Golden Gangster

It's another all out pump up the market for fiscal earnings reporting season and it looks like Goldman Sachs is going to carry the ball for the second quarter 2009. The hype is up in the spin is already dizzying, every body seems to forget that just a few short months ago the golden one was on the mat, was hemorrhaging red ink from every nook and cranny of its balance sheet. And forget it is exactly what Goldman Sachs wants you to forget about it. As if.

Most of Wall Street, and America, is still waiting for an economic recovery. Then there is Goldman Sachs.

Analysts predict the bank earned a profit of more than $2 billion in the March-June period, because of its trading prowess across world markets. If they are right, the bank’s rivals will once again be left to wonder exactly how Goldman, long the envy of Wall Street, could have rebounded so drastically only months after the nation’s financial industry was shaken to its foundations.

The bank's rivals know exactly how Goldman rebounded so drastically, one would wonder how the taxpayer will rebound from the drastic raping by Goldman Sachs.

The obsessive speculation has already begun, along with banter about how Goldman’s rapid return to minting money will be perceived by lawmakers and taxpayers who aided Goldman with a multibillion-dollar cushion last fall.

There is no mystery to the success of Goldman Sachs, steeped in the philosophy that competition is sin, where Goldman sees it they eliminates it. Insider information, high-level political connections and the willingness to screw over your own clients are the key ingredients in the golden formula, rather than the advertised trading powers, brilliance and balls.

The success of Goldman Sachs is proof that on Wall Street who you know is far more important than what you can do.

“They exist, and others don’t, and taxpayers made it possible,” said one industry consultant, who, like many people interviewed for this article, declined to be named for fear of jeopardizing business relationships.

John Gotti was no less sophisticated and his business dealings.

Startling, too, is how much of its revenue Goldman is expected to share with its employees. Analysts estimate that the bank will set aside enough money to pay a total of $18 billion in compensation and benefits this year to its 28,000 employees, or more than $600,000 an employee. Top producers stand to earn millions.

Goldman Sachs is not a wealth producing enterprise it's a wealth stealing enterprise, be you and investor, client, or the taxpayer, they steal the wealth from you and to give it to them.

Goldman was humbled along with the rest of Wall Street when the financial markets froze last year. As a result, it lost money in the final quarter, a rarity for the bank. Along with other big banks, it was compelled to accept billions of dollars in federal aid, which it paid back last month.

But not the $13 billion Sachs got funneled through AIG, or the $28 billion big it borrowed on the cheap on you and me via the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Sure Goldman was humbled when the financial markets froze, and they had to pick the peons pockets for $10 billion in pennies, but unlike the rest of Wall Street Goldman blames you for it. So now in move of enormous up yours-manship with a virtual monopoly on the commodities markets Goldman prepares to say Vuck you, with huge profits, made on the money you lent them and gave them without wanting to, while you clip coupons and edge towards the unemployment lines.

But if the analysts are right — and given the vagaries of Wall Street trading, any hard forecast is little more than a guess — the results will extend a remarkable run for Goldman that was marred only by the single quarterly loss last fall of $2.12 billion.

Goldman Sachs is betting on the markets, but the markets are also betting on Goldman: Its share price has soared 68 percent this year, closing at $141.87 on Friday. The stock is still well off its record high of $250.70, reached in 2007.

There are no vagaries on Wall Street only scams, so the analysts are right dummy, because they are feed the numbers by Goldman, then they deliberately drop enough off so that when the bank reports officially they beat the lowered estimates, here we go again, only this time the low ball is a high $2.2 billion.

In essence, Goldman has managed to do again what it has always done so well: embrace risks that its rivals feared to take and, for the most part, manage those risks better than its rivals dreamed possible.

In essence, Goldman has managed to get away with it again what it has always done so well: hedge their bets with insider information manipulate the market with impunity and admit to it, and frontrun their clients. There are no risks for goldman Sachs.

Traders said Goldman capitalized on the tumult in the credit markets to reap a fortune trading bonds. It profitably navigated a white-knuckled run in stock markets. It bought and sold volatile currencies, as well as commodities like oil. And it reaped lucrative fees from the high-margin business of underwriting stock offerings, which surged this year as other, more troubled financialinstitutions raced to raise capital.

Again there is no white-knuckled white-wate rafting going on. Goldman operates the world largest commodities trading floor and proudly maniputlates those markets.

Most interesting in this Bloomberg article is the following statement by Assisitant U.S, Attorney Joseph Facciponti:

“The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways,” Facciponti said.

Is this an admission by Goldman Sachs that there is the possibility of manipulation in the market?

YUP!

“Someone takes risks and makes money — maybe they were smart, maybe they were lucky,” Mr. Bookstaber said. “But then everyone else feels like they need to take the same risks.”

They were neither, weren't you listening.

While others are shying away from risks, Goldman is courting them. A common measure of risk-taking at Goldman and other banks is known as value at risk, which estimates how much money a firm might lose on a single day. At Goldman, that figure rose by more than 20 percent in the first quarter. Analysts predict Goldman’s V.A.R. ran high in the second quarter as well.

Again , again and again and again Goldman Sachs does not take risks, it transfers risk, in the opposite direction of wealth, thad be from them to you.It is well documented that Goldman's clients take more risk than they do.

The only thing to remember through all the media and anal-ists hype is this. Goldman Sachs transfers wealth from you to them and risk from them to you. They are not taking on any more risk, they have a monopoly on trading, get away with manipulate the markets and reap enormous rewards, but even then they have a contingency for failure, You! That's right Goldman will bite off more than they can chew once more and once more put more on you and yours, forever.

Without their connections Goldman Sachs is as incompetent as greedy and I can prove it. I bet anyone anything Goldman will never declare themselves off further government assistance in the future.

Any takers?

Didn't think so.