The world’s greatest fraud has been established! The top global bankers managed to crash the financial systems, causing damage that will take a decade to recover, yet the culprits remain and will always remain, free and unaccountable.
The wonderful movement of America’s top bankers from the private to the public sector and then back again, shows that the lunatics have really taken over the asylum.
To many it may already be old news, but a great number of the rest of us are still amazed by this murky and dark world. President Obama, for example, has as his financial advisors around 90% of the same people that were used by the highly acclaimed “Bush” administration and of these usual suspects 90% were directly involved in the banking disaster itself, an event that has cost millions their jobs, homes and often their very future itself.
Can you believe that Hank Paulson was the ex head of Goldman Sachs and yet, when he stepped over to “Government” on the hill, he was behind a bill that ensured that his old firm was paid from tax payers funds, on products they designed to make profits from the very demise of the market they helped destroy? Honestly!
Can you believe that this one man alone made millions, by simply moving into government, as it was an opportunity to sell his stock in Goldman Sachs, actually a legal condition of taking his position as Treasury Secretary! Why was that so clever, other than the fact this stock was about to plummet? Well all those moving into government must sell their stock but they do so tax free, he saved around $50m in tax, wow what a well paid “Public Servant”.
Yes, Mr Paulson and his buddies pushed through the big bailout, which pumped billions into his old firm and friends and at the same time allowed one of his oldest rivals to hit the wall, too bad Lehman Brothers never got their man onto the Bush’s ranch and into the top job, otherwise it would have been good night Goldman Sachs.
Despite hundreds of corporate frauds and illegal acts committed by the largest banks no prosecution of the banking elite has been made. The banks simply pay fines that absolve them of prosecution, fines that often represent less than 10% of the money they made from the act in the first place, what a great arrangement.
Would you believe that Hank and his mates not only secured 100 cents on the dollar for all the potential losses they may have suffered, by betting against the very product “they had sold” to their own clients? Better still, they not only got paid but Hank and the guys on the Hill ensured that they received immunity from prosecution. I don’t know who had the biggest party on Park Lane or the Hamptons that following weekend, but I bet Hank was invited.
So fellow South African’s understand this, anything you see in SA, anything our previous Nat MP’s or current ANC MP’s, or their sycophants get away with, is a mere bagatelle compared to the big boys in NY and Washington.
This does not sanction anything in SA, but it also means we need to grow up and realise that our guys are rank amateurs, often caught out or shut down very quickly. In a first world political environment, such as Washington, where there are five financial services lobbyists for every member of congress and probably just as many journalists, the current crop of politicians seemingly act “legally” and with impunity. How, because everyone is part of the circus and if you are on the inside then you are free to make your millions totally unhindered.
A final note, to give you a little headache, heart burn or a sickly feeling and also an idea of the scale of this collusion. One of the head boys at Goldman Sachs, who virtually crashed the business through the banking crisis, was let go, his punishment was a $136,000,000 parachute! That is approximately R1 billion, we really are all in the wrong job!