Remember when the era of big bonuses was over?
Staff at Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm’s 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms.
A lack of competition and a surge in revenues from trading foreign currency, bonds and fixed-income products has sent profits at Goldman Sachs soaring, according to insiders at the firm.
No one could have predicted that having the CEO of Goldman Sachs oversee a huge bank bail-out would result in huge profits for Goldman Sachs.
El Cid
This may appear distasteful, but taking this seriously or thinking that anything ought to have been done marks you as an unserious ultra-fringe extremist luddite lefty moonbat, and shut up, that’s what.
The Grand Panjandrum
I would say that Matt Taibbi’s last Goldman Sachs rant was right on target.
We need a Guantanamo for these rat fuckers. Sleep deprivation, waterboard, bastinado, wall slams, the whole nine yards until we get every penny back and these guys all spend the rest of their worthless lives traipsing from soup kitchen to soup kitchen hoping to scrounge a piece of mold encrusted bread.
Zifnab
What? After all that work milking the public teet and all that time spent raping the financial system, you don’t think they deserve the economic windfall as a reward?
God damn commie.
Yutsano
Wait…wasn’t all the easy money supposed to be coming from CDO/CDS/new strange financial instrument of the moment? Doing good old fashioned investing isn’t supposed to be profitable! What are these people trying to prove anyway?
Oh and I’m not worried about the lack of competition part. When the dust settled post-TARP there will be plenty of folks who are more than willing to nibble at Goldman Sachs’ market share (Piper Jaffray and Edward Jones pop into mind).
JenJen
@The Grand Panjandrum:
As per usual, Taibbi nails it. Your basic “Shorter Goldman Sachs.”
Linkmeister
Tsk. So cynical, so young.
robertdsc
Nice job, Dubya, Barry, Timmeh, and Hank.
JGabriel
Why do people continue to do business with them? If GS is paying out those kind of bonuses, clearly they’re charging too much for their services.
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Comrade Stuck
I think we need the Delta Force to manage the bailout.
JenJen
O/T, but look for more furious debunking of NYT/CBS News Poll re: Health Care this week, as evidenced by Hot Air, quick out of the gate. ZOMG how can McCain voters want ObamaCare?? Poll is skewed by unemployed DFH’s!
Josh Hueco
If only there was a non-carbon emitting energy source that could be created from the rendered fat of insurance executives.
/just opened up an ‘Explanation of Benefits’ letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield.
rob wolfe
I always used to think that the rightwing motto was “I have mine now go fuck yourself”. I now realize that I was too easy on them. The real motto is “I have mine, give me yours too or I will blow up the place. Now go fuck yourself.”
The world has come to a place where it is no longer possible to be too cynical because every new outrage is even worse than anything that the most cynical of us could ever imagine.
The Grand Panjandrum
@JenJen: He actually has a great rant in the comments section that debunks the myth that the Community Reinvestment Act of 1976 was the root of our current problems. The two comments are almost as long as the post itself.
Left Coast Tom
Are insurance executives a renewable resource? If so then the carbon would come from current solar input rather than solar input over the course of millions of years.
JGabriel
Josh Hueco:
There is. Sadly, it releases methane instead.
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Johnny B. Guud
I laugh when I hear Repulicans cry about how Obama is so liberal and such an extreme leftist that he will tackle Wall Street special interests, eliminate capitalism as we know it, kill the free markets, etc. etc….
If anything he’s pragmatic to a fault.
These financial regulation “reforms” he presented last week were nothing but fluff. A lot of his “ideas” have been floating around DC for years. It’s just that whoever would propose them, would timidly walk up to the Hill, realized that the industry was really pulling the strings, then pulled back with their tail between their legs.
So let’s see—-President Bush chose Paulson to run the Treasury, which eventually ran TARP. Then, Obama names Geithner, with his PE cronies and who is part of the Wall Street entrenched crowd at the NY Fed, to the same post.
To the point of the original post, is anyone really surprised?
And what happened to the billions in toxic assets anyway??
Delia
Insurance executives, investment bankers: it’s so hard to decide. Which is the greatest parasitical leech on society and whose demise would free up the most resources for genuinely useful goods and services?
Comrade Stuck
Yes, we would call it eeew!sion.
Redhand
Well, what else could we expect with Geithner and Summers succeeding Paulson? Obama has no credibility with me on these issues anymore.
PeakVT
We really need to shrink the financial industry down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.
Yutsano
Apparently they are very much still on the books. See the first round of TARP only covered the DERIVATIVE losses, it did nothing actually for the removal/discharge of defaulted loans. And since they’re now saying that the next big default wave is coming in commercial real estate, prepare for another round of teeth gnashing and public begging.
tc125231
Time for a national barber. The French did it once, over 200 hundred years ago, and the guff level from the elites has been lower ever since.
tc125231
Yutsano
I agree. Let the whole fucking system crash and burn and incinerate in the flames of its own devising. Also, if a major bank defaults, that’s it, no one can collect on your mortgage/debt until they can show ownership of the exact lien you signed.
jcricket
Don’t forget the massive mountain of consumer debt that’s still out there (despite our recent “conversion” to saving a bunch)… future Option-ARM resets and many foreclosures due to unemployment, etc.
Krugman has been pointing out we’re in exactly the place FDR was 2 years after his Depression-busting tactics started. And he listened to all the “fiscal hawks”, and prompty plunged the country back into the Depression.
I really, really hope Obama doesn’t listen to these fools. Let’s see where the next year or so goes before declaring “crisis averted”. Maybe not that the financial sector is stabilized the recession will play out like a “normal” one (I doubt it, but it’s possible there will be no more major shocks, just small aftershocks). Or maybe there will be several more major shocks, or just a creeping realization we’re in deep, deep shit and need more stimulus to get the patient moving again.
Ian
Double-you. Tee. Eff.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
@JenJen: What a surprise. On a slightly related note, something I’ve noticed is that many of Obama’s critics on the right haven’t made a peep since commodities and stocks started rebounding earlier this year. Since the recovery was a bit too aggressive and there are other problems to contend with (like the second wave of arms and deflationary pressures), we’re likely to see the stock market stall and then decline yet again. It’s only a matter of time until the right wing starts wailing and calling it the ‘Obama recession’.
Yutsano
Remember though, between January 20, 2001, and January 20, 2009, NOTHING HAPPENED. And if it’s bad it’s either Clinton’s or Obama’s fault.
mai naem
I am sure Jim Cramer is going to be on tomorrow going on about how wonderful the capitalist system is and that Obama Healthcare is DOA because its too expensive and why is Obama raising taxes on the rich by 3 percent and how that is going to force Neal KashNKarry to buy a 200 ft yacht when he’s had his heart set on a 340ft yacht. And then he’ll let us know what a meany weany Jon Stewart is.
asiangrrlMN
Allow me to exercise my pure frustration for a minute.
Ahem.
You know what? Fuck you, Wall Street. You were too big to fail, so we, the taxpayers, were forced to give you a gazillion dollars. Were you grateful we saved your ass? No. You just whined at how put upon you felt by all the so-called restrictions. $500,000 cap a year? Why, that’s barbaric, you sniveled. Yeah, you might have to give up the third house or the fourth car.
We, the public were told that this was for our good, too. You see, if Wall Street were to crumble, it would take Main Street with it.
You know what? In case you haven’t noticed, Main Street is already crumbling, and you on Wall Street (and those in government beholden to you) don’t give a damn. You ignore the fact that people are still losing jobs by the thousands as you pat each other and yourselves on the back for rigging your books to make it seem like you have this enormous profit. Now, you are going to give yourselves the biggest bonus evah?????
That’s it. You’re cut off. No more fucking money for you, you greedy, pathologic parasites who are sucking at the teats of the public. You say we’ll go down with you? Well, you know what? We’re already there, so we might as well fucking pull you down with us.
SilverOwl
Wall Street is the best dressed trash dumpster in all History.
Same old people swapping spit. Same old people blowing smoke filled numbers up everyone’s ass. Same old people swallowing the smoke. Same old people rewarding fake bullshit numbers.
It is a really really bad reality show. America has some of the dumbest adults ever born and raised in human history. This is what I call the era of fucked up and irresponsible. lol
TenguPhule
Only if we can ensure Wallstreet is weighted to the bottom.
Otherwise the rats will swim to new lands.
Ruckus
@asiangrrlMN:
Couldn’t agree more.
They were supposed to be the masters of the universe and yet when they were in trouble they grabbed as much as they could be forced to take. They are WATB, those of privilege and position. Just FUCK them. (yes I am shouting!)
Own a small biz and with the economy swirling the drain I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it through to “better times” but these fuckers get to keep everything, they got to be made whole again.
As Rob @12 said their line is “I have mine, give me yours too or I will blow up the place. Now go fuck yourself.”
I’m getting this feeling in my gut that it must be time to just say NO FUCKING WAY
b-psycho
To reform requires there to be something worth saving. There isn’t.
Brick Oven Bill
Geithner’s Chief of Staff is a lobbyist from Goldman Sachs.
figgylu
As a mostly lurker, I’d just like to make it clear that I’m here for the pet stories. The good blogging about “stuff” and ensuing hilarious commentary are just gravy.
random asshole
@JGabriel:
Honestly, this is probably the only insightful point on the thread.
Another interesting (but somewhat ironic, somewhat hilarious) point is that if you search for Goldman Sachs on opensecrets.org, their employees have consistently given more money to Democrats than to Republicans over the last 10 years by a 2-1 margin. Contrary to popular opinion, they folks that work in finance aren’t necessarily the types of people you want to think they are.