Robert Scheer: Goldman Plays, We Pay

from Truthdig:



Goldman Plays, We Pay
Posted on Apr 20, 2010

By Robert Scheer


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.

It was Goldman-Vice-Chairman-turned-Treasury-Secretary Robert Rubin who pushed through the radical financial deregulation during the Clinton presidency that made the derivatives madness possible. When Bill Clinton was asked on ABC’s Sunday show “This Week” if he now regretted the advice he received back then from Rubin and his protégé Lawrence Summers, now a top Obama adviser, he responded: “On derivatives, yeah I think they were wrong and I was wrong to take it. …”

Thanks to that bad advice, Clinton signed off on the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which categorically exempted those derivatives from any existing law or regulatory body. It was that exemption that freed Goldman Sachs and others on Wall Street to run wild in packaging collateralized debt obligations, and their attendant swaps, which turned people’s home into nothing more than gambling chips. The more suckers to be conned into those mortgage obligations, the better for the financial casino—until it had to be saved by taxpayers from spiraling completely out of control. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/goldman_plays_we_pay_20100420/?ln

"Goldman Sachs makes its money placing bets on people losing their homes"