Goldman Conspiracy
by Paul Farrell article link article link
4th May 2010 TheBurningPlatform
Paul Farrell does it again. He is a true patriot. I see his career coming to an end shortly when Goldman and the other criminals on Wall Street apply enough pressure on CBS to fire him. The truth is not allowed on the MSM today. He is not towing the corporate line. His article puts into words what I showed in pictures. This quote sums up Wall Street for me:
“With a trader, the goal of every minute of every day is to make money … So if running the economy off the cliff makes you money, you will do it, and you will do it every day of every week.”
“Wall Street’s culture is without a conscience, reveling in $100 million profit days. Traders act like cocaine addicts. Their brains have warped Wall Street’s ethics so badly they can’t think of anything but bonuses. They’ve lost their moral compass.”
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Remember Nietzsche? “God is dead.” Let’s translate that 19th century Germanic philosophy into modern economics. In Adam Smith’s 1776 capitalism, God was the Invisible Hand, a mysterious force running the economy from the shadows.
Flash forward to 2010: Capitalism is dead. The economy has a new Invisible Hand, the Goldman Conspiracy of Wall Street bankers.
This transfer of power happened suddenly. As recently as late 2008 the Invisible Hand was on life support, near death. Suddenly, miraculously the Treasury secretary, Goldman’s former CEO, transferred the power into a new Invisible Hand of God, the free-market ideology of Reaganomics … a power absolutely essential to the survival of Wall Street’s mega-bonus culture.
Yes, that’s why the Goldman Conspiracy must kill financial reforms … why they will kill effective reform with the backroom support of Obama and Dodd. This was predicted back in late 2008, even before the bailouts, back when we thought Reaganomics dead. “Shock Doctrine” author Naomi Klein warned:
“Free market ideology has always been a servant to the interests of capital … During boom times it’s profitable to preach laissez faire, because an absentee government allows speculative bubbles … When those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance and goes dormant while big government rides to the rescue,” then a neo-Reaganomics “ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis,” setting up a new bubble, bigger meltdown, and the Great Depression 2 the world narrowly avoided in 2008.
America’s now at a historic turning point. If the Goldman Conspiracy succeeds in killing reform, another collapse is guaranteed, soon. Listen to Time magazine’s Stephen Gandel:
“Of all the causes of the financial crisis, one of the biggest was a power shift on Wall Street that left the traders in charge and the bankers who had traditionally run everything from Broad Street to Maiden Lane sidelined. Years ago, the investment world and its professionals believed in long-term relationships. That meant nurturing the economy and the companies and people in it.” Yes, that was the culture when I was with Morgan Stanley back in the ’70s.
But “two decades of cheap money, though, helped turn the Street over to the traders. That led to a very different way of doing business.” Gandel captures Wall Street’s new culture in one powerful quote: “With a trader, the goal of every minute of every day is to make money … So if running the economy off the cliff makes you money, you will do it, and you will do it every day of every week.”
Wall Street’s culture is without a conscience, reveling in $100 million profit days. Traders act like cocaine addicts. Their brains have warped Wall Street’s ethics so badly they can’t think of anything but bonuses. They’ve lost their moral compass.
The 6 reasons Obama/Dodd helping Wall Street kill financial reforms
In this context, the Goldman Conspiracy’s goals are very simple as they manipulate Congress and the president to protect their warped culture:
1. No Fed audits, no transparency, no matter how much money the Fed prints for the banks
2. A toothless Consumer Protection Agency
3. Wall Street must continue controlling rating agencies
4. Unregulated proprietary trading of derivatives with loopholes for corporate derivatives
5. No new Glass-Steagall laws to prevent Wall Street from trading with customers’ deposits
6. And taxpayers must remain liable for future bailouts over $50 billion up to unlimited sums even greater that the recent $23.7 trillion the Fed and Treasury handed out.
Bottom line: The Goldman Conspiracy must kill any real financial reform. Why? The Goldman Conspiracy cannot generate huge bonuses without their new Invisible Hand; the resurrection of unregulated neo-Reaganomics allowing traders to keep gambling in the lucrative $670 trillion global derivatives shadow banking casino.
There’s a super-power ideology driving this new Invisible Hand, the neo-Reaganomics that the Conspiracy’s lobby is pushing as a substitute for real reform. The principles of their neo-Reaganomics are simple, three ideologies evolved since Reagan’s election.
Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan’s guru Ayn Rand: “When I say capitalism, I mean a pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism, with a separation of economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as a separation of state and church.” This ideology guided the world’s monetary policy 18 years.
Nobel economist Milton Friedman taught President Reagan “government is the problem.” Democracy changed too slowly for him. Klein tells us Friedman believed that “only a great rupture, a flood, a war, a terrorist attack, can create the vast, clean canvasses they crave … to begin remaking the nation” using the tools of “privatization, government deregulation and deep cuts in social spending.”
The current resurgence of Reaganomics is all part of the Goldman Conspiracy’s takeover of America. But what’s most alarming in their efforts to kill reforms is the new form of government. What they want goes beyond a plutocracy of the rich. Goldman Conspiracy is creating an Orwellian world that resembles the 14 traits of totalitarianism outlined by Laurence Britt in Free Inquiry, an article that’s become the single most downloaded article in that magazine.
We first reviewed the 14 traits prior to the 2008 election in “Wall Street’s ‘Disaster Capitalism for Dummies.” Since then this trend has rapidly spread across America.
With this trend, the Conspiracy has crossed a dangerous line. Their lobbying efforts make clear they no longer have to pretend America is a democracy.
I do not like what Wall Street’s doing to our freedoms. Years ago I was an investment banker with Morgan Stanley. I’m a patriot, a Marine veteran, volunteered for Korea. I see the Goldman Conspiracy not only killing Adam Smith’s capitalism but also democracy and substituting itself as the new Invisible Hand of God running the economy … and the government.
14 traits of the Conspiracy’s emerging new American government
Britt’s historical analysis of totalitarian governments revealed 14 shared traits that are now emerging in this resurgent neo-Reaganomics ideology. As you read these 14 traits that Britt wrote just five years ago in Free Inquiry magazine imagine their impact on your retirement and your children’s future under the Goldman Conspiracy’s rule, without real reforms. Imagine later, after the next meltdown that Wall Street will trigger:
1. The rich get first priority: laws, tax breaks, favorable regulations
2. Labor and low wages: stagnant for decades, while CEOs skyrocket
3. National security obsession: same paranoia shorts domestic programs
4. Superpower with huge military: war gets 54% of America’s budget
5. Extreme nationalism: ego-driven need to feel superior when threaten
6. Demonize “enemies:” manipulates public, tightens central control
7. Corruption and cronyism: the rich get richer with unlimited authority
8. Obsession with crime: psychological projection of guilt onto “them”
9. Contempt for human rights: democratic protections hinder leaders
10. Fraudulent elections: Supreme Court approves political rule by rich
11. Mass media manipulation: new Orwellian world, ends justify means
12. Obsession with sexism: ideologies dictate constitutional freedoms
13. Disdain for intellectuals: Palin, Joe the Plumber replace Bill Buckley
14. Religion in government: anti-science ideologues guide public policy
Yes, officially America is still a democracy. We still have enough rituals to support the illusion. But the truth is, America has become a plutocracy run by and for the wealthy. Now the rich are running a new trickle-down political economy dispensing leftovers as they rule America through lobbyist mega-bucks siphoned from taxpayers and congressional puppets … all the signs of the new totalitarianism government that most Americans are in denial of even as the Conspiracy flagrantly pushes this agenda.
It’s crucial you see the logical outcome of Goldman Conspiracy’s agenda as they keep spending upwards of $400 million on lobbyists to kill financial reforms. They want to destroy Adam Smith’s original Invisible Hand of Capitalism. They are blindly obsessed with the new Invisible Hand of Reaganomics that grants economic immortality to Wall Street’s too-greedy-to-fail banks, a position that even Ronald Reagan would reject.
Why? Because the Goldman Conspiracy is destroying not just America’s economic position as the world’s super-power but our moral leadership in the world.
The Goldman Conspiracy’s destiny is to blow a new bigger bubble, trigger a new bigger meltdown, and finally drive America into the second Great Depression we dodged twice before.
These guys have no conscience, so be warned. If the financial reforms are as dead as already being widely reported, then the Goldman Conspiracy has won and you should prepare for a repeat of 1929 and the 1930s Depression in the near future.
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