It’s now time for us, as a nation, to come together and congratulate the winner of the 2016 presidential election: Goldman Sachs.
Many Donald Trump voters likely believed his victory would be a loss for Goldman. At the Republican convention, a man who seemed to take Trump’s twitter attacks on Goldman seriously screamed “Goldman Sachs!” at Ted Cruz’s banker wife as she fled the convention floor. Trump’s own final campaign video declared that he would do battle against the “global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations” — as personified on screen by Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
But that was then. As Anthony Scaramucci, a hedge fund manager and top adviser to Trump, as well as a former Goldman Sachs banker himself, put it Thursday: “I think the cabal against the bankers is over.”
The headlines on Friday were that the director of Trump’s National Economic Council will be Gary Cohn, the president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs. Meanwhile, Trump’s pick for treasury secretary is Steven Mnuchin, a one-time Goldman Sachs partner whose father was also a Goldman partner. Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, also once worked for Goldman.
Of course, a Hillary Clinton win would have been a victory for Goldman Sachs too. She was paid $675,000 by Goldman for three speeches, had previously received large campaign donations from Blankfein, and her son-in-law runs a hedge fund whose investors include Blankfein.
Goldman also won the election in 2008 and 2012. Barack Obama received more money from Goldman Sachs employees than any other corporation. Tim Geithner, Obama’s first treasury secretary, was the protege of one-time Goldman co-chairman Robert Rubin. Obama’s Justice Department never went after Goldman criminally, despite the copious evidence from a Senate investigation that it had broken the law.
Before that, Goldman won the election in 2000 and 2004. George W. Bush plucked Hank Paulson directly from Goldman — where Paulson was chairman and CEO — to be his treasury secretary. Paulson then oversaw the huge Wall Street bailout that kept Goldman from collapsing (so it could later make Blankfein a billionaire) with help from former Goldman banker Neel Kashkari. And they were just two of the voluminous number of Goldmanites staffing the Bush administration.
Goldman’s 1992 and 1996 victories manifested themselves when the president before Bush, Bill Clinton, made Rubin his treasury secretary. Rubin played a central role in the repeal of Glass-Steagall, a Depression-era banking law that separated commercial and investment banking. During the 2008 Goldman took advantage of the absence of Glass-Steagall to turn itself into a bank holding company, giving it additional access to lending from the Federal Reserve.
Goldman Sachs stock has gone up 33 percent in value since the 2016 election, and Blankfein himself is purring like a kitten. Trump, he says, is not “dangerous” and “I am not pessimistic at all because he won. … Mr. Trump may turn out to be a much better president than anyone else might have been in that place.”
What about the direct personal attacks on him? “That was the rhetoric in the heat of the political battle; I didn’t take this personally.” This is quite a contrast with Blankfein’s perspective on Bernie Sanders’s denunciation of him this spring, which he said was “dangerous.”
So have all the elections you want. Democrats and Republicans can lose; it happens all the time. But Goldman Sachs always wins.
Top photo: Gary Cohn as he arrived at Trump Tower on Nov. 29.
Nothing but stirring the swamp….can you smell it ??
So much for “drain the swamp”.
Follow the money. http://oi64.tinypic.com/148ll3b.jpg
Hillary’s Goldman-Sachs, Son-In-Law will probably get a plum position.
This could be Trump’s best headhunting pick, you can’t get at GS without someone from inside GS. If he sent Bernie Sanders to do this job the MOTU’s would think he was there to clean the spittoons.
GS is the key to stopping job offshoring because they have the power to demand corporations increase their profits so a deal has to be struck to change that demand.
The level of spin, or perhaps of self-delusion, is truly astounding. Oh, I suppose that Obama befriended Lloyd Blankfein to help eliminate the excesses of the financial system that led to the 2007 crash, and that Hillary’s affiliation with GS would have the same purpose as Trump’s.
By that reasoning we should release El Chapo from jail so he could help us win the war on drugs.
If indeed the best way to catch a criminal of any kind, according to that logic, is to employ people who are successful at such crimes. Thus we should also reinstate Robert Hanssen as head of FBI counterintelligence, and make Aldrich Ames head of counterintelligence at the CIA.
LOL, Thank you. Tired of the excuses people make for Chump.
Blech. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Daffy Donny’s better than the she-devil but that’s not saying much. Maybe this will catalyze a decent third-party run in 2020…both parties are likely going to be in disarray.
We won’t exist in 2020 so no third party will be there to rescue us.
Will he put a 35% tariff on Ivanka’s shoes? https://goo.gl/PV7mkI
We elected a billionaire who is hiring more billionaires to fix the system that made them billionaires. You couldn’t make this shit up if you were Mark Twain or the Marx brothers.
You link to Josh Marshall’s blog post “Trump Rolls Out Anti-Semitic Closing Ad”. Do you actually agree with that post? I’d say Lloyd Blankfein is shown because he runs Goldman Sachs, not because he’s Jewish. It’s probably a similar story with the others.
The current moral panic about antisemitism is, I believe, largely a reaction to the BDS movement and a cover for Israel’s racist policies. I’m not saying there isn’t still an antisemitism problem, and hey, for all I know Trump is probably an antisemite just as he’s a misogynist and racist. But given that this ad is quite satisfactorily explained at face value, why go hunting for antisemitic subtexts?
I agree 100%. The Trump campaign has received huge donations from Jewish sources, such as Sheldon Adelson, and has consistently declared its agreement with the policies of the Netanyahu government of Israel. Trump’s daughter has converted to Judaism, and his Jewish son in law is playing a key role in the formation of the new Administration. I am not sure that Trump really hates anyone other than those who would stand in his way, which makes him an equal opportunity hater.
Yes, he attracted and even courted racist elements as part of his strategy to get elected. That makes him no different from any current republican governor or member of Congress from the south, or any southern democrat in the days before the Civil Rights Act. Demonizing him did not work out well for Hillary Clinton during the campaign, and it will not work out well for the opposition now.
The fox is in charge of the hen house.
So the name of the new US-Captal will be Magadougou?
Unbelievable Trump: instead of chasing the banksters, he puts them in key positions!
http://bit.ly/2h8DHbC
But muh drain the swamp
The Goldman Rule: He who has the Goldman, makes the rules…
Off topic, directly but connected indirectly….
If anyone wants to understand the current state of affairs in the world in general ( of course, includes the USA ) , this an excellent read…..
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/08/welcome-age-anger-brexit-trump
The blame for the control that Goldman, Citi, BofA and JPMorgan have over our government lies entirely on the shoulders of Democrats and, specifically, Clintonism. Bill Clinton abandoned democracy and convinced his fellow Democrats to surrender along with him to the banking oligarchy. In doing so, they ended the right of the party to represent the working class or genuinely claim a populist platform. Obama was a Clinton clone. In 2008, instead of voting against TARP, blaming the economic crisis on the banks and the deregulatory policies favored by Republicans, pledging to bail out workers and homeowners and hold criminal bankers accountable, he cynically sold the lie that a bail out of Wall Street was a bail out of Main Street and that what was good for Goldman was good for America. The Tea Party and the ruse and rise of the faux-populist Trump was the result. Trump could make the claims he made in that campaign video because Democrats didn’t have a leg to stand on.
The repeal of Glass-Steagall was a joint Democratic-Republican effort in which Bill Clinton played a leading role – but the SEC’s refusal to regulate the banking industry in the years before the 2008 economic collapse was led by GW Bush – and the refusal to protect homeowners (as FDR did in 1933, under similar circumstances, with his Homeoweners Refinancing Act and the Homeowner’s Loan Corporation) while bailing out banksters who then bought up foreclosed properties at basement prices – that was a joint GW Bush – Barak Obama operation promoted by the leaders of both Republican and Democratic Parties.
That’s why so many people have entirely rejected these two corrupt parties and instead call themselves independents – actually, we appear to form the majority party in the United States right now, by numbers.
It’s honestly a shame that none of the third party candidates exhibited any kind of true leadership. If there was ever an election ripe for a third-party insurgency, it was this one.
Well, Jill Stein got herself arrested along with protesters on at least two occasions during the campaign, at events that the MSM chose to ignore. She attempted to participate in the televised debates and was physically barred from doing so, another fact ignored by the press. She and the Green Party had a clearly articulated platform that was available to anyone who had the curiosity to find out, but received no publicity that would make the electorate aware of it.
It is very difficult to show any kind of true leadership when everything you say or do is subjected to a complete media blackout. And, by the way, The Intercept is just as complicity in this conspiracy of silence (or as Mark Twain would call it, this lie of omission) as any other media outlet.
“The blame for the control that Goldman, Citi, BofA and JPMorgan have over our government lies entirely on the shoulders of Democrats and, specifically, Clintonism”
WRONG!! The blame lies with you and everyone else in this country that voted either Repub or Dem. GS has owned every administration weather it was Dem or Repub.
If you vote for a corrupt party you are going to get a corrupt leader with a corrupt cabinet. GS is corrupt and former members of GS have dominated every presidential cabinet on both sides.
Your partisan hack of a statement is full of holes. Republican are just as big of criminal as the Democrats. Open your eyes!!!!
Indeed. The republicans have been trying to repeal GS since 1933, but were only able to gain traction starting with Carter. The big breakthrough came under Clinton, though. Clinton almost single-handedly transformed the democrat party from a progressive party to a fascist one. [I use fascist in the context of Benito Mussolini (not ours; the Italian one) who equated it to corporatism. The terms liberal and conservative no longer have any real meaning in US politics because neither branch of the Party espouses any of what would have been called liberal or conservative principles even thirty years ago. Anyone who uses those words to describe a current politician or the media is merely documenting their ignorance.]
Future revolutions will not be waged against governments. Or should not, at least. They will be waged against corporations. Bringing down Goldman Sachs, for example, would make for a positive precedent.
Trump resolved his Bankruptcy (or never really did) by cutting a deal with First Boston and his other major creditors. He is owned by them . They left his name on his properties and casinos, as they would be worth more and more attractive to foreign investors and occupants. He does not have nearly as much money as he says and cut a deal in the bankruptcy to get an allowance for his lifestyle, etc. This is why we will never see his Tax returns. His pursuit of a reality show, etc. kept him in the spotlight and a perfect point man for the banks, who own him Correct, President Bank is our leader.
Clinton Foundation and US State Dept are rebuilding a global slave trafficking network.
Rubio and Gowdy know, too.
https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1457249
https://i.sli.mg/6988EK.jpg
HOW BIG? https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1476079
Ha! We’ll get on that right after that child sex ring at the pizza parlor. That sounds more credible.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!
https://youtu.be/zYMD_W_r3Fg
There is no doubt that Goldman Sachs should be broken up by anti-trust legislation, but not all of the Goldman executives are corrupt. They do understand the economy much better than any politician, and if their motives are right, they can do the country a great service. Trump has made some very smart picks, and as long as they stay focused on creating climate where businesses can prosper, and jobs can be created, they will help to turn the nation around. If they can reduce Obama’s $20 trillion debt, they will have saved the nation from destruction, if that is at all possible at this point.
There is some talk of the possibility that some of the elites
who are members of the electoral college are planning to
vote in opposition to what they were suppose to do because
they don’t like Trump.
The recent flip-flopping by Trump may be an attempt to appease
the electoral determiners by reassuring them that he is corrupt
enough to play their game
or it may be Trump’s way of justifying the election of Hillary Clinton
and simultaneously telling his supporters what he really thinks of them.
The likelihood of all Hell breaking loose will be diminished if Trump
continues to prove his candidacy is as lousy and lacking
as Clinton’s.
Trump does seem to love to tell people to F%#k off.
Mr. Trump will be a source of regret for all Americans.
Bernie Sanders said it best, Mr. Trump is a pathological liar.
What should be added to that is that some people are pathologically gullible!
Well, Hillary Clinton was also a pathological liar, with a WWIII plan. Thank God she was defeated, the world moved back from thermonuclear warfare. As far as the American Empire, it’s over, get used to it. As far as this outlet, it’s a joke, just look up EBay Zurich to see what its all about – Ebay tax dodge USAID CIA outlet. Just shut it down, why don’t you? Such a farce.
Agent Orange, on the other hand, is promising to be o-so-friendly to China, isn’t he?
Talk about crappy choices…
See e.g. John Pilger’s “The coming war on China”:
http://thecomingwarmovie.com/
Hillary Clinton is also a pathological liar – yes. It does not follow that “the world moved back from thermonuclear warfare.”
Mr. Trump says he is going to make America great again. In point of fact, he is going to make the American people second rate again!
I did look at EBay Zurich. Do you have any evidence to connect the dots between “The Intercept” and “CIA”? Please share.
Same as the links between the Washington Post and the CIA – propaganda dispersal. Look at the “White Hats” in Syria articles here, by various reporters – planted propaganda is all it is. USAID, Omidyar Network, CIA in Ukraine is another nice example of how this “independent journalism” has been used for the proliferation of U.S. government propaganda; in that, of course, it is no different from the New York Times or the Washington Post or MSNBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, Fox News, etc. etc.
As far as the financials behind this outlet, I’d read this:
http://thenewdaily.com.au/money/finance-news/2016/07/18/ebay-australia-own-goal/
I’m sure if we just keep voting for Democrats and Republicans, things will eventually get better.
ROFL
How long before the MAGAts begin to revolt?
Three months? Six? Maybe six for the extra slow ones.
Yawn
The moment corrupt liberals stop criticizing Trump’s appointments then I’ll be worried
You guys supported Clinton who is literally the most corrupt politician in history going by pure dollar figures. Sit down and be quiet when corruption issues are brought up
This is a good point, if there’s anything the Intercept has been known for it’s our shamefully brazen support for Clinton.
Ha ha ha ha! Yeah, Intercept you shameless propagandists!
I know! Bunch o’ durned Clintonistas. Well, ‘cept for that Putin-lovin’ Greenwald guy maybe.
“You, you, you — that’s what you are!” (Popeye’s Olive Oil)
Sorry, I forgot it’s Olive “Oyl.”
AND, subverting a 16 year old into reading “NO Place to Hide” and “Assassination Complex”!!! What is your ( TI’s ) AGENDA, may I know??
Frankly, getting 16-year-olds to read books that undermine authority is our first and biggest goal.
SO, you want parents to be warned and to come to TI site to read what their kids are reading? ….. a new way to generate larger readership!!!! Gosh, that is a real “different way” of doing things!! Is it real clever or “more subversiveness”???
Actually the intercept did support clinton. Just look at the garbage that mackey writes. But your support for clinton doesn’t mean your criticism of trump is invalid, contrary to what “joe” believes.
I thought that MacKey was the only one who drank the Clinton Koo-aid at TI.
He has been shamefully brazen in his support for Clinton.
Most of the rest of the staff has been equally loud in their denunciation of both Rs and Ds.
Maybe if you just woke up Joe and paid attention to what the Intercept does, even half a sleep you can see that the Intercept did not support Clinton,
your aluminium hat is on too tight. This site never for a second supported nor endorsed Hillary. You must be a troll and orange man apologist, or a real idiot.
If Bernie Sanders had not been sabotaged by the corporate media, the DNC, and their Clinton connections, then Goldman Sachs would have lost this past election. That’s something to remember.
Bernie and Trump both demonized Goldman & establishment – how do we know Bernie wouldn’t turn around too?
Consistency.
We have three choices accept the wolf, accept the wolf in sheep’s clothing, or form a society where the wolf is driven deep into the wilderness where it can do no harm for fear of being hunted down and destroyed.
Goldman Sachs will get a rally out of Trump and then dump him with the next “market correction.”
They they will bring in a Democrat to “clean up” the mess.
In the meantime main street will be on the sidelines, hoping that they can scoop up some of the crumbs falling under the table
I voted to Hillary and was looking to pay more taxes for more equal and just society: better healthcare, cleaner air, free tuition for more people.
I feel really sorry for the people who voted for Trump.
Actually, I don’t.
I feel really sorry for anyone who still believes Hillary would have done any of those things.
Actually, I don’t. But I feel sorry for our society having to carry the burden of such ignorance.
After Mnuchin, Puzder, and now Cohn, Trump appears to have grossly lied to his supporters!
Perhaps it won’t be a revolution against Hellary, but somebody else.
Really no surprise. However it is best that this type of info is. Reported as often as possible.
Appears as if this Presidency may turn out to be one of the most duplicitous and Destructive events in modern history.
These financial types will not willingly stop. Note how Scaramuci calls anyone who would oppose this as a member of a “cabal”. A secret traitorous political group!
This all is very ominous.
It is now time for direct push back actions.
Breton
Great article, just a quick correction (sorry for being a stickler!): I think you meant to say “During the 2008 COLLAPSE Goldman took advantage…”
When taking from the public is a way of life, predicting stock movements becomes perfectly predictable. For instance, lots of wallstreet pimps looking to whore Hillary out had their pimped out wmd media saying how the market was going to tank. (yeah, like brexit). Once you understand that a trading monopoly has the power to exercise stock price control you will then realize that people dumping their stock upon hearing the Trump win were only giving the takers a big advantage when the monopoly decided to raise the DOW.
1. the monopoly consortium has a blank check
2. the monopoly consortium owns the market on the DOW stocks
3. the monopoly consortium has a trading trick that allows them to meter the volume to get the exact price range they want
4. where else are large funds that are heavily leveraged going to put their money with the same amount of leverage?
The rise of the markets on the Trump win was quite predictable as the profit mechanics of the trade type is tried and true.
5. The market will never tank until the big wallstreet money tells you it’s about to tank. Heads they win, tails you lose.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-18/how-not-criminal-goldman-underwrites-2-billion-tesla-stock-offering-hours-after-upgr
How amazing that you found all this out in a Chinese fortune cookie–or was it several?
No wonder, 47% of eligible voters did not cast their vote as they DID NOT WANT to vote for Goldman Sach’s!
Wrong rs, Only Zionists allowed to speak on the Zionist owned national media, ALL of the candidates was Zionist’s (Bankers) too ! The USA political system is totally corrupt today = TOTALLY !!
Times like this make me glad to say I have not voted for Goldman’s candidates.
Times like this make me glad I’m not American. Unfortunately their destruction of the world will eliminate all of the rest of us as well.