busyForeclosures at Record High in First Half 2009 Despite Aid
Lynn Adler, Reuters: "U.S. home foreclosure activity galloped to a record in the first half of the year, overwhelming broad efforts to remedy failing loans while job losses escalated."
Robert Scheer | "Government Sachs" Strikes Gold ... Again
Robert Scheer, Truthdig: "Connect the dots: Goldman Sachs made $3.44 billion in profit this past quarter, while the U.S deficit topped $1 trillion for the first time in the nation's history and appeared to be headed toward doubling that figure before the budget year is out. Since most of the increase in the federal deficit is due to bailing out the banks and salvaging the greater economy they helped destroy, why is the top investment bank doing so well?"
Much of the economy is designed, like a feudal system, to funnel money from the poor and middle-class to the wealthy. The problem with this is that, when the wealthy leech too much money from the lower classes and/or when the lower classes lose their jobs and have no more money for the leeches, the whole system breaks down. We need to find better ways of running the economy.
July 17 2009, 18:33:12 UTC 11 years ago
That's like saying "When ice cream sales go up, so do drownings. Connect the dots."
While I think Sachs will, if they're smart, pay back the $28 billion in government subsidation they've currently got thanks to AIG debts the government is going to unwind, the guy who wrote this is leaving out a lot and trying to pin something on one company (I seem to remember he was the one who wrote the Goldman Sachs piece that failed some pretty basic applications of Occam's Razor) that just doesn't fit.
Sachs is a bank holding company. A very carefully run bank holding company, and one which has remained fairly secretive. But that's all they are. They don't get secret money from the government. They don't secretly control a goddamn thing, certainly not the economy. They're just very, very good at what they do, and what they do is make money.
That doesn't make them nice people, but that doesn't make them the puppet masters, either.