By M.K. Styllinski
“Goldman Sachs, which received more subsidies and bailout-related funds than any other investment bank because the Federal Reserve permitted it to become a bank holding company under its ’emergency situation,’ has used billions in taxpayer money to enrich itself and reward its top executives. It handed its senior employees a staggering $18 billion in 2009, $16 billion in 2010 and $10 billion in 2011 in mega-bonuses. This massive transfer of wealth upwards by the Bush and Obama administrations, now estimated at $13 trillion to $14 trillion, went into the pockets of those who carried out fraud and criminal activity rather than the victims who lost their jobs, their savings and often their homes.”
– Chris Hedges, journalist and author; extract from his statement during Goldman Sacs protest
Despite the lack of empirical data this hasn’t prevented a massive campaign in favour of reducing our carbon footprint by fusing it with Sustainable Development visions and the promise of a Global Carbon Tax. The latter bonanza has had all the usual suspects rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of yet another opportunity to fleece the global population of what little cash they have left from the last crisis. And here’s where it becomes easy to see something else is very wrong with the anthropocentric (human-influenced) global warming picture.
Lloyd Blankfein CEO Goldman Sachs
Why is it that major electric power utility corporations (the largest consumers of fossil fuels) and some of the biggest names in agribusiness and chemicals have suddenly jumped aboard the climate change train? A change of heart? Well there’s a green light flashing but it isn’t for an ecological conscience.
There is much in the global warming agenda that supports their cause, which is making vast amounts of money through normalised exploitation. This may be why power companies, investment banks and various hedge funds are all salivating at the prospect of Emissions Trading commonly known as “Cap and Trade”, which is central to reducing levels of carbon dioxide. The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and the new speculative profits to be made in carbon futures, is producing another means to exploit a system where any costs incurred for multi-nationals and utility companies are sure to be passed on to the consumer, as they always are.
If things go according to plan, coal fired power stations, gas distributor utilities and others industries will be subject to limits on the amount of CO2 emissions they can produce annually. When some companies arrive at their carbon-polluting limit then “allocations” or credits can be bought from other companies which have got gold stars for producing less emissions. The neat little twist in this eco-SMART dream is that it exists only if the government imposes a cap which creates an artificial scarcity on the right to produce energy. Brokers or an electronic trading platform will provide sales for offsets under such a system which is exactly what has been happening in Europe, since 2005 through the Climate Exchange (ECX). What if the allowed credits exceed the corresponding tonnage of emissions, which is the case in almost every country in Europe?
Then we have yet another system that not only mandates cheating, but celebrates it.
Carbon offsets provide even more opportunities. Recycling aluminium cans? Claim your credits. Planting trees? Roll on up. Despite both these activities giving no net emission reductions, the latter being long-term at best, no regulations are in place to ensure compliance because it is a eco-ponzi scheme created to make money not to protect the environment. Many people on both sides of the political and environmental divide agree. What is really driving this new market are the billions of dollars on offer for the same protagonists of financial warfare that stimulated the economic meltdown of October 2008 and beyond. These same criminals are supporting a Global Carbon Tax and Emissions Trading as another source to exploit. Estimates of $646 billion worth of carbon credits will be auctioned over the next several years, perhaps even three times that amount. [1]
Just as surely as every other bubble in the last eighty years, this new eco-commodities market can only follow the same framework of exploitation as demand rises and carbon auctions become the new source of Elite cash. As the “cap” is lowered by the government, carbon credits will become scarcer and thus more valuable as every year passes. Further, it is a fail-safe framework mandated by the Sate that will be worth almost a $trillion, all under the mantle of saving the planet – what a coup!
While the Western nations are being targeted first, Asia has some of the worst pollution in the world which is why Australasia has come under the Carbon Tax boot with a vengeance. The background is instructive since the Australian experience follows the same formula occurring in the West and indicates that it was being used as a testing ground for a future global roll out. Some key players are pushing the Australian carbon tax and who were/are employed by the very banks that will profit from the system. How interesting then, that Dr Megan Clark, the Chief Executive and Board member of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Australia’s national science agency, was also a former Director of NM Rothschild and Sons Australia (Australian arm of the Rothschild Investment Bank) from 2001-03. She is also a member of the Australia Advisory Board of the Bank of America and Merrill Lynch. [2] The fact that this director is now heading the science body that is lobbying for a global carbon credit scheme that will make her and her colleagues billions has nothing to do with it – it’s all just a coincidence.
Mr Simon McKeon is Chairman of the CSIRO Board is also currently the Executive Chairman of Macquarie Group’s Melbourne Office (Macquarie Bank). The Federal Government had no problem appointing a corporate banker as the CSIRO’s new chairman: “… Despite admitting he has ‘no scientific pedigree’, Mr McKeon says he wants to see the issue of climate change elevated to the top of the political and public agenda.” [3]
Sure – his investments and that of his backers depend on it.
Then there is Liberal Party MP Mr. Malcolm Turnbull who as well as being extremely passionate about climate change issues and equally vocal on carbon credits, he is the former Chairman and Managing Director of Goldman Sachs Australia, 1997-2001 and a former partner of Goldman Sachs and Co. from 1998-2001. (Goldman Sac’s role in the carbon credits scam will be explored in greater detail presently).[4] His colleague and former Liberal party leader Dr. John Hewson is another advocate for carbon credit legislation. A founding member and founding Executive Director of Macquarie Bank 1985-87 and former economist with the IMF 1973-75 he is currently a Non-Executive Director of Change Investment Management a financial investment company that invests in ‘Eco’ projects. Hewson has been a busy banker having been a former Director and Chairman of ABN AMRO Australia 1995-98 an investment bank with its own carbon trading division and still finding time to run his own investment banking business. [5]
Ross Garnaut, a key player in governments in the Asia-Pacific, is a professor in economics with no scientific qualifications which nevertheless qualified him to lead the Garnaut Climate Change Report and several other reviews. He was the former Chairman of the Board of Directors, Primary Industry Bank of Australia 1989 to 1994 and the former Chairman of the Board of Directors, Bank of Western Australia Ltd from 1988 to 1995. [6] Then we mustn’t forget former Prime Minister of Australia Paul Keating, Chairman of the Corporate Advisory International at investment banking firm Lazard and his board membership of China Development Bank: International Advisory Council. [7]
Broadly backed by environmentalists but deeply unpopular with the majority of the Australian public, The Clean Energy Legislative Package was passed by the Australian Senate in November 2011 becoming law in July 2012. With around 13 percent of the public in favour of the tax, no referendum was offered so that people could choose, no debate in Parliament and no disclosure as to who are the biggest 500 “polluters”. Reassurance came in the form of compensation to householders borrowed from the IMF already stretched to the limit with European bailouts. [8]
© Avenger01 | Dreamstime.com – Carbon Tax Photo
Although the Carbon Tax in Australia was repealed in July 2014 climate change legislation overall remains in place. According to the Australian government: “The Climate Change Authority (Abolition) Bill 2013 and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (Abolition) Bill 2014, were introduced into parliament as part of the broader Carbon Tax Repeal Legislative Package and each of which will proceed separately. Policy responsibility for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation remains with the Treasury.” So, no change there. It is likely Carbon Tax will be renewed since the framework is still in place. Furthermore: “The Clean Energy Regulator will ensure that carbon tax liabilities are met in full.” along with the Direct Action Plan of June 2014 which is a bill to implement the Emissions Reduction Fund particularly focused on what’s left of the farming community. [9]
The cost of living for Australians was certainly pushed through the roof with the tax while making very little impact on environmental concerns. In the unlikely event that the science behind CO2 could have been correct, Australia’s total contribution of global emissions will only be reduced by a paltry 0.05 percent taking more than 10 years for the saving to be realised. [10] Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard was a keen supporter of world government so it was natural that she oversaw a move in this direction under the cover of environmental policy.
By 2013, the liberal coalition of Tony Abbot curtailed such a plan for now. No doubt they will try again.
Over in the USA, the first mandatory Cap and Trade system was enforced in the state of New Jersey in 2010 followed by many other North-Eastern states that have sold over 729 million in CO2 credits since 2008. [11] Under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Inc. (RGGI) two other mandatory regional systems started in 2012, bringing cap-and-trade to 23 states in all and four Canadian provinces. [12] Though a nationwide system has yet to materialise it is only a matter of time. When insider trading and secrecy defines the political-corporate system then Congress can easily be bypassed as it has been throughout its existence. According to the RGGI corporation’s mission statement its “…exclusive purpose is to provide administrative and technical services to support the development and implementation of each RGGI State’s CO2 Budget Trading Program”.
RGGI, Inc.’s activities include:
-
- Development and maintenance of a system to report data from emissions sources subject to RGGI, and to track CO2 allowances.
- Implementation of a platform to auction CO2 allowances.
- Monitoring the market related to the auction and trading of CO2 allowances.
- Providing technical assistance to the participating states in reviewing applications for emissions offset projects.
- Providing technical assistance to the participating states to evaluate proposed changes to the States’ RGGI programs.
A CO2 template ready to extract the needed dosh from the populace once Agenda 21, SD and SMART are fully operational.
Funnily enough, who should happen to be bidding their socks off on this issue? None than most of Wall St., including: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays Bank and others. Speculating on the price of permits or “allowances” ensures that these financial giants pocket big money from misplaced environmental concerns and corner the carbon market in the process. Wait awhile and the effects of these speculations will be felt on customers’ electricity bills in the same way we all bailed out banksters so they could continue living in the manner to which they had long become accustomed. Utilities which need CO2 allowances at RGGI auctions must compete against powerful private interests whose primary goal is generating money. Therefore, we are looking at another reinvention of the 2008 Ponzi scheme where US and European citizens will be duped all over again.
What’s more, bureaucrats are denying the public right to know via New Jersey Watchdog’s Open Public Record Requests for auction details. RGGI claimed it was not a “public body” and thus it could keep trade secrets, contrasting sharply with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conducting similar auctions. Allowances have been sold by the EPA for acid rain otherwise known as sulphur dioxide (SO2). It seems now that derivatives have been way too toxic CO2 represents a plentiful bounty that requires insider back-scratching. For that to go ahead, the secondary markets of the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange and the Green Exchange do the job.
And guess who owns these markets?
The Green Exchange is owned by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Goldman Sachs Group Inc., MF Global Holdings Ltd. Credit Suisse Group, AG, Morgan Stanley and Newedge Group, most of whom were involved in massive fraud, insider trading, price fixing and serious financial irregularities and fined billions – not that this made any difference at all. [13] [14]
Oh, and don’t forget JPMorgan Chase & Co is also cutting a slice of the pie. (This is the corporate predator that also has a string of “murder-suicides” of its employees, the company that’s going head to head with the Dept. Of Justice over its FX trading practices). It is in the interest of these companies to not only take advantage of the gaping holes in the financial system but from any new social directive that lies within it, whether ecological or philanthropic. It demands that they actually create the crises that put the majority of people into dire straits economically so that they can benefit directly from the social services implemented to allow the most needy to survive.
One brief example lies in US food subsidization for the poor, the expenditure of which sits at $72 billion a year provided by food stamps, a.k.a The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAPS). Nearly half of all SNAP participants are children. Where there is regular outflow of federal cash you will find corporate parasites leeching off their share. Washington, D.C. is home to a range of political and corporate lobbyists who exert enormous pressure on Congress and other instruments of US government to keep the food that can be bought through food assistance programs of the lowest quality and price possible while banks like JP Morgan cream off billions from their payment processing agreements from electronic transactions.
They profit from every sale and from every individual desperate enough to have to rely on food stamps. Companies like Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola and Kraft gain a tidy some selling products for subsidization and profiting from poverty. One journalist posed the question: “… how much were states spending to print food stamps in comparison to how much they pay JP Morgan to process transactions electronically? I’d wager it is cheaper to print the stamps.” [15]
***
Taking a bird’s eye view of the history of banksters and corporate predation on the public funds is absolutely necessary if we are to see the true nature of the carbon credit scheme and the global warming industry as a whole. JP Morgan-Chase has been manipulating government and the public for as long as Goldman Sachs, the latter having particular influence inside the Obama administration. As Matt Taibbi writes in the opening paragraph of his seminal Rolling Stone piece: “The Great American Bubble”: “the first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it is everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” [16]
It is in this article that Taibbi lifts the lid on the nature of Goldman Sachs and others who have mastered the art of economic manipulation and to such a high degree that we live in a world of their design, where vast numbers of people live in abject poverty as a direct consequence of their financial terrorism.
World “Vampire Squid”
Cutting its teeth in the Great Depression Goldman positioned itself in thick of speculative investments with Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation, issuing a million shares priced at $100 and buying all those shares with its own money, driving the price up by its own relentless bidding and selling a percentage to the public. The sponsorship of Shenandoah Corporation and the Blue Ridge Corporation followed, where millions more shares in these funds accelerated a pyramidal investment scheme that soared into the financial stratosphere. As stated: “Goldman hiding behind Goldman hiding behind Goldman. Of the 7,250,000 initial shares of Elue Ridge, 6,250,000 were actually owned by Shenandoah – which, of course, was in large part owned by Goldman Trading.” [17]
The foundation of the present casino-economy that we now found ourselves forced to play, is directly sourced from financial cartels like Goldman. The basic nature of this time-honoured scam labelled the “global economy”operates in the following way: “You take a dollar and borrow nine against it; then you take that $10 fund and borrow $90; then you take your $100 fund and, so long as the public is still lending, borrow and invest $900. If the last fund in the line starts to lose value, you no longer have the money to pay back your investors, and everyone gets massacred.”
The economist John Kenneth Galbraith had little time for the likes of Goldman Sachs. The Great Crash of 1929 and the following aftermath of the Great Depression saw Goldman Sachs doing what they did best: creating the opportunities to make money through massive suffering. Galbraith saw:“… the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah trusts as classic examples of the insanity of leverage-based investment,” and which were a: “… major cause of the market’s historic crash; in today’s dollars, the losses the bank suffered totalled $475 billion.” As Galbraith wrote in somewhat deflated fashion: “If there must be madness, something may be said for having it on a heroic scale.’ ” [18]
About sixty-five years later and Goldman Sachs had become a fully-fledged corporate psychopath. This tenacity and primitive survival instinct that left many of its competitors sunk during the depression, just made Goldman even stronger. It became the chief underwriter for most of Wall St. and eventually unleashing its true power through deregulation under the direction of CEO Robert Rubin (and CFR member) who had hung onto the coat-tails of best buddy and President Bill Clinton to become director of the National Economic Council and eventually Treasury secretary.
In the 1990s Rubin could do no wrong and the media smoothed his path to supremacy. When the classic Establishment rag Time had Rubin and his Treasury deputy Larry Summers and Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan on their front cover in 1999, the economic outlook was set for speculation, exploitation and economic plunder on a scale undreamt of. The financial markets were “over-regulated” and Rubin sought to change all that. Far from being “The Committee to Save the World” as the title ran, their job was to plunge the world into economic debt that could never be repaid but profits would abound for those in the know, namely, Goldman Sachs and friends.
The second bubble created and burst by Goldman was the internet dot com bonanza. Ill-thought out and barely legal companies were sold like rock-star geeks in the media and floated on the stock market for mega millions. What the average investor didn’t know was that the banks had been hustling and changing the rules so that deals looked better than they really were. How did they do this? Taibbi explains: “… 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.” [19]
It was then that financial warfare became a reality and an even bigger tool for the 4C’s net. With no regulation there were no limits to what could be achieved through financial restructuring in its widest possible sense. Goldman was able to vacuum up money in such an effective and extortionate fashion by manipulating the share price otherwise known as “laddering.”
Taibbi describes the process for us in simple terms:
Say you’re Goldman Sachs, and Bullshit.com comes to you and asks you to take their company public. You agree on the usual tennis: You’ll price the stock, determine how many shares should be released and take the Bullshit.com CEO on a “road show~ to schmooze investors, all in exchange for a substantial fee (typically six to seven percent of the amount raised). You then promise your best clients the right to buy big chunks of the IPO at the low offering price -let’s say Bullshit.com’s starting share price is $15 – in exchange for a promise that they will buy more shares later on the open market. That seemingly simple demand gives you inside knowledge of the IPO’s future, knowledge that wasn’t disclosed to the day-trader schmucks who only had the prospectus to go by: You know that certain of your clients who bought X amount of shares at $15 are also going to buy Y more shares at $20 or $25, virtually guaranteeing that the price is going to go to $25 and beyond. In this way, Goldman could artificially jack up the new company’s price, which of course was to the bank’s benefit – a six percent fee of a $500 million IPO is serious money.
Goldman was seen as one of the primary instigators of the crash as a result. Yet when their laddering operations were discovered they paid their fines and continued as if nothing had happened.
Parallel to laddering was the simple use of bribery or “spinning” where shares were offered to executives at extra-low prices in exchange for underwriting business. Banks did their part by undervaluing the initial offering price so that shares rose more rapidly thus providing greater dividends for the insider few and in the shortest possible time. The you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours formula worked in this way: “… instead of Bullsrul.com opening at $20, the bank would approach the Bullshit.com CEO and offer him a million shares of his own company at $18 in exchange for future business effectively robbing all of Bullshit’s new shareholders by diverting cash that should have gone to the company’s bottom line into the private bank account of the company’s CEO.” [20]
When the bubble burst it took thousands of businesses with it, wiping out more than $5 trillion of wealth on the NASDAQ market alone. Once the investment banksters had been rewarded for criminality with huge bonuses (which continues today) and had obtained a taste for how easy it was to inflate and deflate their bubble – the corruption could only get worse. Moreover, it had an ideological basis to it, where skimming off the maximum amount from a capitalist system in decline was not only profitable but necessary if a new global financial architecture was to ever come of age. Bubbles were essential to global governance to break the public spirit and to provide pots of money for new globalist visions.
Goldman Sachs Headquarters, at 200 West Street, in Manhattan | photo: Quantumquark (wikipedia)
In 2000, true to the formula of sneaking unpopular or downright dangerous acts in at the last minute; when congressman are tired and want to go home to their mistresses, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act found its way into law. It had been inserted into an 11,000 page spending bill with no debate to speak of and very little interest in the implications. Banks were now given free rein to trade default swaps as they pleased. And they did so with impunity in the sub-prime housing crisis leading up to the 2008 crash.
Meanwhile, AIG asked if default swaps could fall under the category of regulatory insurance which meant that Goldman and others could pitch their wares to A-grade investors and the hobo in the street underwriting mortgage-backed securities much of which was subprime. It was the most blatant securities fraud touted as legitimate investing. Ultimately it led to the demise of many companies involved, including AIG. Goldman had the cash to pay lawsuits and fines and was free to walk away yet again with over $1.3 billion of taxpayer’s money from the bailout to AIG which meant that the bank directly profited from the housing bubble not once but twice, or as Taibbi eloquently states: “… it fucked the investors who bought their horseshit CDOs by betting against its own crappy product. Then it turned around and fucked the taxpayer by making him pay off those same bets.” [21]
After the fleecing of the housing market and the myth of housing prices being impervious to change the predators were on the lookout for the next bubble to inflate and burst. The physical-commodities market: foodstuffs, consumables, energy and oil fit the bill. The latter market reacted to this flight from the carnage of the housing crash and the plummeting value of the dollar with the price of a barrel oil shot up from around $55 in mid-2007 to $149 by the summer of 2008. This was due to Goldman and friends manipulating the markets into yet another casino run by lobbying investors and pension fund holders to invest in oil futures on condition that they buy oil at a fixed price and on a specific date of their choosing. Mike Norman, the Chief Economist at the Wall Street firm John Thomas Financial wrote in October 2011: “Total NYMEX open interest in crude is 1.4 m contracts or about 1.4 billion barrels of crude. Daily volume of crude traded on NYMEX is over 1 billion barrels per day. Total daily global demand is only 83 million barrels per day. The amount traded on one single exchange is more than 10 times total daily consumption. It’s a giant casino with prices being driven up by speculators and consumers having to pay more and more.” [22]
Author F. William Engdahl concluded that: “roughly 60-70 percent of the price of oil then was pure speculation, manipulated by the GSCI, the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index” … irrespective of supply and demand”. He observed that the “crucial ingredient” in the success of this manipulation is …“not the NYMEX for the global oil price benchmark, but the ICE Futures in London.”
Why?
He offers this narrative on ICE:
Because the ICE Futures is a daughter company of the International Commodity Exchange of Atlanta in Georgia, owned by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase etc. – the big oil banks that benefit enormously from the inside. There is absolutely no serious regulation of the ICE Futures. The British keep their hands off it, and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the CFTC, since 2006 under the ‘Commodity Modernization Act of 2000’ allows ICE Futures to trade energy futures without disclosure to CFTC in the U.S. market through London. So, in fact, it has deregulated and taken away from any government supervisory role the entire trade in energy futures, especially oil. This is a rigged game. [23]
>As Goldman and other banks drove investors into the commodities markets speculators placed increasingly reckless bets leading directly to the oil bubble in 2008. This all took place with the same illegal secrecy that we saw in New Jersey and the Cap and Trade, the same benefits which allowed Goldman to become “the chief designer of a giant commodities betting parlor.” Once again a huge loss of wealth occurred when oil-commodities crashed. It led to worldwide chaos sending millions of people below the poverty line and creating food riots and serious unemployment.
Carbon Tax supporter Goldman Sacs and others are responsible for creating and perpetuating financial bubbles. Brocken Inaglory | Alvesgaspar (wikipedia)
Finally, the crash in September 2008 after the bailout of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the sacrifice of Lehman Bros., ( a Goldman competitor) Treasury-Secretary and ex CEO of Goldman Sachs Hank Paulson gave the go-ahead to $85 billion bailout of AIG who owed Goldman $13 billion and therefore allowed the company to pay it back. Meanwhile, industry workers’ jobs and small businesses were dying by the dozen ever hopeful for any assistance – which never came.
What did arrive however, was the notorious Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) amounting to $700 billion dollar’s worth of bailout money for the financial industry – namely the banks.
Filled to the brim with ex-Goldman employees surrounding the bailout honeypot like killer bees, Goldman Sachs wanted a piece of it. Thus they managed to do just that by converting themselves from an investment bank to a bank holding company. This permitted access to $10 billion in TARP funds along with an almost infinite Federal Reserve funding, publicly backed but well under the radar. What this means in real terms, is an almost unimaginable level of money was lent or guaranteed by the Federal Reserve by the end March 2009 totalling over $8.7 trillion. The influx of new bailouts and loopholes in the law allowed the Fed to block almost all attempts at congressional auditing so that fiscal details on who received what, when and how remained secret.
More recently, as Europe suffers a depression most intense in Spain, Portugal and Greece we find Goldman’s sticky fingers all over it, most significantly in the country where democracy was born. The company willingly helped Greece conceal its budget deficit by arranging a currency swap so that it could manage $15 billion of bond sales and rack up substantial profits before Greece plunged into chaos. Bill Blain, co-head of fixed income at Matrix Corporate Capital LLP, a London-based broker and fund manager stated: “The price of bonds should reflect the reality of Greece’s finances,” therefore: “If a bank was selling them to investors on the basis of publicly available information, and they were aware that information was incorrect, then investors have been fooled.” [24]
Fooling everyone is the name of game.
In summary, Goldman Sachs is one of many powerful criminal cartels indulging its predatory whims to create the inflation and crash-deflation of four major financial bubbles over several decades. All of these disasters leave a greenback dollar-trail to Goldman and its Rothschild brothers in arms who caused untold misery to millions of people, (mostly pensioners and children) by infiltrating government and bribing spineless members of Congress to fracture society to the point that is almost irreversible. Despite all this, they remain on top while international banking law allows them to secrete their profits away in offshore accounts and claim deductions on the same untaxed income. They are free to start the lucrative financial warfare process again should the next opportunity present itself – and indeed it has.
Goldman Sachs was the leading campaign donor for Barack Obama contributing $981,000. Do we think this is because they liked his smile? Or that he would be the first “black” president? Rather, like so many puppets before him, they knew he’d be compliant having been plucked from obscurity and schooled for the job well in advance. Obama’s White House chief of staff and Zionist Rahm Emanuel whose legacy of funnelling cash contributions from Goldman to the Clinton campaign are well known. First proposed by former a Goldman CEO, Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, he accepted the lead role in overseeing and guiding the ‘$700 billion’ bailout through the White House. Along with Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldman Sachs employees – he was in good company. [25]
By 2010, the Obama Administration was infested with Goldmanites just as it was in Clinton’s day.
Which brings us to the Hamilton Project, a mini version of the Council on Foreign Relations with an emphasis on economics. Funded by Goldman Sachs and Robert Rubin and embedded in the Establishment’s own Brookings Institution, the think-tank is named after Alexander Hamilton who famously described people as “a great beast” and supported the imposition of a State bank and centralised government.
Ex Goldman CEO Rubin is the driving force of Hamilton and stringent economic policies that would ultimately benefit Goldman Sachs and CFR principles. According to journalist Eamon Javers: “Behind the scenes, Rubin still wields enormous influence in Barack Obama’s Washington, chatting regularly with a legion of former employees who dominate the ranks of the young administration’s policy team. He speaks regularly to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who once worked for Rubin at Treasury.” [26]
The Hamilton Project is a revolving door for Goldman employees and the US government, with the first four directors of the Hamilton Project serving in the Obama Administration. With a heavy mix of Zionist and Anglo-American Establishment groupies, the think-tank includes co-chair Robert Rubin himself; Carlyle Group CEO David Rubenstein; Sheryl Sandberg Chief Operating Officer, Facebook; ex-Goldmanite and Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers; Peter Orszag, Vice Chairman of Global Banking, Citigroup, Inc.; Suzanne Nora Johnson, Former Vice Chairman, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Neo-Conservative-transhumanist Peter Thiel and topped off with a heavy sprinkling of Brookings Institute staff and George Town University economics professors. Barack Obama has also given keynote speeches at the Hamilton Project giving his tacit support for both its ideology and policies. [27]
Key U.S. Government Positions held by Goldman Sachs alumni. courtesy of prof 77 at ‘Dregs of the Future’ and the post: A List of Goldman Sachs Ties to the Obama Government–including Elena Kagan
Which means the concrete has set for the foundations of Goldman’s next big casino run: cap-and-trade and carbon credits sold to the public as an on-going environmental strategy complimenting sustainable development and re-wilding. If it takes off, Goldman won’t have to do any rigging – it’s all built into the plan mandated by UN Agenda 21 and Western government push for SMART societies worldwide. Goldman has been lobbying hard for Cap and Trade for years and has poured a lot of money into climate change issues, having already invested $500 million in the Green Growth fund.
Carbon credits represent another trillion dollar bubble for Goldmanites and other corporate predators and they mean to have as big a slice of the pie as they can. As Matt Taibbi observed: “This is worse than the bailout: It allows the bank to seize taxpayer money before it’s even collected.” [28]
And that’s what the eco-economic game is all about.
See also: Goldman Sachs to pay $5 billion for misleading mortgage bond investors
Cool it – documentary by Bjorn Lomborg
Notes
[1] http://www.carboncreditsfaq.com/
[2] http://www.aussieinnovation.com/wiki/Megan_Clark
[3] http://www.csiro.au Simon MKeon bio | ‘Macquarie boss gets CSIRO top job’ ABC News, Jun 21, 2010.
[4] Malcolm Turnbull’s Official Australian Parliament House Biography.
[5] His biography on Equity Capital Limited’s website and his fact page at the Museum of Australian Democracy (PDF), Money Management and Australian National University.
[6] Ross Garnaut: Executive Profile & Biography – Businessweek.
[7] Lazard’s website and China Development Bank’s website.
[8] ‘Carbon tax hecklers stop Prime Minister Julia Gillard in her tracks’ by Mark Kenny, Adelaide Now July 14, 2011.
[9] (http://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/repealing-carbon-tax)
[10] ‘Australia introduces controversial carbon tax’ BBC News, 1 July 2012.
[11] http://www.newjersey.watchdog.org/files/2010/09/RGGI-auction-results-thru-9-10.pdf |WesternClimate Initiative -Currently being designed, anticipated to begin January 2012 (as of 1/2011) http://www.westernclimateinitiative.org
[12] Ibid.
[13] ‘Goldman Sachs, MF Global Among Six New Clearing Members of Green Exchange’ By Mathew Carr, Oct 11, 2010 bloomberg.com
[14] ‘JPMorgan’s record fine’ Bloomberg, June 4, 2010. | ‘JPMorgan fined for wash trades in oil, gasoline’ By David Sheppard, Reuters, Jun 1, 2012. |
[15] ‘J.P. Morgan makes billions in profits from food stamps every year’ by Lou Colagiovanni, The Examiner June 21, 2012.
[16] ‘The Great American Bubble’ By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone Magazine July 9-23 2009.
[17] Ibid. (p.54)
[18] Ibid (Taibbi quotes Galbraith from “In Goldman we Trust” (p.54)
[19] Ibid (p.56)
[20] Ibid (p.58)
[21] Ibid. (p.60)
[22] ‘A History of Rigged & Fraudulent Oil Prices (and What It Can Teach Us About Gold & Silver)’ by Lars Schall interview with F. William Engdahl 2011.
[23] Ibid.
[24] ‘Goldman Sachs, Greece Didn’t Disclose Swap Contract’ By Elisa Martinuzzi, Bloomberg, February 17, 2010.
[25] ‘Goldman Sachs Will Be Sitting Pretty With Emanuel in the Obama White House’ Washington Examiner November 20, 2008.
[26] ‘Robert Rubin returns’ By Eamon Javers, Politico, August 4, 2010.
[27] ‘Obama’s “Smoking Gun”: His Hamilton Project Speech shows his links to Goldman, Entitlement Cuts’(Part 1+2) by F. Flambeau . http://www.firedoglake.com/
[28] op. cit.Taibbi (p.101)
INFRAKSHUN 