Exposing The Story Behind Goldman’s Record Profits – Part 2: The Role Of The Taxpayer
Courtesy of Tyler Durden
Do Goldman employees deserve any compensation, much less the $16 billion paid out in salaries and bonuses in 2009 when one considers that the firm would not only have no money to pay, but would be defunct had the US taxpayer not stepped in and bailed them out? Should this money have been used to prepay the firm’s $20 billion TLGP exposure instead, thus truly making the firm independent of taxpayer support, instead of just claims to Goldman’s public funding independence? Will the wave of public anger, now that President Obama has suddenly and inexplicably done a 180 degree turn and sides with the middle-class instead of the financial executives, take Goldman down at the next black swan occurrence? Is Goldman hypocritical in claiming it did not need a bailout after it rushed to become a bank holding company? Is Goldman a doomed business model which relies solely on the existence of the "greater fool" to sell to? Will its monopolist and ever-larger dominant status result in an implosion in the financial industry (especially with the DOJ continuing to deny there is any anti-trust problem)? All these questions and more seek answers in the just released Part Two of the PBS series "Is taxpayer money behind profits at Goldman Sachs."
We recommend watching Part One of the PBS series in advance of the clip below.
