How Goldman Sachs Starved Millions and Made Billions

This month's Harper Magazine has a great revealing story from author Fredrick Kaufman on how Goldman Sachs, along with other traders, decided the commodities market would be a great area to ruin for personal gain, leave millions to starve and cause food riots globally.

You can catch a short interview here:



Or you can read the whole article here:frederickkaufman.typepad.com...

And here is the Head of Global Investment Research of Goldman Sachs, Steve Strongin's response to the article:
www2.goldmansachs.com...

I love to hate them.

SandF
the bad guys are right there...
there are people whose pension funds depend on that slaughter... government employees etc...
I doubt they are going to fix the culprits

[edit on 27-7-2010 by Danbones]

I think every GS Exec should be
introduced to a big tall tree
with a short piece of rope.

All their assets sold at public auction
and all their banking and money accounts
divided equally among US Citizens.

Their business name retired to the Hall
of Shame and last but not least:

totally banned from doing business
ever again in any part of the world.

I post stories like this often because it highlights the cost of greed, the reality of greed, the effects of greed, and the result of greed.

Anytime someone makes money, another person loses money. Anytime a group makes billions, it means there are a lot of losers. Causing people to starve for a buck is the epitome of evil.

I said something about Goldman Sachs in another thread, I believe about bonuses. I said how insignificant of a fine was imposed on them for the damage they caused. And then a few days later when they announced their bonuses, I mentioned that again.. Man did I get jumped. I hope those people come watch this because I'd be interested in what they have to say. I guess people are still defending them. That sort of blows my mind, but I'm no expert. I just know what feels wrong.

A FREE MARKET is like a farmers market where the producer and the consumer can get together and negotiate a price without interference externally or by middlemen.

The FUTURES market is a good idea when it comes to CO-OP farming where people can invest in a local producer at the time of planting in anticipation of the next harvest. The risk of a crop failure is spread out to the community. However, the way FUTURES markets work today is it allows speculators to manipulate prices at will, bankrupting the individual farmer and consolidating farmland into the hands of huge AGROBUSINESS Conglomerates.

Because of the manipulation of the consolidated Commodities Markets, and the problem that if Nebraska has a bad corn year but Brazil and China have a good year, then corn will be cheap and Nebraska farmers go bust.

So, the DERIVATIVE was born which allows speculators to bet on arbitrarily sub-divided (tranched) sectors of the corn market. In actual fact, this lets speculators for finally manipulate certain specific areas of the market while leaving other areas alone. DERIVATIVES also allow the speculator to control many shares with very little capital.

So, what you do is that you invest in 90% of your money in the usual FUTURES COMMODITIES market and then you take 10% and bet against or hedge you bet by shorting the market DERIVATIVE. Big players then inflate the market and then at some point pull out and take their profits. Then the market price crashes and then they collect on their DERIVATIVES as the price crashes.

Well the new plan is apparently to keep free marketing the money right out of the country, so this might not be an issue any more.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

While we're hating...

On average, Goldman employees made $498,000 in 2009, up from $317,000 in 2008. www.msnbc.msn.com...

A difference of $181,000. That is a 57% RAISE!!! Didn't you get a 57% raise last year?

Imagine a minimum wage worker getting a 57% raise. $7.25 to $11.38. OOOOOOOO!!! Now that's ghetto rich!

At $11.38 an hour, it would take over 8 years to just equal the Goldman employees' raise, at $181,000, and over 22 years to reach a average Goldman employee yearly salary, at $498,000.

Oh, but they "worked hard" for that money and they deserve it.