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Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up
Daily Kos —
... The jobs report for June should put a chill on hopes for an economic recovery anytime soon. And it makes a compelling case for more government stimulus, as unpopular as that idea may be in Washington. Americans all over the country are struggling. Paul Krugman: O.K., Thursday’s jobs report settles it. We’re going to need a bigger stimulus. But does the president know that? Matt Taibbi: a Taibbi tour de force (not without controversy - Goldman Sachs is less than ...
How About Independence Day from Corporations Controlling Our Government? Now That Would be Change We Could Believe In.
BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash —
... of a great experiment in governance, innovation, and freedom being vindicated and restored. But then we were disgusted and horrified by how Wall Street was paid ransom welfare to keep an economy from entirely collapsing that they had gambled away. We saw President Obama surround himself not with populist economic advisors that would restore financial power to Main Street, but rather with the very architects of America's riverboat gambler financial swindles and collapse, many of them from Goldman Sachs which Matt Taibbi just definitively revealed as a predator financial ...
matt taibbi....wordsmith god
skippy the bush kangaroo —
... the first thing you need to know about goldman sachs is that it's everywhere. the world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. - rolling stone ...
Link
Suburban Guerrilla —
Rolling Stone finally linked to the Matt Taibbi story. Go read all about how Goldman Sachs rules our world.
Iran's Fakir Anger, the Good, the Bad, the Sarah Palin
Notes From a Grumpy Old Man —
Paul Krugman Meir Javedanfar Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger Matt Taibbi Oh, what a mess the Iranians are making for themselves: first, they arrest nine British embassy employees on the grounds that they helped incite protestors to riot after the election. They release all but two, whom they are now going to put on trial, as the BBC reports: "Guardians Council chief Ahmad Jannati said: "Naturally they will be put on trial, they have made confessions.".."In these incidents, their embassy had a ...
Another day, another catch-up post
The Sideshow —
... Rolling Stone has finally put "The Great American Bubble Machine: Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression" online - or, rather, according them (I didn't check) "excerpts", plus a video of Taibbi " exploring the key issues". (Thanks to Dr. Geophysics.) And more Taibbi on the pressure on Goldman Sachs ...
links for 2009-07-04
J. Bradford DeLong's Grasping Reality with All Eight Tentacles —
... Matt Taibbi: The Great American Bubble Machine
The Mudflats » PALIN RESIGNS
David Kurtz: Shorter Sarah Palin: Real Winners Quit ...
A republic, if you can take it back
PoliPundit.com —
Happy 4th of July, everybody.
Free-market capitalism has been replaced by a disgusting blend of crony capitalism and socialism, and democracy is on the ropes.
Let’s reflect this Independence Day on what America really means, and how we can start taking it back.
Same as the Old Bosses. [JHoward]
protein wisdom —
From Rolling Stone , Matt Taibbi on money, cap and trade, markets, and, uh, bipartisanship. h/t the skyrocketing Zero Hedge blog: F ast-forward to today. It’s early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs — its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign — sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with ...
Goldman Sachs: Rogue Company
Pacific Views —
... Matt Taibbi has a blockbuster of a piece in RollingStone on the part that Goldman Sachs had in creating the economic disaster the world faces today. Excepts of the piece as well as some clips of Taibbi have been published, but for the full piece one needs to buy the magazine. (Not a bad suggestion, because this clearly is a way to help keep RS going.) ...
Bernie Madoff Is No John Dillinger
Commondreams.org Views —
... , which, incredibly, is a bit higher than its compensation average in the pre-crash year of 2007. In a scathing and controversial new article in Rolling Stone , Matt Taibbi accuses Goldman of having earned such rewards by engineering “every major market manipulation since the Great Depression.” What’s uncontroversial and indisputable is that Goldman alumni have played key roles in both the Bush and Obama administrations’ responses to the current crisis — even though Goldman has a big stake in the outcome. The dense revolving-door conflicts of interest are appalling. ...
Gardens for victory over Big Agra
pandagon.net - we are the public option —
... I don’t know for sure what it was, but I do know this: Modern people feel hopeless, cowed, and defeated. A lot of us vote for Democrats, and then we stand by helplessly as they do awful things like bail out banks but don’t do enough for the people that are the victims here. Increasingly, it seems like we’re not going to get meaningful health care reform, but instead will see some huge bill passed that makes a few minor changes that will leave roughly the same number of Americans uninsured. ...
GOLDMAN SUCKS - AS IN THE AIR OUT OF BUBBLES?
THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS —
HAS GOLDMAN SACHS DELIBERATELY MANIPULATED THE MARKETS AND HAVE THEY DELIBERATELY HELPED TO CREATE SEVERAL MARKET BUBBLES AND THEN BURST THEM, MAKING MONEY ON THE WAY UP AND IN THE WAY DOWN? "YES" SAYS RS - VIA (PG/NRO). ...
Morning No: No Refunds
Open Left - Front Page —
... . Could we have our explanation for the recent, fabulous success of the vampire squid that might as well be our national mascot by now? ...
Don't Scare The Horses
Open Left - Front Page —
... The word 'conspiracy' doesn't appear in the original piece, The Great American Bubble Machine. It's just that when you describe it like this, all the greed and influence-peddling and market manipulation sounds bad to the masses: ...
Gucci Little Piggies
Obsidian Wings —
... Further, in defense of Kevin, Rolling Stone hasn't made the full article available online, and the excerpts they've posted leave out many of the details and in-depth treatment. If Kevin only read the excerpted version, then his criticism would be valid - there isn't enough meat on those bones. Actually, it reads like a disjointed, non-sequitur, meandering piece of little substance (the ...
Two Sides to Every Story
PoliPundit.com —
... the first quarter. Analysts predict Goldman’s V.A.R. ran high in the second quarter as well.
“It’s taking opportune risk that others aren’t taking,” said Charles Geisst, author of the forthcoming “Collateral Damaged” and a Wall Street historian. “They are scooping up all the risks that are available.”
…
“They are a trading firm,” said an executive at rival firm, barely able to hide his jealousy. “It’s what they do.”
And there’s the truth:
The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs ...
The Atlantic: Taibbi Is 'Becoming The Sarah Palin Of Journalism'
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed —
Matt Taibbi's much-discussed take down of Goldman Sachs in Rolling Stone has begun to get its share of criticism. Today, Joe Weisenthal at Clusterstock called the article "a joke." The most scathing critique -- and one of the most cogent -- comes from Megan McArdle at The Atlantic, who went so far as to compare Taibbi to Sarah Palin:
"What I think, sadly, is that Matt Taibbi is becoming the Sarah Palin of journalism. He seems to deliberately eschew understanding his subjects, because only corrupt, pointy-headed financial journalists who have ...
A Brand New Busy Week
The Latest on Air America —
... In the first hour, I'll be joined by the Matt Taibbi, investigative journalist for Rolling Stone magazine, who's current piece, "The Great American Bubble Machine" ...
Will Dems allow Goldman to manipulate a cap-and-trade market?
American Thinker —
... trading-revenue record in 2007. Goldman wouldn't manipulate markets, would they? But what are we to make of Facciponti's comment that "there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways."Which leads the inquiring mind to ask, How does Goldman know that its program has that capability? Goldman, being the good corporate citizens they are, would never have used it that way. Or would they? A recent article by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone accuses Goldman of manipulating markets to create speculative bubbles, including ...
Of Breadlines and Banks
Commondreams.org Views —
... in the last three months. The bank's stock value has soared 68 percent and the Wall Street Journal predicts that it's on track to pay out as much as $20 billion this year, in compensation and benefits to its employees -- or about $700,000 per person. As formerly homelss mom, Franceska Dillella told GRITtv today -- poor Americans, like those in her New York shelter, celebrated on election night. But well-connected Goldman didn't just get hugs or hope when they fell on hard times: Goldman received $13 billion from the Bush bailout of the failed insurance giant AIG and $28 ...
A More Wretched Hive
Whiskey Fire —
... over whether Goldman Sachs committed the economic equivalent of homicide or mere vehicular manslaughter in its part in the recent financial troubles. This is a very important question for her, and she thinks, contrary to Matt Taibbi, that it was all a big mistake. Her theory is that the CDOs Goldman was stuffing with shaky mortgages should in theory have made money forever, barring some catastrophe ...
GIVE IT BACK GOLDMAN!
The Agonist - thoughtful, global, timely —
... There are a number of stories out there about Goldman Sachs gaining unfair advantage in the financial markets. One concerns a former employee who allegedly swiped a ...
"Goldman Sachs is responsible"
The Political Carnival —
... . Batra blamed Goldman Sachs for the economic crisis. As I recall, Matt Taibbi wrote a substantial article expressing similar sentiments. Batra's prediction for the economy? Long term: Very optimistic. Short term: After about a month of better news, we'll go into a Depression. Unemployment, unemployment, unemployment, plus same ol', same ol' seemed to be Batra's message, from the tiny bit I heard. ...
An Open Letter to Liberals
American Thinker —
... We heed Martin Luther King Jr.'s counsel, "You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him."And trauma will not stop until we see that there is a deeper, more pernicious reason why we keep fighting each other: that government, any government, whether left or right, likes it that way. The politicos want us battling, and afraid, and inattentive. And at the same time that they're dividing and conquering us, they're raiding the Treasury for themselves and friends like Goldman Sachs . So we can continue with business as usual, as foot soldiers and serfs for the ...
Goldman Sachs Redux
Suburban Guerrilla —
Charlie Gasparino, CNBC’s on-line editor, says while Taibbi’s Goldman Sachs story is a helluva good read, Taibbi missed the point.
I just want to add here that I don’t especially care if Taibbi got it wrong - and he very well might have. Just about every Hunter Thompson wannabe I’ve ever known got his stories from drinking with sources, not hard-nosed reporting. (Since I don’t drink much and hate smokey bars, I usually took the hard-nosed approach.) But the people of this country have been assaulted from all angles by corporate ...
Come Saturday Morning: Argument by Analogy
Firedoglake —
... Carney spends lots of time beating up Ben Stein -- who has now officially fallen from favor since he started shilling for that skanky "free credit report" outfit -- but he doesn't ever truly address Taibbi's article (which you can read here) to prove his claim that Taibbi and Stein think exactly the same thoughts with regard to Goldman Sachs, much less the claim that Taibbi lifted his opinions of GS directly from Stein with minimal alteration. In fact, the only time he quotes from Taibbi's piece is right in the very passage I just cited to you. That's it. ...
