The world's most powerful investment bank (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine) is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.

Good Rolling Stone article.

IMHO the big financial firms who are too big to fail, should be chopped up into smaller firms, just like they did with AT&T way back when.

Rolling Stone, as an entertainment magazine, has quite a few good political pieces over the last 12 years or so as a subscriber. Honestly enjoy their political pieces far more than their entertainment news. They lean to the left quite a bit though. I did like their smear on the CFTC though, the other thread made them seem a bit to positive, with some obvious underlying issues hidden away.

They have the laws in place for it, to break down companies with the anti trust laws, they are just failing to do so. They are even letting At&T remerge with what was splintered off. Said it before, it is far better to run the economy off smaller business, the systemic risks far outweigh big business.

The world's most powerful investment bank (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine) is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.

Good Rolling Stone article.

IMHO the big financial firms who are too big to fail, should be chopped up into smaller firms, just like they did with AT&T way back when.

A bit dangerous though in putting the blame on one company only. While no doubt Goldman Sachs did its best to make as much money as it could out of these greed bubbles, we can not put the entire blame on them.
First of all there were other banks who did exactly the same.
Second while they may have encouraged opening up the loopholes mentioned in that article, it was still the responsibility of the government that allowed them to.

What the article does, in my opinion, show is that the government model of the USA is deeply flawed where it comes to allowing policy being shaped by private companies who have a vested interest in the changes they are asked to propose.


Eri

I haven't read the entire article yet but I think the idea is that it's more like the spawn of Goldman Sach's, not the company itself. It's the idealogy of the folks who came from that company and went elsewhere, like to important government positions and other investment banks, etc.

I really loved the imagery of the vampire squid. :D

greed bubbles

Greed bubbles? As opposed to benevolence bubbles?

Greed bubbles? As opposed to benevolence bubbles?
LOL! I hope I live to see one of those.

I haven't read the entire article yet but I think the idea is that it's more like the spawn of Goldman Sach's, not the company itself. It's the idealogy of the folks who came from that company and went elsewhere, like to important government positions and other investment banks, etc.
It's Matt Taibbi. If you don't know who he is, here's some background.

He's a hard-core progressive. And like all hardcore progressives, he didn't know much about economics or finance before the financial crisis, other than that bankers are evil and regulation cures all ills. Most hard-core progressives didn't do much reading on the subject even while talking about it a lot in the press; they just find it way too boring. So Matt decided that he'd start craming and learn finance in a few weeks so he could make a progressive counterpoint to the CNBC types in the media.

I give Matt credit because he actually took the effort to learn, unlike say, Michael Moore. But what's really surprising to me is the attention he has received for his writings on finance. Maxine Waters and other progressives in congress pass around his articles on finance around to their colleagues.

But, Matt Taibbi has only been closely following finance for few months now. Matt studied Goldman Sachs more so than the other investment banks, and since it was mostly new information to him, he concluded that Goldman Sachs was a lot more unique than he thought it was. But it isn't. Goldman Sachs just does what the other investment banks do on Wall Street to a greater extent.

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Investment banks and the military have have something in common.

Any interest group, I don't care what it is, is going to ask for handouts from the government. But with most interest groups, people in government feel they know enough to question them and usually say no.

But with Wall Street and the military, not so much. When the military says, "We need more resources or the mission will be compromised," most in congress rubber stamp it. When Wall Street says, "We need bailouts or the economy will be compromised," most in congress aren't confident enough in their knowledge of finance/economics and will rubber stamp it.