I am saying that if you consider GS's business practices unethical then about 95% corporations are unethical as well. Or do you find the way defense contractors secure new orders is ethical? Or is how P&G runs production facilities with little or zero regard to employee safety in many countries ethical? Or how about the ethics of how Boing/Airbus lobby their interests? The list goes on and on. If you despise how GS lobbies its self-interest then you may as well rewrite the entire way corporates conduct business world wide. Let's be clear: We all wish business is conducted in a 100% clean, ethical, and respectful manner, but thats not what I see ANYWHERE. Should we strive to improve things if its for the benefit of society at large? Sure and the ONLY thing I have been arguing for was to NOT single out GS because pretty much everyone else is conducting business in a very similar fashion, albeit in their own sector specific/company specific ways. I simply find it questionable how some "GS bashers" point fingers while they would probably go to great, if necessary, unethical lengths to further their own success. Its easy to point fingers for some of those guys with their 1000 dollars and one mini lot under their arm. The game is entirly different when you are managing stakes on completely different levels. In this competitive environment it comes down to life or death and most chose life within the legal limits even if that means they have to sacrifice being 100% "clean". I dont condone unethical conduct but I think when each one reflects on their own dealings...you know where I am getting at...
I posted this as a separate thread, but Taibbi of Rolling Stone did an provocative expose on Goldman, it's relationship to government, and some of it's more epic machinations of manipulations, going back the era of the Great Depression - http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/28816321/inside_the_great_american_bubble_machine/print Here's the print article, scanned and hosted on line: http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/06/goldman-sachs-engineering-every-major.html
LOL, interesting to see the sources of some of the seemingly "senior" ET members (9000+ posts) -> Political writer of "Road Rage" at Rolling Stone, too amusing. Exactly the type of people who are pretty much all the time behind the curve but bark the loudest when the iq inhibited crowd wants to see blood on the street. Power to the people, right ByLoSellHi?
My understanding is that GS lobbied the government back in the late 1990s to the effect that it could not compete against foreign firms because those firms did not have the same leverage handcuffs that we had. That may be what led to all of this, but the question is, was it true, or was it a clever trick to get the leverage it wanted?
I agree in general. However, two wrongs don't make a right. I was speeding once on the highway. I was mostly going the same speed as everyone else. A cop was hidden and wham his speed gun went off on me. I suggested that I was speeding, but I was going the same speed as everyone else. LMAO. This was not a defense. I don't know if what GS does is unethical or not. I am concerned whether it does ILLEGAL things. I have no hopes that when you put people and money in the same room, that Mother Teresa pops out.
fully agree. And right after GS is sentenced in court I will be the first one to yield to the authority.
What would it matter if AIG had NOT been bailed out by the taxpayer? Goldman would not have gotten paid, lawsuit or not. AIG wouldn't have any money to pay them. That's the whole point you seem to be missing. To say they should have "GS and others should have taken it's payment due up with the US legal system, suing AIG for what it was owed..." ignores the fact that you can't get water from a rock. AIG wasn't collectable without a taxpayer bailout, hence, again, Goldman would never have gotten paid on what AIG owed it, and Goldman would have probably have gone under or come close to it, being permanently crippled in the process.
No, you're just delusional from all the GS jizz you swallowed. It's pretty obvious you do not pay any taxes and are a welfare queen, just like GS.
Agreed as well. But I think you are missing a point made by other people on this thread and elsewhere that take exception to GS: if you have the people that make laws and can say you do right or wrong in your pocket, you can't use getting caught by those same people as your metric for doing something right or wrong. However, I agree that as far as I can tell, GS may be a greedy money making machine with it's tentacles everywhere, but so what as long as all it does is make money by doing it better than anyone else, legally? People may be pointing the finger at GS, when they should be pointing the finger at the whole concept of how we are on course to monetize everything. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetization Maybe it is the Economists that we should kill. GS may just be the messenger. This book argues the other way: http://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248193183&sr=8-1