Comments on: Is Goldman’s Share Offering an Attempt to Further Ensnare the Government?

By: Louise Montgomery

Louise Montgomery — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:52:16 +0000

I’m on the same page with Adair and a couple of other who hinted at the same thing: Throw the (ostensibly “elected”) bums out! All of them, GOP and Democratic. They represent the wealthy top 0.01 percent, not the rest of us. The inside-the-beltway crowd is at least as corrupt, morally if not legally, as the GS and Fed Reserve crew.
But the ultimate responsibility for house cleaning belongs to We The People. And we have been to busy amusing ourselves to death to make our elected officials do their jobs.

By: Carlos Comesana

Carlos Comesana — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 11:06:33 +0000

Repayment could be legal but not moral. Ex- secretary Paulson asking for taxpayers money with a “don’t question” condition and thereafter looking for Congress approval in knees in front of Ms. Pelosi shows a case of conflict of interest.

By: John Adair

John Adair — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:19:57 +0000

We need to get off our ass and throw all these incumbents out and have an open investigation on all these crooks who took money from these institutions. I agree someone should shine the light on these crooks but it won’t happen because the major newspapers and television are in on it also. If the people of the U.S. don’t take care of this with revolts and uprisings this will continue. Thanks and keep informing people of this highway robbery that is going on.

By: David Wieldt

David Wieldt — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:08:05 +0000

Shah,
Please stop referring to Wall Street as a ‘free market’. The cozy relationship of Wall Street Banks with the Federal Government, a relationship controlled through a Private Bank called The Federal Reserve, who counterfeits fiat currency at will, earning interest paid by you and me – that’s not a free market. (Even Alan Greenspan admitted in an interview that The Federal Reserve is not beholden to the President of the United States).
By referring to this system as a ‘free market’ or even ‘capitalism’, you are giving ammunition to all those socialists who hold this failure up as a justification for destroying what capitalist vestiges we have left.
Thanks.

By: li jackson

li jackson — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:12:52 +0000

If memory serves me correctly, Mr Paulson had his root in GS — this goes a long way in explaining why GS seemed “that much smarter” than the rest of the pack.

Talk about “curious relationship!”

By: Tom Beach

Tom Beach — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:24:18 +0000

We, the investors of America and the world, have a choice. We now know that Goldman and a lot of others play fast and loose with our money. We are now asking some hard questions about how they made the Ponzi scheme work all these years. And the answers are not satisfactory when one knows the methods used.
Goldman planning to sell a lot of stock to finance their attempt at ‘management indepedence’ is a major dilution of their already thin stock. And for what? So they can go back to business as usual, ie. pay themselves obscene salaries and bonuses. Masters of the Universe and Bonfires of the Vane.
Excuse me, but I think that I will no longer play these games.
Knowledge is power. My money is leaving town and NOT coming back. Those who think that Goldman is the place to invest after all this light has shown just what they are will get exactly what they deserve….taken to the cleaners….again.
Mr Rogers has it right. Invest in real things that are needed by real industry and businesses that create things. These manipulations of money are non productive except to the manipulators themselves.
I for one actively hope Goldman fails. That may be hoping that our government also fails (they so infiltrate it) but maybe then we can start over a with relatively clean beginning.
When one pulls off a leach one bleeds for a while. But then one is free of the blood sucker and can begin to use what it was stealing to built strength again.
I invested with Goldman for many years. They made me money. But in all consciousness, I can not allow them to use my wealth ever again. That is final.
Aloha from Hawaii.

By: richard avard

richard avard — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:06:38 +0000

Wall Street as we know it should be shut down, It is nothing but a big Casino that is able to pocket proftis but pass losses onto the taxpayer

It creates no new wealth It merely plays games with real weath that has been converted to dollars It exactly like Vegas. No new wealth is created. Old wealth is merely robbed from its creators who to make more dollars through Speculatin (gambling)

The fact that the Fed Govt did not put Wall Street and the Big Banks through a formal Bankruptcy which would have exposed its exesses and coruption proves beyond any doubt who the Feds really really work for, and it aint the People

I think both major Parties signed their death warrants when they both went along with the Bailout. The People will prevail

By: Gary

Gary — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:01:22 +0000

This article lacks basic research, and spreads the wrong picture. What has occurred is not “the excesses of the free-market”. It really has nothing to do with the exercise of free-market practices, and everything to do with the dismantling of the free-market, as predicted and warned of over at least the past 2 centuries by the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Bastiat, Andrew Jackson, and dozens of others who spoke of the dangers of central banking. What has occurred is the straight out of the playbook of the cartel that initiated the Federal Reserve in 1910, and sold it to a corrupt government for inseption in 1913. Read, “Creature from Jekyll Island”, by G. Edward Griffin for a documented play by play…a book that was written 10 years ago.

By: Barbara

Barbara — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:29:37 +0000

Just as important is the last paragraphs of your article. Why isn’t more light shone on government’s role in all this mess? I have been expounding on the fact that in forcing executives to curb what they take in compensation and trying to get money back from those executives in companies that were bailed out by taxpayer money, the media doesn’t demand that our congressmen, senators and president who were in bed with them, voted them the bailouts and basically NEVER REGULATED them in the first place are KEEPING THE LOBBYING MONEY AND CAMPAIGN DONATIONS they received from these companies. Why isn’t the media focusing on this and putting similar pressure on them to return that money to the American taxpayer as they are in their focus on bank executives? Why isn’t the focus NOT JUST on bank executives like GS and how their fingers are everywhere in this mess but how involved various congressmen and senators are responsible as well for all this by failing to regulate: Phil Gramm in getting rid of Glass Steagall, Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd on failure to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after being the #1 and #3 (or maybe it was #7) recipients of Lobbying money from Fannie Mae, Barack Obama whose #1 campaign donor was Franklin Raines with the millions in severance he took from Fannie Mae and which he used to fund Obama’s presidential campaign, Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, who served on the board of Fannie Mae and took money from them several years ago when all this crap was going on but couldn’t bother to check into this and do something about it, Nancy Pelosi who is incensed by auto CEOs arriving in private planes to ask Congress for more money but who wants a bigger jet to go home to California to do the people’s business and who is allowing the automatic pay raises to members of Congress to go through while millions of Americans are laid off thanks to failures by Congress to properly control and regulate this stuff, Chris Cox at the SEC getting rid of the uptick rule on short selling which was not broken and didn’t need to be fixed, Eric Cantor who took money from AIG – AD NAUSEUM! They should all be forced to pay this money back and the press should shine a HUGE LIGHT on these shenanigans and metaphorically tar and feather them in print until they either do so or go to jail.

By: Steve Jossem

Steve Jossem — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 12:47:05 +0000

If memory serves me correctly, going way back, I recall the Government bailing out Goldman Sachs on Mexican Pesos and on Penn Central bonds. Goldman is the Haliburton of finacial companies.