Taxpayers: Your Dollars Are Supporting Goldman Sachs Employees

Hello everyone, just a public notice announcement that as people are being thrown out of homes and living in tent cities [Tent Cities Sprouting Up in Seattle and Sacramento], while others lack basic healthcare, your tax dollars via TARP are being loaned out to suffering Goldman Sachs (GS) employees...some of whom are now suffering from (wait for it.....) net worth under $5 million. The horror of this depressionary period. Some folk on Wall Street might have to sell their 3rd home. Times are tough out there in the six to eight figure income levels - but that is where you, dear taxpayer come in. I know, I know - it's not the SAME money from TARP that is being lent to Goldman employees, it's other magical money that is from a different drawer. (p.s. thanks for the AIG bonuses too Mr/Mrs Taxpayer!)

Anyhow, carry on with your work (need to earn those tax dollars) in the Land of Cramerica: government run by Government Sachs, for Government Sachs. Thank you notes from the power elite at GS will be in the mail (not).

Via New York Times

• Goldman Sachs got its bailout. Now some of its bankers, those aristocrats of Wall Street, apparently need a bit of a bailout too. Goldman, which accepted billions of taxpayer dollars last fall and, as learned Sunday, was also a big beneficiary of the rescue of the American International Group, [AIG Counterparty Furor Grows] is offering to lend money to more than 1,000 employees who have been squeezed by the financial crisis. The loans, offered via e-mail last week, could range from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands.
• Working at Goldman has long been regarded as a sure path to riches. But Goldman’s employees are losing money on their personal investments — particularly in Goldman’s own elite investment funds, which have been considered one of the perks of working at the bank. Employees in the funds are contractually obligated to meet requests for more capital. Several funds have such capital calls scheduled for April. Employees who fail to make the payments risk losing their jobs, according to a person familiar with the situation.
• Now these funds have stumbled, and some Goldman employees who financed their gilded lifestyles by borrowing in good times are suddenly short on cash needed to meet commitments to their personal investments in the funds. “It’s a problem with the culture of spending,” said Gustavo Dolfino, the president of Whiterock Group, a Wall Street recruitment firm. “No matter how much you have, you spend like you have a lot more.”
• The new loans at Goldman are being offered to help employees meet capital demands from the internal funds and cannot be used for other personal needs, according to people familiar with the matter.
• Some Goldman employees got rich before the markets collapsed, allowing them to invest several million dollars in the funds, often on a leveraged basis. Only three years ago, Goldman paid more than 50 employees more than $20 million apiece. In 2007, its chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, collected one of the biggest bonuses in corporate history — nearly $70 million.

Once more, thank you for your service as tax paying peons of America - your hearts are golden as you look out for your neighbors. That is all.

Comments

[GEN X:]

Glad I could contribute. I'll get back to you... my Ramen noodles are ready!!

Mar 18 12:25 PM

[nova:]

Both Bush and Obama administration and the Congress has engineered the biggest rip off of America and its people in the history of world.

Paulson invented and started implementing this colossal fraud of all times using different conduits to channel humongous amount of money from American people to Wall-Street gangster.

What a sorry story but Americans apparently deserved it.

Mar 18 01:39 PM

[Tony Petroski:]

I wasn't in favor of the bailouts, and I thought the hysteria of last September was overblown: "If we don't pass this bailout package and have it signed by Monday's market open we will all die." But I may have been wrong, and the bailouts may have been the prudent course compared to my preference for letting the bums and their companies fail. But now that the bailout course has been taken, it serves no purpose to beat up everyone involved at all the institutions and stir up the provincials with constant references to pay, bonuses, perks, conferences at resorts, etc. There is no end to this type of carping.

Mar 18 09:50 PM

[M3:]

GS stands for Greedy-Sons of XXXXXXX!!!

Mar 20 03:46 AM

[Allan Frain:]

Dead on. Would be nice to read such in mainstream press.

There is little more instructive regarding the present situation than an understanding of that piece of the puzzle that is GS.

Mar 20 11:31 AM