Greed is God?
>>
>> The investment bank's cult of self-interest is on trial against the whole
>> idea of civilization - the collective decision by all of us not to screw
>> each other over even if we can
>>
>> By Matt Taibbi
>>
>> April 24, 2010
>>
>> The Guardian
>>
>>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/24/will-goldman-prove-greed-is-god
>
>> So Goldman Sachs, the world's greatest and smuggest investment bank, has
>> been sued for fraud by the American Securities and Exchange Commission.
>> Legally, the case hangs on a technicality.
>>
>> Morally, however, the Goldman Sachs case may turn into a final referendum
>> on the greed-is-good ethos that conquered America sometime in the 80s - and
>> in the years since has aped other horrifying American trends such as
>> boybands and reality shows in spreading across the western world like a
>> venereal disease.
>>
>> When Britain and other countries were engulfed in the flood of defaults and
>> derivative losses that emerged from the collapse of the American housing
>> bubble two years ago, few people understood that the crash had its roots in
>> the lunatic greed-centered objectivist religion, fostered back in the 50s
>> and 60s by ponderous emigre novelist Ayn Rand.
>>
>> While, outside of America, Russian-born Rand is probably best known for
>> being the unfunniest person western civilisation has seen since maybe
>> Goebbels or Jack the Ripper (63 out of 100 colobus monkeys recently forced
>> to read Atlas Shrugged in a laboratory setting died of boredom-induced
>> aneurysms), in America Rand is upheld as an intellectual giant of limitless
>> wisdom. Here in the States, her ideas are roundly worshipped even by people
>> who've never read her books or even heard of her. The rightwing "Tea Party"
>> movement is just one example of an entire demographic that has been
>> inspired to mass protest by Rand without even knowing it.
>>
>> Last summer I wrote a brutally negative article about Goldman Sachs for
>> Rolling Stone magazine (I called the bank a "great vampire squid wrapped
>> around the face of humanity") that unexpectedly sparked a heated national
>> debate. On one side of the debate were people like me, who believed that
>> Goldman is little better than a criminal enterprise that earns its billions
>> by bilking the market, the government, and even its own clients in a
>> bewildering variety of complex financial scams.
>>
>> On the other side of the debate were the people who argued Goldman wasn't
>> guilty of anything except being "too smart" and really, really good at
>> making money. This side of the argument was based almost entirely on the
>> Randian belief system, under which the leaders of Goldman Sachs appear not
>> as the cheap swindlers they look like to me, but idealised heroes, the
>> saviours of society.
>>
>> In the Randian ethos, called objectivism, the only real morality is
>> self-interest, and society is divided into groups who are efficiently
>> self-interested (ie, the rich) and the "parasites" and "moochers" who wish
>> to take their earnings through taxes, which are an unjust use of force in
>> Randian politics. Rand believed government had virtually no natural role in
>> society. She conceded that police were necessary, but was such a fervent
>> believer in laissez-faire capitalism she refused to accept any need for
>> economic regulation - which is a fancy way of saying we only need law
>> enforcement for unsophisticated criminals.
>>
>> Rand's fingerprints are all over the recent Goldman story. The case in
>> question involves a hedge fund financier, John Paulson, who went to Goldman
>> with the idea of a synthetic derivative package pegged to risky American
>> mortgages, for use in betting against the mortgage market. Paulson would
>> short the package, called Abacus, and Goldman would then sell the deal to
>> suckers who would be told it was a good bet for a long investment. The
>> SEC's contention is that Goldman committed a crime - a "failure to
>> disclose" - when they failed to tell the suckers about the role played by
>> the vulture betting against them on the other side of the deal.
>>
>> Now, the instruments in question in this deal - collateralised debt
>> obligations and credit default swaps - fall into the category of
>> derivatives, which are virtually unregulated in the US thanks in large part
>> to the effort of gremlinish former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan,
>> who as a young man was close to Rand and remained a staunch Randian his
>> whole life. In the late 90s, Greenspan lobbied hard for the passage of a
>> law that came to be called the Commodity Futures Modernisation Act of 2000,
>> a monster of a bill that among other things deregulated the sort of
>> interest-rate swaps Goldman used in its now-infamous dealings with Greece.
>>
>> Both the Paulson deal and the Greece deal were examples of Goldman making
>> millions by bending over their own business partners. In the Paulson deal
>> the suckers were European banks such as ABN-Amro and IKB, which were never
>> told that the stuff Goldman was cheerfully selling to them was, in effect,
>> designed to implode; in the Greece deal, Goldman hilariously used exotic
>> swaps to help the country mask its financial problems, then turned right
>> around and bet against the country by shorting Greece's debt.
>>
>> Now here's the really weird thing. Confronted with the evidence of public
>> outrage over these deals, the leaders of Goldman will often appear to be
>> genuinely confused, scratching their heads and staring quizzically into the
>> camera like they don't know what you're upset about. It's not an act. There
>> have been a lot of greedy financiers and banks in history, but what makes
>> Goldman stand out is its truly bizarre cultist/religious belief in the
>> rightness of what it does.
>>
>> The point was driven home in England last year, when Goldman's
>> international adviser, sounding exactly like a character in Atlas Shrugged,
>> told an audience at St Paul's Cathedral that "The injunction of Jesus to
>> love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest". A few weeks
>> later, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein told the Times that he was doing "God's
>> work".
>>
>> Even if he stands to make a buck at it, even your average used-car salesman
>> won't sell some working father a car with wobbly brakes, then buy life
>> insurance policies on that customer and his kids. But this is done almost
>> as a matter of routine in the financial services industry, where the
>> attitude after the inevitable pileup would be that that family was dumb for
>> getting into the car in the first place. Caveat emptor, dude!
>>
>> People have to understand this Randian mindset is now ingrained in the
>> American character. You have to live here to see it. There's a hatred
>> toward "moochers" and "parasites" - the Tea Party movement, which is mainly
>> a bunch of pissed off suburban white people whining about minorities
>> consuming social services, describes the battle as being between
>> "water-carriers" and "water-drinkers". And regulation of any kind is
>> deeply resisted, even after a disaster as sweeping as the 2008 crash.
>>
>> This debate is going to be crystallised in the Goldman case. Much of
>> America is going to reflexively insist that Goldman's only crime was being
>> smarter and better at making money than IKB and ABN-Amro, and that the
>> intrusive, meddling government (in the American narrative, always the bad
>> guy!) should get off Goldman's Armani-clad back. Another side is going to
>> argue that Goldman winning this case would be a rebuke to the whole idea of
>> civilisation - which, after all, is really just a collective decision by
>> all of us not to screw each other over even when we can. It's an important
>> moment in the history of modern global capitalism: whether or not to move
>> forward into a world of greed without limits.
>>
>> === 2. Somali Pirates Say They Are Subsidiary of Goldman Sachs Could Make
>> Prosecution Difficult, Experts Say
>>
>> April 26, 2010 NORFOLK, VIRGINIA (The Borowitz Report) borowitzreport.com
>>
>> â?" Eleven indicted Somali pirates dropped a bombshell in a U.S. court
>> today, revealing that their entire piracy operation is a subsidiary of
>> banking giant Goldman Sachs.
>>
>> There was an audible gasp in the courtroom when the leader of the pirates
>> announced, â?oWe are doing Godâ?Ts work. We work for Lloyd Blankfein.â?
>>
>> The pirate, who said he earned a bonus of $48 million in dubloons last
>> year, elaborated on the nature of the Somalisâ?T work for Goldman,
>> explaining that the pirates forcibly attacked ships that Goldman had
>> already shorted.
>>
>> â?oWe were functioning as investment bankers, only every day was casual
>> Friday,� the pirate said.
>>
>> The pirate acknowledged that they merged their operations with Goldman in
>> late 2008 to take advantage of the more relaxed regulations governing
>> bankers as opposed to pirates, â?oplus to get our share of the bailout
>> money.�
>>
>> In the aftermath of the shocking revelations, government prosecutors were
>> scrambling to see if they still had a case against the Somali pirates, who
>> would now be treated as bankers in the eyes of the law.
>>
>> â?oThere are lots of laws that could bring these guys down if they were, in
>> fact, pirates,â? one government source said. â?oBut if theyâ?Tre bankers,
>> our hands are tied.�
>>
>> The Los Angeles Times says Andy Borowitz has â?oone of the funniest Twitter
>> feeds around.�

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