Goldman and Sachs (pictured above), the prominent Wall Street bank, has posted that it is likely to have made $2 billion profits in the March-June period. That's $2 billion profits, above and beyond the rest of the money they spent to run their unholy operation. They're posting estimates for their profits from March through June, which means they literally have more money than they can count. I don't know how much money I have either, but that's just due to the subliminal terror I have of checking my current account that impels me again and again to press "No." when offered a receipt at cashpoints. And Goldman and Sachs made $2 billion in profits since March.
Happy Monday, everyone.
In other depressing news, the Honduran coup that ousted Manuel Zelaya and instated serial coup-monger Roberto Micheletti is not at all likely to be overturned. The OAS has not yet accepted Micheletti, but it will probably only hold out for another week or two before "starting talks", implicitly recognising that Micheletti is now the de facto, and soon de jure leader of the country (Official Politic Blunder prediction).
Let's not even get into Iran, which major news outlets have pretty much completely stopped reporting on. This was only to be expected, as the thrill of having absolutely no news to report because of the total media blackout imposed by the government gives way to the realisation that there is absolutely no news to report. But like I said, I'm not going to get into Iran.
Television holds no solace either. Pakistani MTV was showing a really bad band fronted by an ugly woman ripping off Evanescence's "Everybody's a Fool", a really bad song, down to the last note, really badly.
Clearly Evanescence must have known about this, and sold them the rights to their song (and soul). Which is almost worse than coups in Honduras and brutal government repression in Iran. Almost.
Returning to the issue of Goldman and Sachs, Rolling Stone columnist Matthew Taibbi described Goldman as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." The hilarious thing about this is that Goldman didn't dismiss this as a malicious characterisation or metaphor, but as a conspiracy theory. Which means they're seriously worried that people might start thinking that's actually how they make $2 billion in profits in 3 months.
Which would make more sense than all this "derivatives" and "risk management" hocus-pocus they keep foisting down our throats.
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1 comments:
Trans-national corporations are a direct by-product of the globalisation which you trumpet as one of the foundations for a future global system of governance. It would be difficult to imagine, with any degree of intellectual sincerity, a functional global administration without large global corporations. In any case, Goldman and co. do not pluck money out of thin air, but simply thrive off the current global economic system which, in and of itself, is supported by every single naked ape who sees fit to purchase, say, a mobile phone or milk from Tesco. As for the $2 bln. I would not lose undue sleep over that - very little of that will ever see the light of day as liquidity. Money, at this point, is somewhat comparable to poker chips: it will not be used to purchase goods or services, but to re-invest and produce more 'money' or, better still, 'credit'.
As for the giant, vampiric squid, funny you should say that since, in effect, this describes the final boss of acclaimed JRPG Tales of Vesperia rather well. Then, of course, as with most JRPGs, the game in question is not shy about revealing, in a most repetitious and heavy-handed way, just what its techno-magical gadgets represent as metaphors.
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