Seeing as how they donated money to candidate Obama before he became President, I'm not sure WTF that has to do with what they thought about his policies as President? In fact it's pretty clear you didn't even bother to read the articles you linked to, the VERY FIRST LINE in the last one is "For Goldman Sachs, a large financial investment in President Obama does not appear to be paying off."! Why did they donate to candidate Obama in 2008? Because they thought they had more chance of influencing him than McCain and/or that he had a better chance of winning. And as the article you kindly linked for us, it didn't work out for them. Seems a rational person would have quoted donations from GS employees to Obama vs Romney to properly make your point, but of course when you looked that up you found headlines like "Goldman Sachs Employees Ditch Obama, Donate $2 Million To Romney" (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/09/goldman-sachs-obama-romney-contributions_n_1950944.html) and that just didn't fit your bedrock narrative did it. So you kept looking for more confirmatory data and posted that instead, hoping the readers would just ignore that giant hole in your logic. Pretty transparent. Not sure how you deal with that internally, that's the fascinating part because you're clearly intelligent enough to understand that you're doing it, just can't seem to stop yourself though. Speaking of logic, you did a great job of ignoring the whole basic concept that we're always going to put people who did a stint in investment banking in the nation's finance positions and in fact are still doing so today. I know that's awfully inconvenient for you, I understand why you'd ignore it. It does make you very unpersuasive though. Also still curious about which Goldman folks you've been talking to to gauge their thoughts, just trying to figure out if it's just the fixed income and infrastructure types that didn't like Obama or if you know of another group who were big fans and ran the "Obama steering division" somewhere above the Skydeck? You seem very sure of yourself, so I presume you must have some actual experience with this?
The gs employees you know, if you know any, are nothing but gofers and not the people who are plucked for high assignments in gov't. The facts are there were tons of them in high assignments. I listed them. And personnel is policy. And no matter what the puffingtonpost says, the banks cleaned up when obama came into office. Those facts are indisputable. I provided the link. How that gets turned into "it didn't work out for them", i'll never know. Oh, yes I do. It was the puffingtonpost who wanted desperately to untie obama from banking interests in the eyes of the public. But it did work out for the banking industry. They obviously thought they could get an even better deal from Romney, seeing as how Romney was a street guy to begin with. Of course they'd go for Romney. He's virtually one of them. In other words, they wouldn't have to share the massive haul they'd get from Romney with some of obama's union buddies. Capiche? GS plays both sides of the street because they want to run things. And they do run things. How can that be lost on you? Do you honestly think that it's just a delusion that everyone has? They're in senior policy positions in every admin, for crying out loud. There's not another company or industry that's even close.
As traders you and I have probably both been bitten by mistaking correlation for causation. It sounds like we now agree that every administration has a number of appointees who are formerly worked in investment banking. Why is this. It could be a global conspiracy by GS to manipulate the government through it's former employees. It could also be because we have a system in the U.S. where a few elite universities get their pick out of hundreds of thousands of applicants to choose the 1% or so who have the combination of intelligence, EQ, and family connections that makes their students most likely to become future leaders. An even smaller handful of MBA programs gets to further down-select adding in initial career success. These programs then throw this group together for 2-4 years to set up incredible networking effects. Then investment banks get to come in and offer above market salaries to further select the top of this top group, then sets them up with even more incredible networking opportunities. Finally, wall street is set up to essentially require that you pay your dues putting in 80 hour weeks for 2 or 3 years as a post-undergrad analyst or post-MBA associate at an i-bank in order to move on to any other job (with some exceptions for sure). So the model is for GS and the rest to cycle through thousands of analysts and associates, most of whom go on to become leaders on the buy side, elsewhere on wall street, or in industry and some of whom remain in i-banking. The end result of this system is that a very large proportion of the people who become leaders in the finance world once worked at an investment bank at one point in their life. For better or for worse, like it or not, that's the world we live in. I'd love to see a more egalitarian system, but this is the one we have We also have a system where we feel like the appointees in the Treasury department, SEC, and other finance related areas should have some experience at a finance job and perhaps even be top performers in their jobs. The pool of people who meet that description is going to be made up in large part of people who once worked in investment banking....because see above. You mentioned that the people I know at GS are "gophers" and that's true (associates and VPs). It's also true that most of the people you specifically listed who worked in the Obama administration who "came from" GS actually didn't come directly from GS, it was just on their resume where they worked as "gophers" at one point in their career.....because see above. This is exactly what you'd expect by sheer probability given the system I described above. Any administration is going to have a bunch of people with i-banking on their resume and the top leaders in the finance posts are going to have been top leaders on wall street. It could be that somehow GS is running the country because they have former employees who work in government. It could be that we have a system that just makes it highly probable that a bunch of former GS employees will end up in government. Just like a bunch of people with law degrees end up as political appointees, but lawyers don't "run the place" And a bunch of people who graduated from Harvard end up as political appointees, but Harvard doesn't "run the place". Just like a bunch of white males end up as political appointees, but white men don't.....oh wait a minute, nevermind, this is getting uncomfortable. Oh, and speaking of mistaking correlation for causation, or in this case just mistaken attribution I suppose, gun manufactures also "cleaned up" when Obama came into office (and are doing poorly now) as I pointed out before. Record profits could indicate nefarious action by Obama, or could very well have been in spite of a bunch of detrimental action by Obama. You can choose to see the presence of people who once worked at GS in political positions and GS profits as a conspiracy, or as the natural result of the system we live in. I would think that if you want to rail against something and make a positive change you'd choose to rail against the system I described, not a GS conspiracy. You could ban anyone who ever worked at GS from working in any government position and you'd still end up with investment banks making record profits and a bunch of political appointees who once had a job in investment banking.
So explain to me where the "charitable spending" is located in the Clinton Foundation financials from 2015 and 2014 provided below -- directly from their filings. In 2014 Direct Program Expenditures accounted for a mere 13.57% of the Clinton Foundation spending. In 2015 it accounted for a mere 16.97%.
LOL Where is PROGRAMMING SPENDING located on Netflix financials? Since that exact phrase is not listed on their financials, obviously they don't spend any on original programming. Hint: What do you think DIRECT PROGRAM EXPENDITURES mean on CF financials?
In 2014 Direct Program Expenditures accounted for a mere 13.57% of the Clinton Foundation spending. In 2015 it accounted for a mere 16.97%. This is terrible from any charity standards.
Well for starters UNITAID commodity expenses are the money paid out to buy supplies to support UNITAID, which if like me you aren't familiar with is an organization that provides malaria, tuberculosis, and TB, and hepatitis treatment and prevention. But.... The real point is that you are stuck in this idea that the only thing a "real" non-profit can do is hand out food or medicine to poor people, otherwise it's corrupt and illegitimate. Lets say I start a non-profit that does nothing but hire doctors to go to sub-saharan Africa and treat patients. My non-profit pays their salary and travel expenses. My consolidated financial statements would show that most of my expenses went to salaries and benefits and travel. You'd say I was an illegitimate non-profit and I'd say you have no experience in the world of non-profits and don't know wtf you're talking about. Or I could set up a non-profit, an example of which I provided in this thread, that sets up conferences and meetings to bring local leaders together to collaboratively solve issues that we all care about. Most of my expenses would be salaries and benefits, travel, and meetings. Thousands of very legitimate non-profits use this model, among them the Clinton Global Initiative. You'd say I was an illegitimate non-profit and I'd say you have no experience in non-profits and don't know WTF you're talking about. There are tens of thousands of non-profits and NGOs that all have unique models to address unique needs. I'd highly recommend you get and and get involved in this world, then we can intelligently chat about what makes up a good non-profit and what doesn't. If you do have such experience, please share it with us and why it leads you to believe that the models I described above are somehow illegitimate?
AGAIN, direct expenditures is just ONE of the ways they do their charity work Program Expenses (Percent of the charity's total expenses spent on the programs and services it delivers) 86.9% https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=16680
I think it is time you go read the Clinton foundation financials and find the evidence that supports your claims regarding charitable giving. If you support the Clinton Foundation so much why aren't you donating your money to it.
I didn't make any claims, I linked to an actual organization that audited and proved your BS claims false. I don't have to support a foundation to bust lies being spread about them, if you posted lies about Trump, I would bust them as well.