Two of the biggest swinging dick firms that still remain in the once vaunted Wall Street arena are Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. Over the last forty eight hours, in what strikes this onlooker as something of a fantastic temporal correlation, two public testimonials have appeared that excoriate the two aforesaid firms for profoundly unethical- or, perhaps more properly, thoroughly immoral- conduct. Unless you have lived under a very large and non porous rock for several years, if not longer, the perfidy of Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan hardly comes as news. However, one devoutly hopes that whatever the intentions are of the authors of these very public jeremiads-more on that shortly- their damning admissions of (non specified) criminality will, in time, represent something of a watershed event.
In the meantime, pardon me if I detect the not so faint whiff of a rat, especially where the Goldman revelations are concerned. Greg Smith, the former Goldman Executive, makes various claims regarding the true nature of his erstwhile firm. Unfortunately a number of them strain credulity, not the least of which is that, in the not so distant past, Goldman Sachs operated at the highest levels of ethical conduct, systematically choosing "to do the right thing" in its dealings with its clients and other business partners. This will no doubt be news to folks such as Matt Taibbi, who, approximately two years ago, famously dubbed Goldman Sachs The Vampire Squid in response to their numerous misdeeds going back generations. How is it possible that such longstanding and systematic vile behavior, so well chronicled by Mr. Taibbi, has only recently become known to Mr. Smith? What's more, where is the evidence of the culture of do gooding that Mr. Smith purports to have, until only relatively recently, been subverted? To encapsulate, the New York Times op-ed written by Mr. Smith almost seems like a clever recasting of the essence of Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Sachs is not the instinctively rapacious firm we thought (we knew) it was, but, rather, an avuncular outfit that lost its way due to some poor stewardship by CEO Lloyd "We're doing God's work" Blankfein who allowed a few- or maybe a few more than a few-bad apples to spoil what once was a bastion of rectitude. We can only hope that (should this be a very clever attempt to take pressure off Goldman by having a critical number of the public now believe that by dint of a few key firings The Vampire Squid can be transformed into a -name your favorite warm and fuzzy creature) such a gambit will fail. In the meantime, as always, we would do well to be more than a little reticent to buy whatever Goldman, or even a self professed, disaffected, ex Goldman man, is selling.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Occupy America
What does the Occupy Wall Street movement really amount to? Is it simply a nationwide act of civil protest by mostly youthful, disaffected citizens against a predatory and criminal finance industry (as represented by such commercial melafactors as Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and the quasi private, state chartered Federal Reserve) or is there more going on? Who are the organizers of Occupy Wall Street? Is it, in fact, a leaderless, non hierarchical, self organizing entity that is not, in any meaningful way, controlled by some shadowy someone or something with an entirely different, perhaps even, sinister agenda-One World Government, for example- that is different from the one that the OWS movement ostensibly espouses.
I'm afraid I don't get out enough to have a firm first hand opinion of the precise nature of the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it is my sense that, in the main, OWS participants are a peaceful, if somewhat scruffy group, who, contrary to a host of MSM reports, are neither violent nor criminal. In any event, even were the movement peopled entirely by nothing but some aggregation of entitled, snot nosed layabouts and/or execrable street thugs, the group's collective shortcomings and transgressions would pale beside those of the banksters and their wayward political enablers occupying our nation's capital.
In that sense, we would do well to not traduce the messenger let alone slay him. And by way of answering my own question, we would also do well to recognize some of the salient characteristics of this movement and its brief history as we try to figure out what Occupy Wall Street amounts to?
Here are a few key observations that, to date, I believe to be true about the Occupy Wall Street movement.
1.) Whatever hierarchy may exist within OWS it is, in fact, a youth movement. Many of the protesters are approximately of college age, most are under thirty.
2.) Unlike the Vietnam and Civil Rights era protesters the OWS youth are undeniably economically less well situated than both their parents and grandparents. More importantly, they are keenly aware of their condition, if, perhaps, a bit confused about how events and trends have conspired to leave them on the wrong side of the tracks financially and economically.
3.) So far, nothing the protestors have experienced by way of a response from the so called Powers That Be could be thought of as encouraging them to hold onto whatever faith in the system they may still possess. And that's understating the matter.
The following points are conjecture:
1.) Demographically, their numbers are all but certain to grow in the years ahead.
2.) Increasingly, for purposes of self esteem and survival there will be very little to encourage Occupy Wall Street protesters to continue to practice a mode of protest that is peaceful since it has garnered so little for the movement. Put another way, as Gerald Celente would say, those who have nothing to lose, lose it. The authorities have shown their hand in this regard. And even as the government prepare for greater unrest they all but guarantee that there will be more strife.
3.) The other strain of protest, besides outright and open defiance, will emerge in a different form that will constitute a kind of middle ground between peaceful protest and the throwing of molotov cocktails. This form of protest might even become a kind of nation building movement though that may be a bit grandiose and ambitious for what will, at the outset, amount to nothing less than a campaign of dropping out. Communities, hard scrabble ones, will form out of necessity and the values and ways of being that define these communities will be at variance with the values that have defined U.S. society for generations.
4.) The government will attempt to disrupt this movement. They already are engaged in preempting it if one looks at the recent passage of laws pertaining to the growing of one's own food. The government will fail, though they will, as is their wont, create a lot of misery on their way to a well deserved defeat.
In conclusion, the Occupy Wall Street Movement, though it has achieved very little, if anything, towards reigning in or redressing the crimes of the banking and so called financial services industry-which, for all intents and purposes doesn't even exist anymore on Wall Street- has, perhaps, taken the first steps towards setting in motion something far more profound, a society (within our society) that operates along genuinely different principles than those that inform the functioning of institutions that are now under protest.
I'm afraid I don't get out enough to have a firm first hand opinion of the precise nature of the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it is my sense that, in the main, OWS participants are a peaceful, if somewhat scruffy group, who, contrary to a host of MSM reports, are neither violent nor criminal. In any event, even were the movement peopled entirely by nothing but some aggregation of entitled, snot nosed layabouts and/or execrable street thugs, the group's collective shortcomings and transgressions would pale beside those of the banksters and their wayward political enablers occupying our nation's capital.
In that sense, we would do well to not traduce the messenger let alone slay him. And by way of answering my own question, we would also do well to recognize some of the salient characteristics of this movement and its brief history as we try to figure out what Occupy Wall Street amounts to?
Here are a few key observations that, to date, I believe to be true about the Occupy Wall Street movement.
1.) Whatever hierarchy may exist within OWS it is, in fact, a youth movement. Many of the protesters are approximately of college age, most are under thirty.
2.) Unlike the Vietnam and Civil Rights era protesters the OWS youth are undeniably economically less well situated than both their parents and grandparents. More importantly, they are keenly aware of their condition, if, perhaps, a bit confused about how events and trends have conspired to leave them on the wrong side of the tracks financially and economically.
3.) So far, nothing the protestors have experienced by way of a response from the so called Powers That Be could be thought of as encouraging them to hold onto whatever faith in the system they may still possess. And that's understating the matter.
The following points are conjecture:
1.) Demographically, their numbers are all but certain to grow in the years ahead.
2.) Increasingly, for purposes of self esteem and survival there will be very little to encourage Occupy Wall Street protesters to continue to practice a mode of protest that is peaceful since it has garnered so little for the movement. Put another way, as Gerald Celente would say, those who have nothing to lose, lose it. The authorities have shown their hand in this regard. And even as the government prepare for greater unrest they all but guarantee that there will be more strife.
3.) The other strain of protest, besides outright and open defiance, will emerge in a different form that will constitute a kind of middle ground between peaceful protest and the throwing of molotov cocktails. This form of protest might even become a kind of nation building movement though that may be a bit grandiose and ambitious for what will, at the outset, amount to nothing less than a campaign of dropping out. Communities, hard scrabble ones, will form out of necessity and the values and ways of being that define these communities will be at variance with the values that have defined U.S. society for generations.
4.) The government will attempt to disrupt this movement. They already are engaged in preempting it if one looks at the recent passage of laws pertaining to the growing of one's own food. The government will fail, though they will, as is their wont, create a lot of misery on their way to a well deserved defeat.
In conclusion, the Occupy Wall Street Movement, though it has achieved very little, if anything, towards reigning in or redressing the crimes of the banking and so called financial services industry-which, for all intents and purposes doesn't even exist anymore on Wall Street- has, perhaps, taken the first steps towards setting in motion something far more profound, a society (within our society) that operates along genuinely different principles than those that inform the functioning of institutions that are now under protest.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Seeing is believing.
Some number of years ago I predicted that The Catholic Church was in a terminal state of decline. I think the trend has been pretty clear. Here's some more evidence of the well deserved fall of The Vatican.
Friday, October 21, 2011
The Secret
Hello, is anybody out there? I wouldn't blame you one bit if you weren't. I know this post won't wow you, but obviously the following tidbit-another one in a very long list of pieces from Yahoo designed to manage the expectations and perceptions of those teeming masses who are seemingly inexorably downwardly mobile- is one I feel worth posting.
What's the secret of living well, well, mind you, on eleven grand a year? Well, let's just say that the secret is A.) no secret at all, and B.) once knowing the secret, not one man or woman in a million could successfully follow the prescription, because C.) no one can live well on eleven grand a year in the U.S.A.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Ask Yourself...
Why do we have all the taxes listed at the link? Are they necessary or even advised? I realize the nation is far more populated then it was one hundred years ago, and substantially more complex, broadly speaking, than a century ago, but how much government-since that is what all these taxes go to support-do we need? I emphasize the word need because if we don't require them they should be eliminated. Perhaps another way to look at the problem is to ask ourselves how much tax payer supported government benefits those it is meant to support, namely the citizenry, (and in many cases non citizens) versus simply supporting the economic and financial maintenance of those who are employed by the government irrespective of the cost, broadly defined, to the rest of the nation's citizenry.
I posit that, at the very least, a national experiment be undertaken wherein the elimination of many of the tax levies on the aforesaid list occurs for some decent interval so we can come to an answer regarding the question of whether such taxes are justified.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
This is a Joke, Right?
Apparently it isn't meant as a joke, but if you think this plan is anything but another hopeless dodge by legislatwhores eying next year's elections, think again. Lets start with the most glaring bit of evidence that what we are dealing with from the, so called, "Gang of Six" is just more crapulous kabuki theater. Hold on to your hat, folks, but this plan involves finding eighty billion dollars to cut from the most electrified third rail in U.S. politics, the military. Just to give you an idea of what eighty billion dollars amounts to in military spending these days, please note that the total cost of the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq had reached the 900 billion dollar mark in 2008, and that expenditure was considered supplemental to the 600 billion dollar plus official yearly budget. So, first they have to find what is a puny amount and then on finding it, they will cut it. Get the picture?
In addition to the far from courageous posture towards the nation's immense military spending, the Gang has decided to go after the tax code and reduce such things as the mortgage interest deduction. How savvy is that in the middle of a RE depression. Corporations will be taxed at a lower rate, and the alternative minimum tax will, it is said, be abolished. Then there's the once vaunted Social Security system, now a hapless, bleating, sacrificial lamb if ever there was one. You thought that Social Security was a third rail of U.S. politics did you? Well, not anymore. The Gang are going to see to it that, by certain accounting legerdemain no doubt, Social Security recipients will receive less.
In short, what this plan amounts to is merely 1.) a decrease in the rate of increase in U.S. government spending, and 2.) an exercise in engaging in the time honored canard of equating putative enhanced revenue projections (as a result of, in this case, diddling with the tax code and eliminating certain key deductions) with the actual act of really, truly putting the financial and fiscal condition of the nation on a new, healthy track. Setting aside the absolute certainty one should have that any projected revenue enhancements are going to be exaggerated, this pending agreement-as yet uncertain to pass, but out of the gate in impressive fashion- is absolutely more of the same smoke and mirrors rubbish from our political class that one has long since come to feel is de rigueur.
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