Читать книгу Lies of a Century - Heiko Schrang - Страница 21
ОглавлениеAn interview by the BBC in the autumn of 2011 was the cause of much upheaval and outrage in the world of banking and politics.[55]
The TV station questioned the stock trader Alessio Rastani about the economic crisis in Europe. He, amongst other things, said: “Governments cannot solve this crisis.” And then he went on to say something ‘monstrous’: “Not governments, but Goldman Sachs rules the world.” With this statement he breached the unwritten laws of the banking world. Immediately afterwards a campaign of vicious backbiting and slander ensued via the established media, in which the Daily Telegraph particularly excelled. The paper accused him of being an “attention seeker” who only deals in stocks as a hobby.[56]
Goldman Sachs is more than a bank. It is an invisible empire with assets under management of 700 billion, which is more than twice the budget of the nation of France.
The dubious Goldman Sachs activities attracted public attention for the first time during the Abacus scandal in 2007. Abacus was a risky mortgage loans that Goldman Sachs was bundling and selling on to their clients. This maximum risk product was given an AAA rating, as the safest investment product.[57] The scandal was that Goldman Sachs itself speculated on the decline of these papers, thereby betting against their own clients. Half a year later it ended in mass insolvencies of the American property owners and Abacus dropped in value. This resulted in Goldman Sachs losing its investments.
Even worse, in the same year Goldman Sachs was so audacious as to engage in highly speculative trades betting on the insolvency of American households.[58]
In autumn 2008 the situation changed dramatically and it appeared as if the entire system of financial capitalism threatened to collapse. Especially grave was that the strongest competitor of Goldman Sachs, the Lehman Brothers bank, was nearly facing bankruptcy. The American finance minister Hank Paulson refused to help, citing his unwillingness to spend taxpayer money on the rescue of Lehman Brothers as the reason for his decision.
On September 19th, 2008 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had imposed a ban on naked sales of about 800 financial titles. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were ruined by naked sales, but the SEC did not view this as a cause to react. Unlike than with Goldman; after their own share price came under the same kind of pressures and sank by 20 percent in only three days, the ban on naked sales was lifted by SEC boss Christopher Cox, a former Goldman Sachs employee.
The Goldman Sachs competitors Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch were liquidated and Goldman Sachs along with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. left the insolvency massacre on Wall Street victoriously in the autumn of 2008. Unlike its competitors, Goldman Sachs was able to enjoy billions in rescue packages by the Bush administration.
At the same time the largest US insurance company AIG was facing bankruptcy as well. The explosive part is that if AIG had collapsed, Goldman Sachs would have lost about 10 billion Euros.
This sum represents no less than the exact sum of the loan that was granted to the AIG by the former Goldman Sachs boss Hank Paulson himself. He, in his role as finance minister, led secret talks with his former right hand at Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein. Blankfein, by now himself chairman of Goldman Sachs and Finance Minister Hank Paulson made the decision to rescue AIG.
The government, in reality the taxpayer, now accepted the debt as its own and paid for it. Without any losses incurred, Goldman Sachs was returned its 10 billion Euros.[59]
At the end of 2008, just as the banking world found itself in its worst crisis, Goldman Sachs made a profit of 1.5 billion Euros and was able to profit brilliantly from the demise of its main rivals.
When Greece’s entry to the Euro Zone was being discussed during the year 2000 and 2001, the New Yorker banks were immediately at hand. They supported the left of center government of Konstantinos Simitis with the required reduction of his budget deficit. They further re-organized their credit accounting in the dimensions of 15 billion Euros as well as employed a variety of financial sleight of hand trickery to conceal the additional loans from Brussels. In other words they helped Greece to fake their balance sheet.
In doing so, they misled the European Office of Statistics Eurostat in order to hide the real budget deficit only to make it re-appear once Greece was accepted into the Euro Zone.
In well-informed circles it is assumed that Goldman Sachs not only helped Greece, but also Italy to hide parts of its national debt in order to comply with the admission requirements of the Euro Zone. It is alleged to have been Draghi, the current head of the European Central Bank, and in the case of Greece, its Prime Minister Papadimos. In this time frame, the President of the Bilderberger Conference of 2011, EU Commissioner and head of the CFR, Mario Monti, succeeded the former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi in his office.
There is one thing connecting the three men, the common former employment for the investment bank Goldman Sachs and the common goal of an EU fiscal union in which national sovereignty no longer exists.
Mario Draghi for example was at Goldman Sachs (Europe), Vice President and Head of the department that shortly before he was heading it, helped Greece sugarcoat its balance sheet with a financial instrument called Swap[60], in order to conceal its national debt.
In order to reach their goals, Goldman Sachs continued to place its own people in high offices time and time again.
Romano Prodi for example was a consultant at Goldman Sachs, prime minister of Italy and later president of the European Commission.
In that time of cover-up maneuvers by Goldman Sachs, the man who was presented as a beacon of hope for the Greeks by the lobby, Loukas Papadimos, was the governor of the Greek national bank.
The fact that Mario Draghi got the blessing of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) was appointed as Head of the European Central Bank could be seen as the greatest coup of Goldman Sachs in Europe. The entanglement of their interests with politics is quite obvious. Bush’s Finance Minister Hank Paulson as well as Clinton’s Finance Minister Robert Rubin both came from Goldman Sachs. Obama’s Finance Minister Timothy Geithner and his Secretary of Commerce Robert Hormats also belong to the chosen few who at one point used to work for Goldman Sachs. Not to forget that Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank was once a Director at Goldman Sachs.
The former leaders of Goldman Sachs, who are partly to blame for the worst excess in the world of finance, are now appointed to solve the financial crisis. They impose austerity measures on their population that are supposed to be inevitable. One should be allowed to wonder whether they really are the right people to solve the crisis or whether we appointed the arsonists to act as the fire department.
Critics accuse the European lobby network of the US bank Goldman Sachs that it operates like a type of free mason lodge. To varying degrees the new president of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi, Italy’s head of state Mario Monti and Greek’s head of the transitional government Loukas Papadimos are figureheads of this tightly knit network.[61]
Since the establishment of the FED in 1913 governments came and went, Goldman Sachs as one of the co-founders of the FED remained and stands for the best money making machine that has ever come out of global capitalism.
Goldman Sachs is a financial empire on the sunny side that through their limitless greed for profits has turned the world into a giant casino. This even happens in the name of god, as Goldman Sachs head Blankfein phrased it: “I am merely a banker doing god’s work? [62]
Their god seems to be after more and more money. Driven by their insatiable greed for profit, they do business with anyone, no matter whether it is friend or foe.
| GOLDMAN SACHS: | |
|---|---|
| Hank Paulson: | Former Finance Minister of the USA, former CEO of Goldman Sachs |
| Christopher Cox: | Formerly worked at Goldman Sachs, now Head of the SEC |
| Lloyd Blankfein: | CEO of Goldman Sachs |
| Mario Draghi: | Former VP at Goldman Sachs International, 2006-2011 President of the Italian National Bank, since November 2011 President of the European Central Bank |
| Loukas Papadimos: | Formerly worked at Goldman Sachs, former Greek Prime Minister and former VP of the European Central Bank |
| Mario Monti: | Formerly Goldman Sachs, Italian Prime Minister |
| Robert Rubin: | Formerly Goldman Sachs, Finance Minister under Clinton, Advisor to Timothy Geithner |
| Timothy Geithner: | Formerly Goldman Sachs, US Finance Minister |
| Robert Hormats: | Formerly Goldman Sachs and Secretary of Commerce under Finance Minister Timothy Geithner |
| Robert Zoellick: | Director at Goldman Sachs – former President of the World Bank, was part of both Bush administrations, Senior and Junior |
| Alexander Dibelius: | German Head of Goldman Sachs and Advisor to Chancellor Angela Merkel |
| Peter Sutherland: | Works in international business affairs at Goldman Sachs, former EU Commissioner |
| Petros Christodoulou: | Formerly Goldman Sachs, now Head of the Greek Debt Office |
| Charles de Croisset: | Formerly Goldman Sachs, supervises the French equivalent of the SEC |
| Mark Patterson: | Lobbyist for Goldman Sachs and Advisor to Timothy Geithner |
| E. Gerald Corrigan: | Former Head of the FED and Goldman Sachs |
| Otmar Issing: | “International Advisor” to the US investment Bank Goldman Sachs, former Chief Economist of the European Central Bank |
| All of them were employed either directly at or as advisors to Goldman Sachs |
