Goldman Sachs: Running the Country Since 1999

Ten months after an election that purportedly would usher in a major reversal of our national priorities, beginning with a financial empire in free-fall, the New York Times this (Sunday) morning presents an "expose" on the cozy relationship between the federal government and Wall Street's biggest power broker and the one closest to U.S. monetary policy since the late 1990s - - Goldman Sachs. Today's Inquirer editorial page also wades into this morass of insider dealings and using the largest expenditure of taxpayer money to prop up one industry in world history. Where were the Times' crack investigative reporters when this was first announced in the back pages of the national press last September? - - and even worse where were they as the Obama administration took this major scam on the citizenry to new heights?

Please skip whatever you are doing this morning, open this NY Times news story on Goldman Sachs/Treasury Secy Paulson, and then follow the rest of the trail as I tell you larger story.

These questions about former Treasury Secretary Paulson's relationship with Goldman Sachs and the bailouts surfaced when crises was unfolding, but now, almost eight months after a new administration is in place, we have a post-mortem article of this type finally making public what could have and should have been on front and financial pages while the deals were being done.

For the first time we learn that a long-term Republican representative, Cliff Stearns of Florida (frequent critic of his own party's policies) questioned the insider deal then. Would you not think that would have been a major story at the time, particularly with the conflict of interest issue widely known inside the financial sector?

Of course things were happening very fast from September to election day, but two months later a new president from the opposition party, and an entirely new administration were about to be installed to deal with these world-wide financial problems. Why not put this type of situation front and center and let a new broom really sweep clean?

But you see the Obama administration not only did nothing to reverse the involvement of Goldman Sachs types in the bailout process, as both direct and indirect recipients of the public money, they recruited more Goldman Sachs executives to run virtually every newly-created financial department that would oversee the distribution and direct of all those billions; pardon me trillions!

The New York Times newspaper, lapdog for the Obama administration and Democratic Party public relations tool, could not possibly run such a story then, as the public might learn that those very insider Wall Street types that Obama was appointing and delegating were not only some of the same ones the Bush administration used, but even more of them from the same institution were installed in key positions where they still serve. Investigative journalism, with timing when it counts, is no longer performed at the New York Times.

I think the Bush administration was largely a failure on many fronts, so don't jump to any conclusions about my point here. What you must know, and again only reported parenthetically at the time, is that the Obama election campaign received more private funding than any candidate in political history, and the largest bloc came from Wall Street. He was and is only returning the favor - - quid pro quo!

But you see Goldman Sachs has a long history in running our government as it began when another Goldman alumnus was Treasury Secretary. Robert Rubin, whom Clinton appointed was the mastermind of the financial deregulation bill that he and Clinton supported enthusiastically, with the full unquestioned participation of both parties in the congress in the form of the Graham-Leech bill. The Bill that undid all the safeguards on banking and speculation put in place during the Roosevelt years. Don't let the phony news stories fool you, deregulation of commercial enterprises begun during Regan years had nothing to do with financial deregulation. That came much, much later and was the brainchild of Rubin and Clinton after massive campaign contributions came from Wall Street insiders like Sanford Weil of Citibank; another Rubin creation.

For you see, the Democratic and Republican parties are identical in what they really do, and who they really answer to. There are as many fat-cat Democratic business leaders today as Republicans. What you witness daily is a smoke-screen that keeps the illusion alive that there is a dime's worth of difference between them when it comes down to it. If anything the Republicans are less hypocritical, as they make it clear that government money helping industry and management at the top will "trickle down" and benefit everyone. The Democrats claim to fund the needs of the people directly, but in point of fact, they are also using a "trickle down" program as they piss on your shoes.

Jim Foster
Publisher,
Germantown Newspapers Inc.
5275 Germantown Avenue
Philadelphia, Pa. 19144
215-438-4000