Depends what you call it

 

Credit to @ohboywhatashot for the lead

Goldman Sachs clients are “muppets!”

Goldman Sachs director in London quits

Goldman is considered one of the world's top banks

A manager at US banking giant Goldman Sachs in London has quit, saying he could no longer work there “in good conscience”.

Greg Smith, who headed Goldman’s equity derivatives business in Europe, said it was common to hear talk of ripping off their “muppet” clients.

“The environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it,” he wrote in the New York Times.

Goldman said it disagreed with what Mr Smith wrote.

“We disagree with the views expressed, which we don’t think reflect the way we run our business,” a Goldman spokeswoman said.

“In our view, we will only be successful if our clients are successful. This fundamental truth lies at the heart of how we conduct ourselves.”

Mr Smith said in his editorial that he appeared in Goldman’s recruitment video, shown at universities around the world.

“I knew it was time to leave when I realised I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work,” he wrote.

“It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as ‘muppets’, sometimes over internal email.”

‘He’s toast’

…”He’s not on the management committee or even a partner of the firm,” Mr Cohan told Bloomberg TV.

“He’s toast. He is completely toast in terms of Wall Street, no question about that,” he added.

Source: BBC News Read more

Goldman Sachs' clients

Opinion:

Of course ‘he’s toast;’ he told the truth.

Can’t have that, can we?

It would destroy all our little thieving money grabbing schemes.

Saturday Satire

This is NOT a Police Force – It’s an occupation force

This is NOT a Police Force

This is not a police force meant to protect the people, this is a police force to protect the 1% from the people.

The American people have been sold down the river, by everybody, the government, the bankers, Wall Street, your elected politicians (who, incidentally are supposed to be ensuring this type of thing doesn’t happen); absolutely everybody.

And the 1% are wining and dining while Americans are crying for work, bread and housing.

For fuck’s sake America WAKE UP!

 

Thursday Thought

They Just DON’T Get it!

Part of the problem

Neither the politicians nor the bankers nor the corporations get it. They don’t understand. They have no idea.

Their feet are so far off the ground with their heads in the clouds, they are all so far divorced from reality and cannot see what the problem is.

Occupy Wall Street can, that’s why they are there, occupying Wall Street.

I just read this on BBC News:

“Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has raised $14m (£9m) for his campaign in the third quarter, close to the $17m raised by Texas Governor Rick Perry.

Both have around $15m cash in hand, but their fundraising totals for the third quarter were dwarfed by President Barack Obama’s $70m in the same period.”

THIS TYPE OF THING IS THE PROBLEM!

Where did this money come from? Did it grow on trees? Did God send it? Have the Feds’ printing presses been busy again?

This money is obscene. The source will probably never be known… truthfully. If this money has come from corporate America, then it is a disgusting example of buying the next president to do their corporate bidding for them so they get richer and richer at the expense of the 99%.

A Clear Demonstration

In Private, Wall St. Bankers Dismiss Protesters as Unsophisticated

Publicly, bankers say they understand the anger at Wall Street — but believe they are misunderstood by the protesters camped on their doorstep.

But when they speak privately, it is often a different story.

“Most people view it as a ragtag group looking for sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll,” said one top hedge fund manager.

“It’s not a middle-class uprising,” adds another veteran bank executive. “It’s fringe groups. It’s people who have the time to do this.”

As the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations have grown and spread to other cities, an open question is: Do the bankers get it? Their different worldview speaks volumes about the wide chasms that have opened over who is to blame for the continuing economic malaise and what is best for the country.

Some on Wall Street viewed the protesters with disdain, and a degree of caution, as hundreds marched through the financial district on Friday. Others say they feel their pain, but are befuddled about what they are supposed to do to ease it. A few even feel personally attacked, and say the Occupy Wall Street protesters who have been in Zuccotti Park for weeks are just bitter about their own economic fate and looking for an easy target. If anything, they say, people should show some gratitude.

Read the rest of this pathetic story on New York Times.

None of the people who are the problem have any idea that they are the problem; from bankers, Wall Street, CEOs, corporations right up to the president of the USA and ALL those in congress have an iota of an idea. They are so morally corrupt that all they can do is ask, a plaintiff why? Shake their heads and keep doing the same thing.

Another example from the NYT:

He (a fund manager) added that he was disappointed that members of Congress from New York, especially Senator Charles E. Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, had not come out swinging for an industry that donates heavily to their campaigns. “They need to understand who their constituency is,” he said.

Blatantly admitting they have BROUGHT at least two senators. Those two senators should be in jail, but nooooooo…. they sit in congress and decide whose life to ruin next.

More from the NYT:

Similarly, executives keep getting generous payouts when they leave. Just last week, Bank of America disclosed it was paying a total of $11 million in severance to two executives forced out in a management reshuffle, Sallie Krawcheck and Joe Price, even as the company said it would begin laying off roughly 30,000 employees over the next few years.

$11 million in severance! And where are the jobs? Noooo. they are laying off 30,000. So much for job creation.

And more:

“There is a view that it will be a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing,” said one financial industry official.

But no more, go and read it for yourself on the above link.

The upshot is THEY don’t understand and they will be taken to the gallows, perplexed, asking, “What did I do?”

We are the 1%

No comment necessary

The People are Waking Up

Anti-Wall Street protesters arrested in New York

At least 80 people have been arrested during an anti-Wall Street march in New York’s financial district.

Police arresting disorderly protesters

Several hundred people took part in Saturday’s march, which was intended to draw attention to “corporate greed and corrupt politics” in the US.

Participants carried banners supporting a range of other issues, including healthcare reform, an end to US wars and the scrapping of the death penalty.

The march came after a week of protests by the Occupy Wall Street campaign.

The loosely organised group says it is defending 99% of the US population against the wealthiest 1%, and had called for 20,000 people to “flood into lower Manhattan” on 17 September and remain there for “a few months”.

Protesters, who are mostly young, initially numbered some 1,500 but their numbers had fallen to about 200 by Saturday’s march.

There was a heavy security presence in the district, with police deploying nets to block off major roads including Fifth Avenue and to protect the New York Stock Exchange.

Corporate ‘enemy’

One protester, 21-year-old Ryan Reed, said he joined in “because what I see – and what I feel most people in this country see – is an economy and a system that’s collapsing”.

“The enemy is the big business leaders of Wall Street, the big oil company leaders, the coal company leaders, the big military industrial leaders.”

A number of placards also called for “justice for Troy Davies”, the US man executed in Georgia last week amid widespread criticism.

Police said most of Saturday’s arrests were for disorderly conduct and blocking traffic, but one person was charged with assaulting a police officer. One officer also suffered a shoulder injury, said police.

They have not commented on protest organisers’ comments that there had been an “unprecedented level of police aggression” on display.

A statement on the Occupy Wall Street website said the protesters have “an interest in returning the US back into the hands of its individual citizens”.

“Our nation, our species and our world are in crisis. The US has an important role to play in the solution, but we can no longer afford to let corporate greed and corrupt politics set the policies if our nation.”

Source: BBC News Read more

Opinion:

Well, it looks like the American people are waking up; and they’re not at all happy.

Corporate America

They’re not happy with the government. They’re not happy with Corporate America for controlling the government. They’re not happy with the bankers, nor Wall St.

This could spell major problems for the government. Because social unrest is on the horizon; something I said would happen two years ago and people got angry at me for saying it.

Is this the beginning of a civil war to retake America from the corporations and give it back to the people?

I suggest a civil war because any uprising of the people will be met with force. The American police are better armed and trained than some military forces, they are being trained to take you, the American people, down; you have become domestic terrorists!