Chairman of Goldman Sachs International Was – Until Last Year – Also Chairman of BP

Janine Wedel has written extensively on how the “shadow elite” rule the world and about the “flexians” – the movers and shakers of the shadow elite who glide across borders, and structure overlapping (and not fully revealed) roles in government, business, media, and think tanks to serve their own agendas.

Wedel says that flexians wear many hats both within and outside of government, and use their networks of contacts to influence policy – are warping our democracy and the rule of law.

Peter Sutherland is the quintessential flexian.'

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Geithner Rushes To Sabotage German Derivatives Ban

The German government is now fully committed to escalating its ongoing counterattack against international financial speculation. These moves represent an historical watershed as Germany becomes the first major economic power to roll back the tide of financial globalization, under which crackdowns on hedge funds, derivatives, and the world gambling casino were branded as taboo for national governments.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has announced that the Merkel government is sending a draft bill to the German parliament (the Bundestag) targeting "turbulence" and "volatility" through further regulation of "certain transactions [which] amplify the crisis." The bill reaffirms the most fundamental German measure enacted so far, the May 18 blanket ban on all naked credit default swaps issued against the treasury bonds of the eurozone nations.

This ban represents the most aggressive move anywhere in the OECD against these most toxic derivatives, which have figured prominently in the AIG bankruptcy and the recent Goldman Sachs Abacus scandal. They are also the derivatives being widely used by hedge fund hyenas and zombie banks to attack such nations as Greece , Spain , and the rest of the Southern tier of the euro.'

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Obama’s Supreme Pick Kagan Is A Bankster Operative

Kagan sat on a Goldman Sachs advisory council between 2005 and 2008. It was her job to offer “analysis and advice to Goldman Sachs and its clients.”

Obama mouthpiece Robert Gibbs and the Justice Department are now engaged in frenetic damage control over Kagan’s Goldman connection. Kagan’s role working for the “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity” (as Matt Taibbi described Goldman) should not be dismissed lightly. Kagan will obviously serve the interests of the banksters if she makes it to the Supreme Court (adding to the corporatist influence already well entrenched there). Republicans need to hammer Kagan on this during her confirmation hearing. But then Republicans are the right hand on the zombie One Party grocery clerk known as Congress. Difficult questions will not be asked.'

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Goldman Sachs Set to Plan Sell-Off of Ontario Assets

Ontario's Liberal government has put Goldman Sachs, the huge banking and investment firm being investigated by the US Congress for fraud, in charge of selling off Ontario's public assets. For some reason, the involvement of this ethically challenged firm has, to date, failed to ignite controversy in Canada.

In its March budget, the government announced a plan to raise money by placing Crown assets, including public power, liquor stores, and the lottery commission into a combined fund and sell 49 percent of it privately. Goldman Sachs, which has specialized for decades in organizing privatizations around the world - often representing both buyers and sellers - is being paid $200,000 to organize the scheme. In the USA, for instance, the company has supervised highway privatization deals in which it acted as a financial advisor to the state at the same time as it invested in companies vying for the highways.'

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Stock Market Collapse: More Goldman Market Rigging

Last week, Goldman Sachs was on the congressional hot seat, grilled for fraud in its sale of complicated financial products called “synthetic CDOs.” This week the heat was off, as all eyes turned to the attack of the shorts on Greek sovereign debt and the dire threat of a sovereign Greek default. By Thursday, Goldman’s fraud had slipped from the headlines and Congress had been cowed into throwing in the towel on its campaign to break up the too-big-to-fail banks. On Friday, Goldman was in settlement talks with the SEC.

Goldman and Wall Street reign. Congress appears helpless to discipline the big banks, just as the European Central Bank appears helpless to prevent the collapse of the European Union. . . . Or are they?'

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LLoyd Blankfein, Vampire at Large

When historians look back on this time of the most pervasive corruptions at all levels of society, one name will stand as the icon above all the rest. That name will be Goldman Sachs. Lloyd Blankfein’s comment about doing God’s work will also be remembered as the ultimate in hubris and sheer naked, panting greed. Like the proverbial goat, which pisses all over himself in the runaway excitement of pending coitus, Lloyd will be a karmic bookmark and the face of his times; a man without shame. Lloyd is the bridegroom at the marriage of The Whore of Babylon.'

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Scandal: Obama, Gore, Goldman, Joyce Foundation CCX Partners to Fleece USA

Glenn tells us that a watchdog has steered him to the collusion between Barrack Obama, George Soros, Al Gore, Goldman Sachs, Franklin Raines (super crooked Fannie Mae head), CCX, and Generation Investment Management (GIM-London based co-founded by AL Gore).

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Profitable Depopulation Plot Links JP Morgan-Chase And Goldman Sachs To Vaccination Contaminations And Big Pharma Corruption

A medical investigation into suspicious outbreaks and propaganda used to sell drugs and vaccines has exposed investment bankers at JP Morgan-Chase (JPMC) and Goldman Sachs (GS) for plotting to shock/stress, frighten, poison, and kill billions of people most profitably--pharmaceutically--according to the Editor-in-Chief of Medical Veritas journal.

While researching a powerful Partnership for New York City (PFNYC), uniting Wall Street's wealthiest industrialists, Harvard-trained public health expert, Dr. Leonard Horowitz, and investigative journalist, Sherri Kane, discovered shocking evidence of a conspiracy to commit global genocide by generating diseases and death to advance profitable pharmaceutical depopulation.'

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Bring Down Goldman Sachs and Expose the Financial Coup

Have you heard the news? It’s everywhere! The SEC and Congress have all of a sudden sprung to life and are now “getting tough” on Goldman Sachs. Is this all the first phase of a long-awaited investigation that will reveal the causes of our current economic crisis, or is this just more show trials and psychological operations designed to manipulate public opinion and make the American people feel that our elected officials are finally standing up to their campaign funders on Wall Street?

First off, let’s address these SEC charges against Goldman Sachs. At first glance you might think, oh big deal, this is just a minor civil suit that only indicts a low-level Goldman employee. Goldman will just throw some money at it and it will most likely go away. After all, Wall Street firms have already thrown over $430 billion out to derail 1500 cases against them, so what will make this any different?'

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Goldman Boss Lloyd Blankfein Denies Moral Obligation Towards Clients

Lloyd Blankfein has admitted that he believes Goldman Sachs has no moral obligation to tell clients it is betting against a product it is asking them to buy.

The stark admission – made by the bank's chairman at the end of a more than nine-hour marathon hearing before the US Senate – came in spite of his assertion that "I think people trust us" as he tried to fend off accusations that Goldman inflated the US housing bubble.

Senator Carl Levin told the veteran banker that he "wouldn't trust" Goldman as he repeatedly asked whether the bank would disclose its position "when they're buying something you solicit them to buy, and then you're taking a position against them?"'

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Possible Supreme Court Pick Had Ties With Goldman Sachs

A top prospect for the Supreme Court was a paid member of an advisory panel for the embattled investment firm Goldman Sachs, federal financial disclosures show.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan was a member of the Research Advisory Council of the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute, according to the financial disclosures she filed when President Obama appointed her last year to her current post. Kagan served on the Goldman panel from 2005 through 2008, when she was dean of Harvard Law School, and received a $10,000 stipend for her service in 2008, her disclosure forms show.

A spokesman for Goldman Sachs did not respond to requests for comment Monday.'

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Goldman Profited from Market Crash

A US Senate panel has revealed emails that show Goldman Sachs Group Inc profited massively by engaging in the sale of investments that were structured to fail.

Senators say the Wall Street giant investment bank bundled toxic mortgages into complex financial instruments. It then manipulated credit rating agencies to give excellent ratings to these products.

The head of the Senate panel, Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan claims that Goldman sold the toxic securities to its investors.

In some cases, the company bet against the financial products it sold to investors and profited at the expense of its clients.'

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The Story of the Financial Debacle: Goldman Plays, We Pay

The story of the financial debacle will end the way it began, with the super-hustlers from Goldman Sachs at the center of the action and profiting wildly. Never in U.S. history has one company wielded such destructive power over our political economy, irrespective of whether a Republican or a Democrat happened to be president.

At least the robber barons of old built railroads and steel mills, whereas Goldman Sachs makes its money placing bets on people losing their homes. On Tuesday, Goldman announced a 91 percent jump in profit to $3.46 billion for the quarter, while the dreams of millions of families continue to be foreclosed and unemployment hovers at 10 percent because of a crisis that that very company did much to cause.'

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Goldman Sachs and the Mega Banks: Too Big To Obey The Law

But as the White House surveys the battlefield this morning and considers how best to press home the advantage, one major fact dominates. Any pursuit of Goldman and others through our legal system increases uncertainty and could even cause a political run on the bank – through politicians and class action lawsuits piling on.

And, as no doubt Jamie Dimon (the articulate and very well connected head of JP Morgan Chase) already told Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner over the weekend, if we “demonize” our big banks in this fashion, it will undermine our economic recovery and could weaken financial stability around the world.'

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Obama Repaying His Masters at Goldman Sachs

President Obama is sponsoring a bill by the Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd(D-CT) that would reward the Financial Firm Goldman Sachs with up to Billions of Dollars. The bill implements a $50 billion resolution fund to the firms creditors through fees that would come from banks and other businesses, which the bill calls a "nonbank financial company." Critics are calling it a "backdoor bailouts" to Goldman Sachs who was already payed $12.9 billion in tax dollars through the bailout of AIG.

Supporters are denying the bill is a bailout because its demands the removal of some management positions but Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission member Peter Wallison said "that act - paying off the creditors when the government takes over a failing firm - is a bailout. It doesn't matter that the management lose their jobs, or that the shareholders get nothing. When the creditors are aware that they will get a better deal with the failure of a large company than they will get with a small one that goes the ordinary route to bankruptcy, that is a bailout".'

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London Observer: Now We Know The Truth. The Financial Meltdown Wasn’t a Mistake – It Was a Con

The global financial crisis, it is now clear, was caused not just by the bankers' colossal mismanagement. No, it was due also to the new financial complexity offering up the opportunity for widespread, systemic fraud. Friday's announcement that the world's most famous investment bank, Goldman Sachs, is to face civil charges for fraud brought by the American regulator is but the latest of a series of investigations that have been launched, arrests made and charges made against financial institutions around the world. Big Finance in the 21st century turns out to have been Big Fraud. Yet Britain, centre of the world financial system, has not yet levelled charges against any bank; all that we've seen is the allegation of a high-level insider dealing ring which, embarrassingly, involves a banker advising the government. We have to live with the fiction that our banks and bankers are whiter than white, and any attempt to investigate them and their institutions will lead to a mass exodus to the mountains of Switzerland. The politicians of the Labour and Tory party alike are Bambis amid the wolves.

Just consider the roll call beyond Goldman Sachs. In Ireland Sean FitzPatrick, the ex-chair of the Anglo Irish bank – a bank which looks after the Post Office's financial services – was arrested last month and questioned over alleged fraud. In Iceland last week a dossier assembled by its parliament on the Icelandic banks – huge lenders in Britain – was handed to its public prosecution service. A court-appointed examiner found that collapsed investment bank Lehman knowingly manipulated its balance sheet to make it look stronger than it was – accounts originally audited by the British firm Ernst and Young and given the legal green light by the British firm Linklaters. In Switzerland UBS has been defending itself from the US's Inland Revenue Service for allegedly running 17,000 offshore accounts to evade tax. Be sure there are more revelations to come – except in saintly Britain.'

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Goldman Sachs Set to Pay £3.5bn in Bonuses

Goldman Sachs, the world’s biggest investment bank that is now assailed by accusations of fraud, is poised to reignite controversy over bankers’ bonuses by paying its staff more than £3.5 billion for just three months’ work.'

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Europeans Won’t Be Amused by Alleged Goldman Scam

Europeans won’t be amused by the alleged Goldman Sachs scam. ABN Amro, and therefore ultimately Royal Bank of Scotland, ended up losing $841 million in the allegedly fraudulent collateralised debt obligation investment concocted by the investment bank. Meanwhile, IKB, the bust German bank, lost nearly $150 million.

These European banks were some of the biggest financial mugs in the last years of the credit bubble. But the allegations levelled by the Securities and Exchange Commission don’t concern the folly of the buyers and insurers of subprime mortgage investments. Goldman is accused of misleading investors. The UK and German states, which bailed the banks out, will be livid if the case is proved. Goldman denies the charges.'

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Goldman Sachs Charged With Fraud

A fraud charge has been filled on behalf of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Goldman Sachs Group Incorporated.

The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accused Goldman Sachs Group of structuring and marketing a "synthetic Collateralized-Debt-Obligation" or CDO, tied to sub-prime mortgages.'

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Max Keiser Takes Offense to Goldman Sachs Story