And who is Goldman Sachs chairman? Peter Sutherland (Bilderberg), ex attorney general of Ireland appointed by Garrett Fitzgerald. From Luke Ming Flanagan TD Please read and share. Itll take a while. Its your money. You need to know this. REFLECTIONS One advantage – the only advantage as far as I can see – of the monthly move for a week of almost the entire European Parliament, and the wasted resources, is that the trip gives you a few hours to reflect. PANTOMIME TIME Looking back at the news that broke yesterday that Michael Noonan had appointed Goldman Sachs to advise him on the possible sale of AIB, I couldnt help but wonder if Ireland is still in the Christmas spirit mode, if in fact we’re all part of a great Pantomime. We’re the audience, the plebs, strapped into our seats as up on the stage, the big bad monster steals up behind the hero and we’re all reduced to helplessly screaming– HE’S BEHIND YOU! HE’S BEHIND YOU! And of course it IS pantomime, we ARE the plebs, and those on the stage are all just acting out a part that has been long scripted for them by those we DON’T see. I mean, Goldman Sachs acting ‘pro bono’ – are we expected to believe that? Seriously? People think ‘pro bono’ means that it’s free – no it doesn’t. I looked it up, and ‘pro bono’ is just a shortened form of the Latin expression ‘pro bono publico’, which means ‘for the public good’. Goldman Sachs is doing something for nothing ‘for the public good’? LIST OF SHAME Is this the same Goldman Sachs which, according to an article from corp-research.org/goldman-sachs has the following roll of honour to its name. Its a long list. In 2002 it was fined $1.65 million by the industry regulatory body NASD (now FINRA) for failing to preserve e-mail communications. In 2003 it paid $110 million as its share of a global settlement by ten firms with federal, state and industry regulators concerning alleged conflicts of interest between their research and investment banking activities. That same year, it had to pay $9.3 million in fines and disgorgement of profits in connection with federal allegations that it failed to properly oversee a former employee who had been charged with insider trading and perjury. In 2004 Goldman was one of four firms each fined $5 million by NASD for rule violations relating to trading in high-yield corporate bonds; Goldman also had to make restitution payments of about $344,000. In 2005 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that Goldman would pay a civil penalty of $40 million to resolve allegations that it violated rules relating to the allocation of stock to institutional customers in initial public offerings. That same year, it paid a fine of $125,000 to NASD for violating rules relating to the sale of restricted securities during initial public offerings. Shortly thereafter, it was fined $140,000 by NASD for late and/or inaccurate reporting of municipal securities transactions. In 2006 Goldman was one of 15 financial services companies that were fined a total of $13 million in connection with SEC charges that they violated rules relating to auction-rate securities. In another case relating to auction-rate securities brought by the New York State Attorney General, Goldman was fined $22.5 million in 2008. In May 2009 Goldman agreed to provide about $50 million in relief to holders of subprime-mortgages in Massachusetts to remove itself from the state attorney general’s investigation of abuses relating to the origination and securitization of subprime loans. In July 2010 the SEC announced that Goldman would pay $550 million to settle the Abacus charges. That sum included a payment of $300 million to the U.S. Treasury and a distribution of $250 million to investors that had suffered losses in the deal. The settlement also required Goldman to “reform its business practices” but did not oblige the firm to admit to wrongdoing. The Abacus scandal also led to a £17.5 million fine imposed by Britains Financial Services Authority and a federal investor lawsuit that is pending. In January 2011 Goldman announced that an internal review of its policies in the wake of the SEC settlement had found that only limited changes were necessary. Others apparently saw matters differently: In November 2010 FINRA fined Goldman $650,000 for failing to disclose that two of its registered representatives, including Fabrice Tourre, had been notified by the SEC that they were under investigation. In March 2011 the SEC announced that it was bringing insider trading charges against former Goldman director Rajat Gupta. He was accused of providing illegal tips, including one about Warren Buffet’s $5 billion investment in Goldman in 2008, to hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam. (Gupta was later convicted and sentenced to two years in prison.) In September 2011 the Federal Housing Finance Agency sued Goldman and 16 other financial institutions for violations of federal securities law in the sale of mortgaged-backed securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In August 2014 the agency announced that Goldman would pay $3.15 billion to settle its role in the case (through bond repurchases). In March 2012 the Commodities Futures Trading Commission announced that Goldman would pay $7 million to settle charges that it failed to diligently supervise trading accounts in the period from May 2007 to December 2009. Later that year, the CFTC fined Goldman $1.5 million for failing to properly supervise a trader who fabricated large positions to try to cover up losses. Also in March 2012 a Goldman executive director named Greg Smith published an op-ed in the New York Times announcing his departure from what he called a “toxic and destructive” environment at the firm, saying he could “no longer in good conscience identify with what it stands for.” In April 2012 the SEC and FINRA fined Goldman $22 million for failing to prevent its employees from passing illegal stock tips to major customers. In July 2012 a federal appeals court rejected an effort by Goldman to overturn a $20.5 million arbitrator’s award to investors in the failed hedge fund Bayou Group who had accused Goldman of helping to perpetuate a Ponzi scheme. That same month, Goldman agreed to pay $26.6 million to settle a suit brought by the Public Employee’s Retirement System of Mississippi accusing it of defrauding investors in a 2006 offering of mortgage-backed securities. In September 2012 the SEC charged Goldman and one of its former investment bankers with “pay-to-play” violations involving undisclosed campaign contributions to then-Massachusetts state treasurer Timothy Cahill while he was a candidate for governor. Goldman settled its charges by agreeing to pay $12.1 million in disgorgement and penalties. Some good news for Goldman came in August 2012, when the Justice Department decided it would not proceed with a criminal investigation of the firm’s actions during the financial crisis and the SEC dropped an investigation of the firm’s role in a $1.3 billion subprime mortgage deal. In January 2013 the Federal Reserve announced that Goldman and Morgan Stanley would together pay $557 million to settle allegations of foreclosure abuses by their loan servicing operations (Goldmans share was $330 million). In March 2013 the Fed cited weaknesses in Goldmans capital plan and ordered it to submit a new proposal. In December 2014 FINRA fined Goldman $5 million as part of a case against ten investment banks for allowing their stock analysts to solicit business and offer favorable research coverage in connection with a planned initial public offering of Toys R Us in 2010. And all that is just in the USA, all that was before the recent claims by a former New York Fed bank examiner Carmen Segarra that Goldman Sachs had no written ‘conflict of interest’ policy. For her honesty, for trying to do her job as it should have been done, Carmen was fired by the New York Fed. Which tells you all you need to know really about whose side they were on. THE GOLDMAN SACHS PROJECT It’s not just in America. In September 2010, an article by Laura Noonan in the Irish Independent led with the following paragraph: ‘INVESTMENT bank Goldman Sachs is snapping up discounted Quinn Group debt on behalf of clients while simultaneously advising the Government on Anglo Irish Banks Quinn dealings.’ Later in the same article a Goldman Sachs spokesperson is quoted as saying ‘We are highly confident of the effectiveness of our Chinese walls.’ Right, yeah. It’s not just in Ireland of course, small fry for the likes of Goldman Sachs, the ‘Predators’ Creditors’ as they’ve been called. In an article in the UK Independent in November 2011 headed ‘What price the new democracy? Goldman Sachs conquers Europe’, Stephen Foley documents what he calls the ‘Goldman Sachs Project’ and lists the key actors – current or recent Goldman Sachs employees – in key positions across the EuroZone. Hell, we even had the situation where two sitting democratically-elected Prime Ministers, in Italy and Greece, were replaced WITHOUT an election by a former Goldman Sachs International Adviser (a big-wheeling lobbyist, in reality), Mario Monti (Italy) and a former banking technocrat, Lucas Papademos (Greece). GOLDMAN SUCKS. That’s what they should be called, because this is what they are doing, sucking the life-blood from the likes of us, worldwide, and ensuring the benefits are shared only among themselves and their likes. It is insulting to your intelligence that Michael Noonan actually wants you to believe that these guys are acting ‘pro bono’. They’ll go in now to AIB, they’ll educate themselves on every element of it, they’ll offer their ‘advice’ to Mr Noonan. And then when it comes time to sell, who has all the best inside information? Who is best placed to offer investment ‘advice’, advice that certainly won’t come ‘pro bono’?! So, do we continue to sit strapped into our seats and watch this Pantomime unfold? Or do we take to the streets in droves again? It’s up to ourselves now, isn’t it? Meanwhile, Strasbourg here I come. Hopefully I havent wasted these few hours, nor will any be wasted in the next few years in Brussels. Join the fight. Or join the helpless chorus HE’S BEHIND YOU! Meanwhile, have a look at this; look at the video at the end particularly. billmoyers/2014/11/25/elizabeth-warren-ny-fed/
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 02:01:28 +0000