"I'm doing 'God's work'. Meet Mr Goldman Sachs" http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ne...article6907681.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1 A must read if you want to undersand GS.
Regulations are so tight that if an investment banker so much as tries to enter a trading floor using their electronic office pass, not only will the pass not work, but he or she will be hauled in for questioning. ------------------------- One point that amazed me is back when Cramer IPO'd his company, I was very suprised how little he knew how the system worked in spite of working for GS. I draw the conclusion that there are very defined boundaries on a "need to know". When you read in the media that GS bet against it's own clients (or other parts of its own firm) a clear case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, is likely true. Do we have to be perpetually poor to do "God's work"? There are some might wealthy religions doing God's work. Teach a man to fish (make money, provide a job) sounds a whole lot better than handing him a loaf of bread. I have to admit though, GS doing "God's work" is funny.
Appeals to their corporatist right wing evangelical base. The geriatric inbreed hogging off welfare and medicare who have all the time to get on corporate busing to voice their corporatist opinions in the middle of the week day. The rest of us are too busy paying taxes and taking care of life.
"Staff rigorously price â "mark to market", in the jargon â the bankâs assets every day, down to the last cent, and forensically examine daily profit and loss. This helps the bank to see market trends clearly and early and, it believes, to manage risk better than most other banks. "We think we make better decisions," says Beshel. Thereâs evidence to support the claim. Take the sub-prime mortgage sector, the ticking toxic debt bomb that detonated the economic crisis. One year before bad home loans brought down Lehman and Bear Stearns, forced shotgun marriages of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America and HBOS to Lloyds, and made Royal Bank of Scotland a national joke, Goldmanâs daily valuations revealed it had suffered modest losses in its mortgage holdings for just over a week. At most banks, the losses might have gone unnoticed or been dismissed as a rounding error, but Goldman convened a meeting of senior bankers to try to find out what was going on. Even though the housing and mortgage markets were still buoyant, the bank did not like what it saw and began reducing its exposure. When the credit crunch hit, its losses in the mortgage sector were only $1.7 billion, lower than any other big investment bank. UBS lost $58 billion." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (At most banks, the losses might have gone unnoticed or been dismissed as a rounding error, but Goldman convened a meeting of senior bankers to try to find out what was going on. Even though the housing and mortgage markets were still buoyant, the bank did not like what it saw and began reducing its exposure.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hmm, just like god they create something, then say they do not like what they see? p.s. all the brown and black people who take the loan they can not pay will go to hell. :eek: because Goldman see their sin and short them.
Has anybody read F.I.A.S.C.O.? I wonder how large a portion of Goldman's profits are from unregulated derivatives? I don't believe you can read that book and then say that those derivative products have any redeeming social value. None whatsoever. In fact, it seems like the sole purpose of most of these derivative products is to let people skirt existing financial laws.
It is so hard to be objective on situation like this. But let me try: Here are the top charitable contributors: http://specials.slate.com/slate60/2007/ Here are the richest people and percent of what they give away: http://www.forbes.com/2004/09/23/cz_dw_0923philan_rl04.html I think what LB is trying to say is, by creating wealth, not just for himself but for others, he believes that those people will not only creat jobs, but if their corporations go on to be superstars, most of these people go on to give away a large part of their wealth. In essence, he believes that the noblest thing one can do is to enrich themselves, in the hope of being able to direct funds in order to better humanity. They seek to define themselves on a scale that you or I have zero chance of doing, by reaching potentially millions of people, or in the case of Bill Gates, literally an entire continent. I cannot disagree with this. The problem is that no one likes to feel like they are a beggar, and especially those that are struggling with their lives see these people making all this money when they can't even pay the heat bill, is well, there is no word to describe the inhumanity of it. Perhaps the way we measure these people should be by normalizing their actions within the system they are in. LB perhaps could have joined Greenpeace, or The Red Cross, etc, and made a big difference. But perhaps he feels that he could make as much difference or orders of magnitude more by playing within the capitalist system, and trying make the biggest difference this way. You could say, nitro, you are naive. The guy did it to make himself rich. Perhaps, but if his actions in the end are that he helps countless numbers of people the way Bill Gates has, would the people that received that help hold the same oppinion that you do about him? I don't like the God comment. It is a statement that others should make about you, not you about yourself. But if the man is on a mission to do Gods work, and he really believes it, and does it, we should be encouraging him, not focusing on the fact that he is rich and pays himself huge sums of money, imo.
You're pretty much spot on. However... The irony of Blankfein's statement is that he overwrites what's defined as "God's work", as embodied in Jesus Christ, whom he quotes. Your and his interpretation of the benefits of investment is all true. But he is not even in the same time zone of the truth when trying to equate those things. That hints at sociopathic narcissism. I'm an atheist, but I recognize that what made Christ so potent and relevant was that his philosophy was radically selfless. When someone sues you, give him the cloak off your back as well. Give up all your possessions, walk with me, give your last ounce of food to the starving and diseased, and do it all without coveting or feeling entitled to your possessions. If you do any with the wrong motives, it'd be easier for a camel to be pushed through the eye of a needle than for you to get to heaven. That's the whole reason he actually got into the history books. It's purely "other-centered" and at odds with the cathexis at the core of human desire. And that's powerful. He's trying to co-opt that tradition with its polar opposite philosophy, by highlighting its positive effects. Justifying his own motives with a higher cause. Ever meet a sociopath? They do the same thing.