Tag Archives | Financial Crisis

Five More Countries For Goldman Sachs To Take Over

By on November 23, 2011 in News 3

octoNow that Goldman Sachs has achieved coups d’etats in Greece and Italy, DJ Pangburn at Death and Taxes lays out five additional countries ripe for bankdom to install leaders:

We present five other countries where Goldman Sachs could install bankers as heads of state.

Where to begin, though? Originally, I considered Ireland to be a prime candidate for some Goldman Sachs coup d’etat action, but it seems that Ireland already got the old Goldman Sachs in/out in the form of Peter Sutherland, a non-executive director of Goldman Sachs, as well as a non-executive at BP. Here are five countries that could use a little Goldman Sachs in/out.

Spain: With concerns in Italy lessening amidst the installation of ex-Goldman man Mario Monti as PM, bankers and investors in the eurozone and abroad are looking to Spain, which the BBC is calling the “weaker link in the eurozone chain.”

This is obviously the first country that requires a Goldman Sachs premiership.

… Read the rest

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Bankers Undemocratically Installed As Heads Of Italy And Greece

By on November 18, 2011 in News 19

Pg-12-eurozone-graphicIn case you missed it, over the past eight days, the prime ministers of two major European nations stepped down. The newly appointed, not elected, leaders of Italy and Greece will be Mario Monti (formerly of Goldman Sachs) and Lucas Papademos (formerly head of the Central Bank of Greece). A signal that marriage between capitalism and democracy is coming to an end? The Independent writes:

The ascension of Mario Monti to the Italian prime ministership is remarkable for more reasons than it is possible to count. By replacing the scandal-surfing Silvio Berlusconi, Italy has dislodged the undislodgeable. By imposing rule by unelected technocrats, it has suspended the normal rules of democracy, and maybe democracy itself. And by putting a senior adviser at Goldman Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic.

… Read the rest

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Congress Got 25% Richer During Height of Recession

By on November 5, 2011 in News 14

Rich CongressSeems like time to Occupy Congress … Paul Singer and Jennifer Yachnin report on Roll Call:

Members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion in 2010, a nearly 25 percent increase over the 2008 total, according to a Roll Call analysis of Members’ financial disclosure forms.

Nearly 90 percent of that increase is concentrated in the 50 richest Members of Congress.

Two years ago, Roll Call found that the minimum net worth of House Members was slightly more than $1 billion; Senators had a combined minimum worth of $651 million for a Congressional total of $1.65 billion. Roll Call calculates minimum net worth by adding the minimum values of all reported assets and subtracting the minimum values of all reported liabilities.

According to financial disclosure forms filed by Members of Congress this year, the minimum net worth in the House has jumped to $1.26 billion, and Senate net worth has climbed to at least $784 million, for a Congressional total of $2.04 billion.

… Read the rest

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We’re Facing Worst Financial Crisis Ever – Bank Of England

By on October 7, 2011 in News 9

When uber-establishment figures like Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England (UK central bank) warn of an impending financial apocalypse, you know things are out of control. The Telegraph has the bad news:

The world is facing the worst financial crisis since at least the 1930s “if not ever”, the Governor of the Bank of England said last night.

Sir Mervyn King was speaking after the decision by the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee to put £75billion of newly created money into the economy in a desperate effort to stave off a new credit crisis and a UK recession…

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Fiat Money Explained (Video)

By on September 26, 2011 in News 14

From YouTube description: “Despite every effort by governments, the gap between rich and poor continues to grow. It is now the biggest it has even been in history. All sorts of reasons for this have been proffered, but few, however, seem to realise that is a simple, inevitable consequence of our system of money and credit. This video, a shorter version of which appears in the film The Four Horsemen, explains …”

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Occupying Wall Street On A Saturday Afternoon

By on September 26, 2011 in News 23

A Report from A Front That May Soon Be Shut Down

Before you read on, watch this: a video from the base camp of the #OccupyWall Street protest that is now in its seventh day. It’s called “No One Can Predict the Moment of Revolution.”  (The video was produced by Martyna Starosta and her friend Iva)

These are the faces of a wannabe revolution, more than a protest but not yet quite a major movement. The spirit is infectious perhaps because of the sincerity of the participants and their obvious commitment to their ideals.

Occupy Wall Street is more than a protest; it is as much an exercise in building a leaderless, bottom-up resistance community with a more democratic approach to challenging the system where everyone is encouraged to have a say.

But saying that also leads to a conflict between my emotional identification with the kids that have rallied in this small park/public space on Liberty Street to exercise some liberty,  with a despairing analysis that wishes this enterprise well but harbors deep doubts about its staying power and impact…

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The Men Who Crashed The World

By on September 21, 2011 in News 10

In a fantastic new series called Meltdown, Al Jazeera looks at the people and machinations around the globe that were behind the financial collapse of 2008, beginning with the assertion that for a brief period, Henry Paulson “was the de facto president of the United States.”

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Dooming Ourselves Deeper Into Debt

By on July 21, 2011 in News 3

William HogarthAaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:

The showdown over the budget and the debt ceiling continues to drag on and Congress is still attempting to cut spending down to nothing but defense, tax breaks for the wealthy and their own salaries. While politicians continue to rail against taxes and spending and the media hypes the “gang of six”, it seems that we’re quietly moving past an interesting historical marker. Ten years ago, former President George W. Bush signed the first round of tax cuts and the Treasury Department began to borrow billions in order to pay for them.

Think Progress reports that on August 1, 2001, the AP ran a story on the Treasury announcing its intent to borrow $51 billion to cover the tax rebate checks handed out by the Bush Administration. In addition, the article highlighted the Democratic argument against the Bush tax cuts: “Democrats argued that President Bush’s $1.35 trillion 10-year tax-cut package, which includes the rebate checks, is too large, and they expressed fears it will sow the seeds for a return to days of government red ink.… Read the rest

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