The Obama Adminstration's Handling of Wall Street.

I don't know where people are getting such magnified figures on the Koch brothers. Yes, they would have spent money on fliers and "policy think tanks" that would not have been reflected in this pie, but I have a hard time believing they're pumping millions more.

That said, the same thing applies for Goldman. We also don't know how much money they contribute to think tanks, or to fliers and things that advocate their position. What we do know however, suggests that they are very politically active, and spend, by any measurable index, more than most corporations.

Labor unions also usually represent millions of people banding together and trying to give their individual donations some semblance of power. Goldman is a corporation that represents 35000 people. Of course, the scale of money is different, but among corporations, Goldman is a clear leader in political contributions.

 

Koch Industries (including all individual donations attributed to people affiliated with the company, most notably the Koch brothers themselves-#88 in contributors.)
Goldman Sachs-#25.

As for the revolving door---

http://www.opensecrets.org/revolvin...ncy=Securities+&+Exchange+Commission&id=EISEC

Either former lobbyists and bank employees hired by the SEC, or former SEC members now in cahoots with the banks they used to regulate.

 

Well, thank god they don't know how to play the game then, I guess. All of their contributions are to opposition affairs/shoddy Tea Party offshoots. Goldman is donating to the government directly, and at that, much more.

let's see which one pays off more. I already know one guy who's been invited to the White House and has the president's ear!

Blankfein has visited the White House ten times as of February 2011.

 

Well, I'm not American, for one, so to fault me for having little idea of how campaign finance in America works would be fair. I know how it works in Canada though (I was responsible for a campaign), and I can say that big donations by corporations and the individuals associated with them are often noted---and they're the ones most pursued, because they're consistent, and usually easy to placate, as they donate around one or two key issues (in Goldman's case that would be deregulation). I'm not going to assume it's the exact same and the numbers will be different (if this amount of money were ever spent on dreary Canadian politics---well, *******), but I can tell you that direct donations...are very important, perhaps more than most people realize. It's hard to appeal to a labor union that is aggregating the views of millions of people. It is much easier to appeal to a corporation with one or two interests in mind.

The SEC thing was Wall Street as a whole. Quite a few of those are Goldman employees FYI, but just having a lax enforcement agency benefits everyone, no?

That said, I deplore the Koch brothers. But, what is to say Goldman is not doing the same? ---you might think it's unimportant, but like Major noted, this is only one slice of the pie---the only one we all have insight into, and one of at least some importance. If we have so many shadowy dollars for Koch, what is to say we don't have any for Goldman? The fact is, in the one index that is fully transparent and comparable, Goldman far outranks the Koch brothers.

Either way, can't argue with the results. Goldman has many people in significant positions in government. For a while in the 90s as well, Rubin was American foreign policy when it came to the Asian financial crisis, to the detriment of bankrupt Asian countries, and the benefit of bailed-out investors. (sound familiar?)

You're arguing that this kind of money is pithy and small, but nowhere do I see you bring forth any argument that Goldman does not enjoy undue influence as compared to other corporations.

 

The state boys have taken the lead on this case once again---the DOJ has been very quiet.

Yet Thomas Drake gets 35 years slapped on him from some archaic 1917 law? And 19 other whistle-blowers get severe punishment as well, this despite the fact that candidate Obama was a champion of transparency and protecting whistle-blowers?

Circumstantial, yes, but it would seem that the DOJ has a very bad set of priorities.

couple that with the shoddy regulation pieces from the Obama Admin. (notably handicapped by the Republicans as well, as I have noted before, but it's not like Obama is spending any political capital trying to get this passed), and the weakening of TARP Main Street provisions, and it would not be hard to see rent-seeking in action. Like I said, corporations are easy to appease. I know they are critical to a candidate, in that you do one or two things, often far from the public's view, and you're guaranteed a faucet of money.

Also, SEC enforcement action penalties are jokes. To say that Goldman received the largest SEC penalty is like saying Pujols got the longest homer ever on a 10-year old Little League pitcher.

 

Circumstantial evidence, yes, but an indicator that Goldman does have a direct line to the President.

Now, as for circumstances where Goldman's connections within government have gone bad---I refer to Rubin's actions during the Asian Financial Crisis as an example...

yeah, the same bailout packages that saw much of the money go to lenders.

and the exact reason why you DON'T want people from Wall Street or Goldman revolving into public policy; because often enough, they bring own their interests at heart. This would be okay if they were one of many views, but it seems they are often a strong view that American foreign policy is based on (witness the latest actions of the IMF).

It's not like there's a dearth of qualified applicants for the positions of power many former Goldman executives hold. There are also many qualified economists and financial experts that have held court and should hold the President's ear...but evidently, they don't as much as Wall Street does.

mirrors what happened when Stiglitz was trying to get an ear into Clinton when he was Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors---but Rubin in his capacity of treasury secretary, often blocked and frustrated Stiglitz and his message, and managed to get many deregulation bills passed.

yeah, good thing that happened.

it's happened before, and there's no good reason to trust the entrenchment of GS and Wall Street in general in politics now, especially with a wave of IMF and TARP bailouts that severely punish borrowers, but gives lenders nary a whisker for their insolent risk-taking.

 

I learned it last year, in a course designed around it. cause that's kinda my major lolololol.

well yeah, that's the whole point of rent-seeking. you pay out $4 million to let's see, stop your ass getting slammed in jail? and prevent laws that would ever consider doing that? A civil penalty of $550 million is a small price to pay for the fact that federal actions still allow your company to function, and play the unethical game you do, bail out the people who got ruined by your risky ventures, and let your closest rival to fail? I'd take that.

However, I never said the money, in of itself, was cold evidence of quid pro quo. I've started elaborating on the actions of the US government with regards to Goldman and Wall Street that makes it seem as if it is. To question the government's impartiality over the matter is pretty key, the money is just the beginning of the worry over the entrenchment of GS and Wall Street in the political institution, but the actions of the government with regards to Wall Street and Goldman have been troubling, to say the least.

 

Actually, 9 million if you consider PAC money. $4 million is just the amount of direct money from the company treasury---which is significantly more than GE, Lockheed Martin, Koch Industries---you know, the usual bogies of government nefariousness?

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=n00009638

GS is #2, and far and ahead the largest private donor. Citigroup and J.P Morgan aren't that far behind. It would be wise to consider the fact that movement towards deregulation or a fair and partial judgment on the financial crisis would be hard to reach under these circumstances.

 

^strike that de from the regulation

 

Yeah, well you tell me what's wrong about what I said. Rent-seeking could be happening. Of course Goldman would rather have the legislative environment change rather then fit to adapt and innovate within it. A number of deregulation bills have been pushed by Goldman's ex-employees in government positions. It's about time you stop saying "you have no idea what you're talking about" and tell me what is factually wrong with that statement above.

and why switch? I'm in position to get into a T-14 law school, just gotta finish out and not massacre my GPA. Already got my LSAT done. I might not know s**t but this system doesn't know that!

plus the innumerable other expenses on lobbying, fliers, political think tanks and initiatives. You combed out all that s**t about the Koch Brothers, and apparently they're all high and mighty, but how many secretaries of the Treasury were ex-employees of Koch Industries? I'm sure you would've thrown fits if one of the Koch brothers got a cabinet position for their ex-employees.

for all we know, Goldman spends more. Much more. In this one measurable and transparent index it much outpaces Koch Industries. I would wager there is much more money at stake.

 

GS spends significantly less on lobbying than the average, I must admit, however that still comes out to a cool 2 mill. Koch spends more...much more. But nothing near the level that would have me be a blithering idiot when I am countering one person who thinks Koch has bought its' ideology in, while Goldman cannot be accused of rent-seeking in any form.

 

I should note I have no particular aversion to MFW or defending positions he has defended before---I am aware he said the SEC ruling was just a "slap on the wrist."

I just had an aversion to him, you know, claiming that I can't read and have no attention span, when he claimed that I was single-handily pursuing Goldman and paying no heed to government regulators, clearly demonstrating he can't even read the thread title. It's fair to call me an idiot, just don't do it because you've misrepresented my position because you never bothered to read a thread you derailed for something like three pages, and wasting my time combing through your posts, just to find he had read nearly none of mine. seriously. If he's going to be an ******* about other people's reading comprehension and attention spans, he better be ready to step his own game up.