Due to the fact that Goldman Sachs is currently the favorite of Washington they are raking in massive profits during a time when most banks and brokerage firms are struggling for survival.
Due to a very successful second quarter, Goldman has set aside $226,156 per employee in compensation - a 75% increase per employee. That means annualized compensation could be $1 million per employee for the year. We find this of great interest inasmuch as the recently converted bank received a $10 billion taxpayer bailout via Goldman's connections in Washington. They also received a myriad of benefits from several other government schemes over the past two years. It is nice to know that in part American taxpayers made this possible while unemployment is running on a U6 basis at 20.5%, and Americans are losing their homes by the millions.
Pay surged 75% in the second quarter and compensation and benefits costs were $6.65 billion, up 37% from the equivalent quarter in 2008.
The immense profits of 33% were mainly due to trading profits of $2.7 billion. Goldman made up 24% of the Black Box program. Program trading made up 73% of all NYSE trading.
High frequency trading is one of the fastest-expanding strategies on Wall Street. The Street is no longer a place of raising capital, but a vast gambling casino. This is moral hazard at its utmost. Needless to say, the most egregious example is Goldman Sachs. A perfect example of too big to fail as an owner of the Fed. There is no question its activities distorts markets. They are leaders in credit default swaps and taxpayers bailed out Goldman via AIG for $13 billion that you were allowed to pay for. In addition, Goldman is the world's largest insider-trading hedge fund and they are kings of crony capitalism. Almost everything this conglomeration of crooks are involved in is to the detriment of the US economy and the American people collectively. They rig markets with the complicity of our government who they have bought and paid for. They are master manipulators and creators of bankruptcies.
Then we have the arrest of Russian-American programmer Sergey Aleynikov, who allegedly tried to steal Goldman's secret code to unlocking Goldman's method of front-running stock, and commodity trades. This platform, that we were told came from the government, allowed rapid fire trading of stocks and commodities. In fact, the industry considers such activity as front running. In this process Goldman says there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways. If that is the case, what is to stop Goldman from doing the same thing? Did they manipulate markets? Their earnings say they did. Goldman was able to read data on trades before it's committed, and place their own buys and sells according to that nanosecond, thus, allowing them to essentially steal boatloads of money every day from the traders and others worldwide. Goldman was able to front-run any transaction, stealing pennies in each transaction.
The criminals here may be both Sergey and Goldman or just Goldman. We'll probably never know because the Illuminati protects their own. One thing is for certain and that is that Goldman won't be using that program any more and markets could well return too normal. All such kinds of market manipulators have to be stopped. The FBI has to get to the bottom of what has really transpired here.
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