[quote][Goldman CEO] Blankfein began to raise his personal- security threat level early in the financial crisis. He keeps a summer home near the Hamptons, where unrestricted public access would put him at risk if the angry mobs rose up and marched to the East End of Long Island.
To the Barricades
He tried to buy a house elsewhere without attracting attention as the financial crisis unfolded in 2007, a move that was foiled by the New York Post. Then, Blankfein got permission from the local authorities to install a security gate at his house two months before Bear Stearns Cos. collapsed.
This is the kind of foresight that Goldman Sachs is justly famous for. Blankfein somehow anticipated the persecution complex his fellow bankers would soon suffer. Surely, though, this man who can afford to surround himself with a private army of security guards isn’t sleeping with the key to a gun safe under his pillow. The thought is just too bizarre to be true.
So maybe other senior people at Goldman Sachs have gone out and bought guns, and they know something. But what?
Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary during the bailout and a former Goldman Sachs CEO, let it slip during testimony to Congress last summer when he explained why it was so critical to bail out Goldman Sachs, and — oh yes — the other banks. People “were unhappy with the big discrepancies in wealth, but they at least believed in the system and in some form of market-driven capitalism. But if we had a complete meltdown, it could lead to people questioning the basis of the system.”
Torn Curtain
There you have it. The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one. Goldman Sachs blew its cover when the firm’s revenue from trading reached a record $27 billion in the first nine months of this year, and a public that was writhing in financial agony caught on that the profits earned on taxpayer capital were going to pay employee bonuses.[/quote]
[quote=Arraya]The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one.[/quote]
Exactly. Those who think this mess is a failure of free markets have no clue what a free market is.
[quote=Arraya]The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one.[/quote]
Exactly. Those who think this mess is a failure of free markets have no clue what a free market is.
[quote=Arraya]The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one.[/quote]
Exactly. Those who think this mess is a failure of free markets have no clue what a free market is.
[quote=Arraya]The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one.[/quote]
Exactly. Those who think this mess is a failure of free markets have no clue what a free market is.
[quote=Arraya]The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one.[/quote]
Exactly. Those who think this mess is a failure of free markets have no clue what a free market is.
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