Human rights and nuclear arms

Wirepullers: che senso hanno gli accordi tra superpotenze sullo smantellamento dei propri arsenali nucleari (molto di facciata ma di poca sostanza), se piccoli paesi sull'orlo della bancarotta fanno di tutto per costruirsi la bomba atomica? Come già detto su queste pagine, questa puo essere una strategia per stimolare "aiuti" provenienti da occidente in cambio della rinuncia al programma atomico o, ancora di più, un metodo per evitare che la democrazia venga "stimolata" come sta succedendo in Afghanistan e Iraq, cioè con le bombe. La fine della guerra fredda non ha portato alla contestuale fine dell'equilibrio atomico, ha semplicemente delocalizzato la minaccia. Corea del Nord, Iran, Birmania...la lista potrebbe allungarsi. (2).

Reports by two defectors from Burma that the secretive military regime is collaborating with North Korea to build nuclear weapons should send a shudder down everyone's spines. These are, admittedly, only reports. Moreover, even if the defectors' claims prove accurate, Burma is still a long way behind North Korea, Libya or even Iran when it comes to acquiring this technology. The target date appears to be 2014.

Nevertheless it is depressing, as well as worrying from a strategic point of view, to conceive of these generals getting their hands on such an important prize in the not-too-distant future.
It is, firstly, a grotesque joke to think of a regime that cannot properly feed, or provide electricity for, its citizens spending millions of pounds on obtaining nuclear technology. The point made by many foreign-based Burmese rights groups is equally important: past experience shows that the acquisition of nuclear arms gives even the most anti-democratic regimes a new aura of legitimacy in the international arena.

North Korea has been an example of this. If ever a country was a candidate for externally imposed "regime change", this brutal prison camp was it. But, as the Burma Campaign UK group points out, since Pyongyang acquired nuclear weapons, the emphasis has been on "effectively bribing the regime to give up nuclear weapons, while ignoring human rights".

They also point out that pandering to these paranoid regimes rarely gets the West far. If North Korea's response to such wooing is anything to go by, the tendency is only to up the ante and demand more concessions.

It would be a pity if the West went down this road with Burma too. The regime may well shrug off Western pressure about the lack of democracy there. But the moral sympathy that the outside world has lent Burma's imprisoned pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has at least kept the issue of Burmese human rights alive.

Another question is whether the Burmese generals can be trusted to use nuclear technology safely or whether, as some experts fear, the likely result is another Chernobyl. The world needs to watch Burma closely, and not make the same errors it has made with North Korea.

Fonte: www.independent.co.uk

L'equilibrio del terrore

Wirepullers: che senso hanno gli accordi tra superpotenze sullo smantellamento dei propri arsenali nucleari (molto di facciata ma di poca sostanza), se piccoli paesi sull'orlo della bancarotta fanno di tutto per costruirsi la bomba atomica? Come già detto su queste pagine, questa puo essere una strategia per stimolare "aiuti" provenienti da occidente in cambio della rinuncia al programma atomico o, ancora di più, un metodo per evitare che la democrazia venga "stimolata" come sta succedendo in Afghanistan e Iraq, cioè con le bombe. La fine della guerra fredda non ha portato alla contestuale fine dell'equilibrio atomico, ha semplicemente delocalizzato la minaccia. Corea del Nord, Iran, Birmania...la lista potrebbe allungarsi. (1).

Mentre Usa e Russia decidono di ridurre le armi di distruzione totale, altri Stati medi e piccoli ce le hanno e gli abitanti le desiderano fortemente e festeggiano come una liberazione il fatto di poterne disporre.

Mentre i grandi della Terra si incontrano nei G8 in preparazione del G20 per tentare di risolvere i terribili problemi dell'umanità, è arrivata finalmente una buona notizia. Stati Uniti e Russia avevano deciso di tagliare una notevole parte delle armi di distruzione totale. Per un salutare ritorno alla ragione? No, perché i missili intercontinentali e i radar e le altre apparecchiature super moderne arrugginiscono, si disarmano da sole e vanno sostituite con una spesa che neppure le grandi potenze possono scatenare. Si è capito che il fallimento economico è l'unico freno alla follia degli scienziati e dei generali. Ma la follia resta e con essa la speranza che il mondo le sopravviva.

Avete capito di che misura è la riduzione degli armamenti decisa da Obama e dal presidente russo? Milleseicento missili intercontinentali a testa, come a dire la quantità sufficiente a distruggere la vita sul pianeta Terra più volte. D'accordo le superpotenze a mantenere, a costi astronomici, le altre migliaia di missili pronti al lancio.

A questo equilibrio del terrore non si è arrivati per caso, ma per opera dei più avanzati stati maggiori di scienziati e di generali che hanno continuato per anni a chiedere ai governanti di adeguarsi alla minaccia nemica che da teorica diventava pratica. Ed è per conoscenza di causa che i grandissimi della Terra sanno che scienziati e generali dei paesi meno forti e ricchi sono pronti a tutto pur di aver anche loro missili e bombe di distruzione totale.

Perché giornali e televisioni si occupano ossessivamente del G8 e già si preoccupano dei G20 del prossimo futuro? Credo perché si è capito che in qualche modo bisogna pur ricostruire un diritto internazionale, una regola della convivenza e della sopravvivenza.

Siamo ancora in tempo? Sempre dal G8 in preparazione dei G20 si è capito che il disarmo parziale voluto dagli Stati Uniti e dalla Russia non risolve il problema decisivo della sopravvivenza se altri Stati medi e piccoli le bombe ce le hanno e soprattutto se tutti gli abitanti del pianeta a quanto pare desiderano fortemente averle e festeggiano come una liberazione dal terrore il fatto di potervi anche loro partecipare.

Quando il buon Pertini socialista all'antica esortava a "riempire i granai e a svuotare gli arsenali" fra l'approvazione generale, una nostra industria riforniva i campi minati del mondo intero con le bombe che hanno riempito il mondo di morti o di mutilati. E quando i sacerdoti e pontefici di tutte le religioni fanno a gara a ricordarci che la vita è sacra, e considerano assassini coloro che per pietà aiutano a morire i quasi morti come la povera Englaro, ma poi continuano a gestire le loro chiese fornendo cappellani militari agli eserciti, i dubbi sul futuro dell'umanità rimangono. Perché c'è sempre chi, non avendo rubato o ucciso al tempo dell'Impero romano delle Crociate o delle invasioni barbariche, rivendica il diritto di farlo nel prossimo futuro, come fanno oggi gli imperi nascenti della Cina e dell'India che all'invito dell'Occidente a non inquinare il pianeta con la industrializzazione forzata, rispondono: vogliamo solo fare quello che voi avete fatto prima di noi e di cui vi gloriate continuamente.

Ha destato grande scandalo Bernie Ecclestone organizzatore di corse automobilistiche per aver fatto in pubblico la lode di Hitler che "certe cose sapeva come risolverle". Con il vecchio sicuro metodo di eliminare i concorrenti.

Autore: Giorgio Bocca

Fonte: http://espresso.repubblica.it

Tornano gli speculatori

Wirepullers: Goldman Sachs è forse la banca più importante al mondo, e non deve essere un caso se i suoi manager prima o poi finiscono in una qualche amministrazione pubblica (in Italia gli esempi di Romano Prodi e Mario Draghi). Qualcuno addirittura pensa che sia la stessa Goldman Sachs a piazzarli nei punti nevralgici della politica mondiale, per poterla controllare come una sorta di piovra che si muove nell'ombra. Non sappiamo se questo sia vero, è indubbio però che Goldman Sachs è un colosso economico molto potente. (4)

Con i tassi bassi si cercano investimenti più redditizi. E così si rischia una nuova bolla. Intanto la Goldman Sachs ha annunciato i profitti trimestrali più elevati della sua storia, e lo stesso hanno fatto le maggiori imprese finanziarie.

A Wall Street la crisi sembra dimenticata. Goldman Sachs ha annunciato i profitti trimestrali più elevati della sua storia: 3,44 miliardi di dollari, corrispondenti a 4,58 dollari per azione, battendo del 29 per cento le previsioni degli analisti. Le maggiori imprese finanziarie hanno seguito a ruota. Perfino Citigroup ha riportato profitti trimestrali per 4,3 miliardi di dollari, pari a 0,49 dollari per azione, un'azione che a marzo valeva solo 0,97. Ma marzo sembra lontanissimo, così come sembrano appartenere ad un passato remoto le immagini di Goldman Sachs e Morgan Stanley in crisi di liquidità, salvate dall'intervento propizio dello stato. Insomma non c'è più area di crisi a Wall Street, dove era proprio nata. Possiamo quindi dedurre da questi segnali che la crisi sia finita anche per il resto del paese (e del mondo)? Purtroppo no. Innanzitutto non è tutto oro quel che luccica. Mentre la performance di Goldman Sachs e JP Morgan sono state veramente straordinarie, quelle delle altre banche no. Togliendo i profitti per il conferimento della controllata Smith Barney a una joint venture con Morgan Stanley, Citigroup avrebbe riportato nel trimestre una perdita di 2,4 miliardi e non un profitto di 4,3 miliardi. Lo stesso si può dire per Bank of America. E Cit, un intermediario finanziario specializzato nei prestiti alle piccole e medie imprese, si avvia ad essere la quinta più grossa bancarotta nella storia degli Stati Uniti. In secondo luogo i profitti ottenuti derivano principalmente da condizioni di mercato eccezionali e difficilmente ripetibili. Con tassi di interesse pressoché nulli, forti rialzi azionari, e una valanga di collocamenti di titoli, i settori del trading e dell'investment banking hanno messo a segno profitti record. Ma per quanto riguarda il business del credito tradizionale la situazione non è altrettanto rosea. JP Morgan, una delle banche migliori, ha riportato perdite di 955 milioni di dollari nel settore del credito al consumo e di 672 milioni nel settore carte di credito. Citigroup ha dovuto accantonare 3,9 miliardi per perdite attese sui prestiti. Visto che in passato Citigroup ha sottostimato queste perdite, il futuro non sembra molto roseo.

Per finire, anche se la crisi è iniziata a Wall Street, non finisce lì. Con un livello di disoccupazione che si sta avviando al 10 per cento e i pignoramenti delle case in aumento (+15 per cento nei primi sei mesi dell'anno), l'economia reale non sembra dare grossi segnali di ripresa. Ma allora perché Wall Street gioisce? Una possibile spiegazione, fornita da molti analisti, è che il settore finanziario e la Borsa in generale anticipino l'economia reale di circa sei mesi. Il crollo di ottobre-novembre anticipava la crisi economica attuale. E il boom degli ultimi tre mesi anticiperebbe una ripresa a fine anno. Storicamente questa relazione è giustificata. Ma se c'è una cosa che questa recessione ci ha insegnato è di non fidarsi troppo delle correlazioni passate. L'alternativa, molto più pessimista, è che Wall Street sia drogata da quegli stessi fattori che hanno causato la crisi. Dopo lo scoppio della bolla Internet i bassi tassi di interesse hanno favorito la nascita della bolla immobiliare. Allo stesso modo oggi i bassi tassi di interesse e la massa di liquidità immessa dalla Federal Reserve creano le condizioni per la formazione di una nuova bolla. All'apice della crisi, quando si temeva che il sistema finanziario implodesse, i risparmiatori erano contenti di detenere contanti e titoli del Tesoro americano. Ma ora che questo rischio sembra rientrato, i risparmiatori cercano impieghi più redditizi per la liquidità in loro possesso. Questo li spinge verso investimenti più rischiosi. Il mercato ha ben recepito una cartolarizzazione di titoli cartolarizzati (in gergo Cdo al quadrato) fatta da Morgan Stanley. Con l'alchimia tipica di questi processi dei titoli cartolarizzati che erano stati downgraded dalle agenzie di rating sono stati trasformati in titoli da tripla A. E il mercato si è affrettato a comprarliGli operatori finanziari, lungi dall'essere contriti per gli errori passati, si sentono ringalluzziti. La storia recente ha dimostrato che è nel loro interesse assumersi rischi. Se le cose vanno bene guadagnano cifre favolose: su base annua i compensi di Goldman per il primo semestre 2009 corrispondono ad una media di 772.000 dollari per dipendente, segretarie e portieri inclusi. Se le cose vanno male, interviene lo Stato. E il gioco ricomincia.

Autore: Luigi Zingales

Fonte: http://espresso.repubblica.it

Inside The Great American Bubble Machine

Wirepullers: Goldman Sachs è forse la banca più importante al mondo, e non deve essere un caso se i suoi manager prima o poi finiscono in una qualche amministrazione pubblica (in Italia gli esempi di Romano Prodi e Mario Draghi). Qualcuno addirittura pensa che sia la stessa Goldman Sachs a piazzarli nei punti nevralgici della politica mondiale, per poterla controllare come una sorta di piovra che si muove nell'ombra. Non sappiamo se questo sia vero, è indubbio però che Goldman Sachs è un colosso economico molto potente. (3)

Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression.

The basic scam in the Internet Age is pretty easy even for the financially illiterate to grasp. Companies that weren't much more than pot-fueled ideas scrawled on napkins by up-too-late bong-smokers were taken public via IPOs, hyped in the media and sold to the public for megamillions. It was as if banks like Goldman were wrapping ribbons around watermelons, tossing them out 50-story windows and opening the phones for bids. In this game you were a winner only if you took your money out before the melon hit the pavement.

It sounds obvious now, but what the average investor didn't know at the time was that the banks had changed the rules of the game, making the deals look better than they actually were. They did this by setting up what was, in reality, a two-tiered investment system — one for the insiders who knew the real numbers, and another for the lay investor who was invited to chase soaring prices the banks themselves knew were irrational. While Goldman's later pattern would be to capitalize on changes in the regulatory environment, its key innovation in the Internet years was to abandon its own industry's standards of quality control.

Goldman's role in the sweeping global disaster that was the housing bubble is not hard to trace. Here again, the basic trick was a decline in underwriting standards, although in this case the standards weren't in IPOs but in mortgages. By now almost everyone knows that for decades mortgage dealers insisted that home buyers be able to produce a down payment of 10 percent or more, show a steady income and good credit rating, and possess a real first and last name. Then, at the dawn of the new millennium, they suddenly threw all that shit out the window and started writing mortgages on the backs of napkins to cocktail waitresses and ex-cons carrying five bucks and a Snickers bar.

And what caused the huge spike in oil prices? Take a wild guess. Obviously Goldman had help — there were other players in the physical-commodities market — but the root cause had almost everything to do with the behavior of a few powerful actors determined to turn the once-solid market into a speculative casino. Goldman did it by persuading pension funds and other large institutional investors to invest in oil futures — agreeing to buy oil at a certain price on a fixed date. The push transformed oil from a physical commodity, rigidly subject to supply and demand, into something to bet on, like a stock. Between 2003 and 2008, the amount of speculative money in commodities grew from $13 billion to $317 billion, an increase of 2,300 percent. By 2008, a barrel of oil was traded 27 times, on average, before it was actually delivered and consumed.

The history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates. By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup — which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibillion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman.

But then, something happened. It's hard to say what it was exactly; it might have been the fact that Goldman's co-chairman in the early Nineties, Robert Rubin, followed Bill Clinton to the White House, where he directed the National Economic Council and eventually became Treasury secretary. While the American media fell in love with the story line of a pair of baby-boomer, Sixties-child, Fleetwood Mac yuppies nesting in the White House, it also nursed an undisguised crush on Rubin, who was hyped as without a doubt the smartest person ever to walk the face of the Earth, with Newton, Einstein, Mozart and Kant running far behind.

Rubin was the prototypical Goldman banker. He was probably born in a $4,000 suit, he had a face that seemed permanently frozen just short of an apology for being so much smarter than you, and he exuded a Spock-like, emotion-neutral exterior; the only human feeling you could imagine him experiencing was a nightmare about being forced to fly coach. It became almost a national cliché that whatever Rubin thought was best for the economy — a phenomenon that reached its apex in 1999, when Rubin appeared on the cover of Time with his Treasury deputy, Larry Summers, and Fed chief Alan Greenspan under the headline the committee to save the world. And "what Rubin thought," mostly, was that the American economy, and in particular the financial markets, were over-regulated and needed to be set free. During his tenure at Treasury, the Clinton White House made a series of moves that would have drastic consequences for the global economy — beginning with Rubin's complete and total failure to regulate his old firm during its first mad dash for obscene short-term profits.

After the oil bubble collapsed last fall, there was no new bubble to keep things humming — this time, the money seems to be really gone, like worldwide-depression gone. So the financial safari has moved elsewhere, and the big game in the hunt has become the only remaining pool of dumb, unguarded capital left to feed upon: taxpayer money. Here, in the biggest bailout in history, is where Goldman Sachs really started to flex its muscle.

It began in September of last year, when then-Treasury secretary Paulson made a momentous series of decisions. Although he had already engineered a rescue of Bear Stearns a few months before and helped bail out quasi-private lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers — one of Goldman's last real competitors — collapse without intervention. ("Goldman's superhero status was left intact," says market analyst Eric Salzman, "and an investment-banking competitor, Lehman, goes away.") The very next day, Paulson greenlighted a massive, $85 billion bailout of AIG, which promptly turned around and repaid $13 billion it owed to Goldman. Thanks to the rescue effort, the bank ended up getting paid in full for its bad bets: By contrast, retired auto workers awaiting the Chrysler bailout will be lucky to receive 50 cents for every dollar they are owed.

Immediately after the AIG bailout, Paulson announced his federal bailout for the financial industry, a $700 billion plan called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and put a heretofore unknown 35-year-old Goldman banker named Neel Kashkari in charge of administering the funds. In order to qualify for bailout monies, Goldman announced that it would convert from an investment bank to a bank-holding company, a move that allows it access not only to $10 billion in TARP funds, but to a whole galaxy of less conspicuous, publicly backed funding — most notably, lending from the discount window of the Federal Reserve. By the end of March, the Fed will have lent or guaranteed at least $8.7 trillion under a series of new bailout programs — and thanks to an obscure law allowing the Fed to block most congressional audits, both the amounts and the recipients of the monies remain almost entirely secret.

Converting to a bank-holding company has other benefits as well: Goldman's primary supervisor is now the New York Fed, whose chairman at the time of its announcement was Stephen Friedman, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs. Friedman was technically in violation of Federal Reserve policy by remaining on the board of Goldman even as he was supposedly regulating the bank; in order to rectify the problem, he applied for, and got, a conflict-of-interest waiver from the government. Friedman was also supposed to divest himself of his Goldman stock after Goldman became a bank-holding company, but thanks to the waiver, he was allowed to go out and buy 52,000 additional shares in his old bank, leaving him $3 million richer. Friedman stepped down in May, but the man now in charge of supervising Goldman — New York Fed president William Dudley — is yet another former Goldmanite.

The collective message of all of this — the AIG bailout, the swift approval for its bank-holding conversion, the TARP funds — is that when it comes to Goldman Sachs, there isn't a free market at all. The government might let other players on the market die, but it simply will not allow Goldman to fail under any circumstances. Its edge in the market has suddenly become an open declaration of supreme privilege. "In the past it was an implicit advantage," says Simon Johnson, an economics professor at MIT and former official at the International Monetary Fund, who compares the bailout to the crony capitalism he has seen in Third World countries. "Now it's more of an explicit advantage."

Fast-forward to today. It's early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs — its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign — sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs.

Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites. (Gensler was the firm's co-head of finance.) And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits — a booming trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.

Autore: Matt Taibbi

Fonte: www.rollingstone.com

Bashing Goldman Sachs Is Simply a Game for Fools

Wirepullers: Goldman Sachs è forse la banca più importante al mondo, e non deve essere un caso se i suoi manager prima o poi finiscono in una qualche amministrazione pubblica (in Italia gli esempi di Romano Prodi e Mario Draghi). Qualcuno addirittura pensa che sia la stessa Goldman Sachs a piazzarli nei punti nevralgici della politica mondiale, per poterla controllare come una sorta di piovra che si muove nell'ombra. Non sappiamo se questo sia vero, è indubbio però che Goldman Sachs è un colosso economico molto potente. (2)

From the moment I left Yale and started working for Goldman Sachs, I’ve felt uneasy interacting with those who don’t.

It’s not that I think less of Goldman outsiders than I did while I remained among you. It’s just that I feel your envy, and know that nothing I can do or say will ever persuade you that I am no more than human.

Thus, like many of my colleagues, I have adopted a strategy of never leaving Goldman Sachs, apart from a few brief, spasmodic attempts to make what you outsiders call “love” or “the beast with two backs.” Goldman recognizes how important it is for its people to replicate themselves. We bill no performance fees for the service.

Today, the sheer volume of irresponsible media commentary has forced us to reconsider our public-relations strategy. With every uptick in our share price it’s grown clearer that we who are inside Goldman Sachs must open a dialogue with you who are not. Not for our benefit, but for yours.

America stands at a crossroads, and Goldman Sachs now owns both of them. In choosing which road to take, ordinary Americans must not be distracted by unproductive resentment toward the toll-takers. To that end we at Goldman Sachs would like to dispel several false and insidious rumors.

Rumor No. 1: “Goldman Sachs controls the U.S. government.”
Every time we hear the phrase “the United States of Goldman Sachs” we shake our heads in wonder. Every ninth-grader knows that the U.S. government consists of three branches. Goldman owns just one of these outright; the second we simply rent, and the third we have no interest in at all. (Note there isn’t a single former Goldman employee on the Supreme Court.)
What small interest we maintain in the U.S. government is, we feel, in the public interest. Our current financial crisis has its roots in a single easily identifiable source: the envy others felt toward Goldman Sachs.

The bozos at Merrill Lynch, the dimwits at Citigroup, the nimrods at Lehman Brothers, the louts at Bear Stearns, even that momentarily useful lunatic Joe Cassano at AIG -- all of these people took risks that no non-Goldman person should ever take, in a pathetic attempt to replicate Goldman’s financial returns.
For too long we have allowed others to emulate us. Now we are working productively with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the Congress to ensure that we alone are allowed to take the sort of risks that might destroy the financial system.

Rumor No. 2: “When the U.S. government bailed out AIG, and paid off its gambling debts, it saved not AIG but Goldman Sachs.”

The charge isn’t merely insulting but ignorant. Less responsible journalists continue to bring up the $12.9 billion we received from AIG, as if that was some kind of big deal to us. But as our CFO David Viniar explained back in March, we were hedged. Our profits from AIG “rounded to zero.”

People who don’t work at Goldman Sachs, of course, find this implausible: How could $12.9 billion round to zero? Easy, but you just need to understand the mathematics.
Let’s assume AIG transferred $12,880,560,250.34 of taxpayer money to Goldman Sachs. A Goldman outsider, asked to round this number, might call it $12,880,560,250.00. That’s not how we look at it; at Goldman we always round to the nearest $50 billion, so anything less than $25 billion rounds to zero.

Think of it that way and you can see that $12,880,560,250.34 isn’t even close to not rounding to zero.
Rumor No. 3: “As the U.S. government will eat the losses if Goldman Sachs goes bust, Goldman Sachs shouldn’t be allowed to keep making these massive financial bets. At the very least the $11.4 billion Goldman Sachs already has set aside for employees in 2009 -- $386,429 a head, just for the first six months -- is unfair, as the U.S. taxpayer has borne so much of the risk of the wagers that generated the profits.”
Really, we don’t know where to begin with this one. It is wrong-headed in so many different ways!

Let’s begin with the idea that the taxpayer is running a bigger risk than we are. The billions he stands to lose are trivial; after all, they round to zero.
The real risk, when you think about it even for a minute, is the risk we take ourselves: that Goldman will cease to exist and we will cease to be Goldman employees. To flirt with such tragedy we obviously need to be paid.

Rumor No. 4: “Goldman employees all look alike.”
Several recent newspaper photos have revealed that a surprising number of Goldman Sachs workers are white, male and bald. That non-Goldman people glance at such photos and think “Holy crap, they even look alike!” just shows how deeply anti- Goldman bigotry runs in American life.
We at Goldman represent unique clusters of DNA; if we bear some faint surface resemblance to one another, and to creatures from the 24th century, it is only because our superior powers of reasoning lead us to hold in our minds exactly the same thoughts, at exactly the same time.
A shared disinterest in growing hair, for instance, isn’t a coincidence of nature but an expression of healthy like- mindedness.
“The world is a pool table,” our naked-headed CEO likes to tell us. “And all the people in it are either stripes or solids. You alone are the cue balls.”

Rumor No. 5: Goldman Sachs is “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”
Those words are of course taken from a recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine and they are transparently false.

For starters, the vampire squid doesn’t feed on human flesh. Ergo, no vampire squid would ever wrap itself around the face of humanity, except by accident. And nothing that happens at Goldman Sachs -- nothing that Goldman Sachs thinks, nothing that Goldman Sachs feels, nothing that Goldman Sachs does --ever happens by accident.

Autore: Michael Lewis

Fonte: www.bloomberg.com