Wall Street Greed

There is no shame on Wall Street. These people have caused $10 trillion in damage to the world economy. But they demand their "bonuses".

Goldman Sachs would have reported tens of billions in losses, but Geithner provided $80+ billion to AIG which really meant many billions to Goldman Sachs to cover their credit default swaps they had placed with AIG and which were worthless if AIG collapsed.

Now that the American taxpayer has saved Goldman Sachs, what does that company do? It pays humungous bonuses!!! From the UK's Guardian newspaper:

Staff at Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm's 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms.

A lack of competition and a surge in revenues from trading foreign currency, bonds and fixed-income products has sent profits at Goldman Sachs soaring, according to insiders at the firm.

...

Critics of the bonus culture in the City said the dominance of a few risk-taking investment banks is undermining the efforts of regulators to stabilise the financial system.

...

Last week, the firm predicted that President Barack Obama's government could issue $3.25tn of debt before September, almost four times last year's sum. Goldman, a prime broker of US government bonds, is expected to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from selling and dealing in the bonds.

I blame this outrage on Geithner and Larry Summers, and then on Obama who appointed these guys and let them play the same tricks as the Treasury and government did under Paulson and Bush.