26-04-2010, 02:18 PM
http://www.alternet.org/story/146611/
Taibbi: The Lunatics Who Made a Religion Out of Greed and Wrecked the
Economy
By Matt Taibbi, The Guardian
Posted on April 26, 2010, Printed on April 26, 2010
So Goldman Sachs, the world's greatest and smuggest investment bank, has
been sued for fraud by the American Securities and Exchange Commission.
Legally, the case hangs on a technicality.
Morally, however, the Goldman Sachs case may turn into a final
referendum on the greed-is-good ethos that conquered America sometime in
the 80s ? and in the years since has aped other horrifying American
trends such as boybands and reality shows in spreading across the
western world like a venereal disease.
When Britain and other countries were engulfed in the flood of defaults
and derivative losses that emerged from the collapse of the American
housing bubble two years ago, few people understood that the crash had
its roots in the lunatic greed-centered objectivist religion, fostered
back in the 50s and 60s by ponderous emigre novelist Ayn Rand.
While, outside of America, Russian-born Rand is probably best known for
being the unfunniest person western civilisation has seen since maybe
Goebbels or Jack the Ripper (63 out of 100 colobus monkeys recently
forced to read Atlas Shrugged in a laboratory setting died of
boredom-induced aneurysms), in America Rand is upheld as an intellectual
giant of limitless wisdom. Here in the States, her ideas are roundly
worshipped even by people who've never read her books or even heard of
her. The rightwing "Tea Party" movement is just one example of an entire
demographic that has been inspired to mass protest by Rand without even
knowing it.
Last summer I wrote a brutally negative article about Goldman Sachs for
Rolling Stone magazine (I called the bank a "great vampire squid wrapped
around the face of humanity") that unexpectedly sparked a heated
national debate. On one side of the debate were people like me, who
believed that Goldman is little better than a criminal enterprise that
earns its billions by bilking the market, the government, and even its
own clients in a bewildering variety of complex financial scams.
On the other side of the debate were the people who argued Goldman
wasn't guilty of anything except being "too smart" and really, really
good at making money. This side of the argument was based almost
entirely on the Randian belief system, under which the leaders of
Goldman Sachs appear not as the cheap swindlers they look like to me,
but idealized heroes, the saviors of society.
In the Randian ethos, called objectivism, the only real morality is
self-interest, and society is divided into groups who are efficiently
self-interested (ie, the rich) and the "parasites" and "moochers" who
wish to take their earnings through taxes, which are an unjust use of
force in Randian politics. Rand believed government had virtually no
natural role in society. She conceded that police were necessary, but
was such a fervent believer in laissez-faire capitalism she refused to
accept any need for economic regulation ? which is a fancy way of saying
we only need law enforcement for unsophisticated criminals.
Rand's fingerprints are all over the recent Goldman story. The case in
question involves a hedge fund financier, John Paulson, who went to
Goldman with the idea of a synthetic derivative package pegged to risky
American mortgages, for use in betting against the mortgage market.
Paulson would short the package, called Abacus, and Goldman would then
sell the deal to suckers who would be told it was a good bet for a long
investment. The SEC's contention is that Goldman committed a crime ? a
"failure to disclose" ? when they failed to tell the suckers about the
role played by the vulture betting against them on the other side of the
deal.
Now, the instruments in question in this deal ? collateralized debt
obligations and credit default swaps ? fall into the category of
derivatives, which are virtually unregulated in the US thanks in large
part to the effort of gremlinish former Federal Reserve chairman Alan
Greenspan, who as a young man was close to Rand and remained a staunch
Randian his whole life. In the late 90s, Greenspan lobbied hard for the
passage of a law that came to be called the Commodity Futures
Modernisation Act of 2000, a monster of a bill that among other things
deregulated the sort of interest-rate swaps Goldman used in its
now-infamous dealings with Greece.
Both the Paulson deal and the Greece deal were examples of Goldman
making millions by bending over their own business partners. In the
Paulson deal the suckers were European banks such as ABN-Amro and IKB,
which were never told that the stuff Goldman was cheerfully selling to
them was, in effect, designed to implode; in the Greece deal, Goldman
hilariously used exotic swaps to help the country mask its financial
problems, then turned right around and bet against the country by
shorting Greece's debt.
Now here's the really weird thing. Confronted with the evidence of
public outrage over these deals, the leaders of Goldman will often
appear to be genuinely confused, scratching their heads and staring
quizzically into the camera like they don't know what you're upset
about. It's not an act. There have been a lot of greedy financiers and
banks in history, but what makes Goldman stand out is its truly bizarre
cultist/religious belief in the rightness of what it does.
The point was driven home in England last year, when Goldman's
international adviser, sounding exactly like a character in Atlas
Shrugged, told an audience at St Paul's Cathedral that "The injunction
of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of
self-interest". A few weeks later, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein told the
Times that he was doing "God's work".
Even if he stands to make a buck at it, even your average used-car
salesman won't sell some working father a car with wobbly brakes, then
buy life insurance policies on that customer and his kids. But this is
done almost as a matter of routine in the financial services industry,
where the attitude after the inevitable pileup would be that that family
was dumb for getting into the car in the first place. Caveat emptor, dude!
People have to understand this Randian mindset is now ingrained in the
American character. You have to live here to see it. There's a hatred
toward "moochers" and "parasites" ? the Tea Party movement, which is
mainly a bunch of pissed off suburban white people whining about
minorities consuming social services, describes the battle as being
between "water-carriers" and "water-drinkers". And regulation of any
kind is deeply resisted, even after a disaster as sweeping as the 2008
crash.
This debate is going to be crystallised in the Goldman case. Much of
America is going to reflexively insist that Goldman's only crime was
being smarter and better at making money than IKB and ABN-Amro, and that
the intrusive, meddling government (in the American narrative, always
the bad guy!) should get off Goldman's Armani-clad back. Another side is
going to argue that Goldman winning this case would be a rebuke to the
whole idea of civilisation ? which, after all, is really just a
collective decision by all of us not to screw each other over even when
we can. It's an important moment in the history of modern global
capitalism: whether or not to move forward into a world of greed without
limits.
Taibbi: The Lunatics Who Made a Religion Out of Greed and Wrecked the
Economy
By Matt Taibbi, The Guardian
Posted on April 26, 2010, Printed on April 26, 2010
So Goldman Sachs, the world's greatest and smuggest investment bank, has
been sued for fraud by the American Securities and Exchange Commission.
Legally, the case hangs on a technicality.
Morally, however, the Goldman Sachs case may turn into a final
referendum on the greed-is-good ethos that conquered America sometime in
the 80s ? and in the years since has aped other horrifying American
trends such as boybands and reality shows in spreading across the
western world like a venereal disease.
When Britain and other countries were engulfed in the flood of defaults
and derivative losses that emerged from the collapse of the American
housing bubble two years ago, few people understood that the crash had
its roots in the lunatic greed-centered objectivist religion, fostered
back in the 50s and 60s by ponderous emigre novelist Ayn Rand.
While, outside of America, Russian-born Rand is probably best known for
being the unfunniest person western civilisation has seen since maybe
Goebbels or Jack the Ripper (63 out of 100 colobus monkeys recently
forced to read Atlas Shrugged in a laboratory setting died of
boredom-induced aneurysms), in America Rand is upheld as an intellectual
giant of limitless wisdom. Here in the States, her ideas are roundly
worshipped even by people who've never read her books or even heard of
her. The rightwing "Tea Party" movement is just one example of an entire
demographic that has been inspired to mass protest by Rand without even
knowing it.
Last summer I wrote a brutally negative article about Goldman Sachs for
Rolling Stone magazine (I called the bank a "great vampire squid wrapped
around the face of humanity") that unexpectedly sparked a heated
national debate. On one side of the debate were people like me, who
believed that Goldman is little better than a criminal enterprise that
earns its billions by bilking the market, the government, and even its
own clients in a bewildering variety of complex financial scams.
On the other side of the debate were the people who argued Goldman
wasn't guilty of anything except being "too smart" and really, really
good at making money. This side of the argument was based almost
entirely on the Randian belief system, under which the leaders of
Goldman Sachs appear not as the cheap swindlers they look like to me,
but idealized heroes, the saviors of society.
In the Randian ethos, called objectivism, the only real morality is
self-interest, and society is divided into groups who are efficiently
self-interested (ie, the rich) and the "parasites" and "moochers" who
wish to take their earnings through taxes, which are an unjust use of
force in Randian politics. Rand believed government had virtually no
natural role in society. She conceded that police were necessary, but
was such a fervent believer in laissez-faire capitalism she refused to
accept any need for economic regulation ? which is a fancy way of saying
we only need law enforcement for unsophisticated criminals.
Rand's fingerprints are all over the recent Goldman story. The case in
question involves a hedge fund financier, John Paulson, who went to
Goldman with the idea of a synthetic derivative package pegged to risky
American mortgages, for use in betting against the mortgage market.
Paulson would short the package, called Abacus, and Goldman would then
sell the deal to suckers who would be told it was a good bet for a long
investment. The SEC's contention is that Goldman committed a crime ? a
"failure to disclose" ? when they failed to tell the suckers about the
role played by the vulture betting against them on the other side of the
deal.
Now, the instruments in question in this deal ? collateralized debt
obligations and credit default swaps ? fall into the category of
derivatives, which are virtually unregulated in the US thanks in large
part to the effort of gremlinish former Federal Reserve chairman Alan
Greenspan, who as a young man was close to Rand and remained a staunch
Randian his whole life. In the late 90s, Greenspan lobbied hard for the
passage of a law that came to be called the Commodity Futures
Modernisation Act of 2000, a monster of a bill that among other things
deregulated the sort of interest-rate swaps Goldman used in its
now-infamous dealings with Greece.
Both the Paulson deal and the Greece deal were examples of Goldman
making millions by bending over their own business partners. In the
Paulson deal the suckers were European banks such as ABN-Amro and IKB,
which were never told that the stuff Goldman was cheerfully selling to
them was, in effect, designed to implode; in the Greece deal, Goldman
hilariously used exotic swaps to help the country mask its financial
problems, then turned right around and bet against the country by
shorting Greece's debt.
Now here's the really weird thing. Confronted with the evidence of
public outrage over these deals, the leaders of Goldman will often
appear to be genuinely confused, scratching their heads and staring
quizzically into the camera like they don't know what you're upset
about. It's not an act. There have been a lot of greedy financiers and
banks in history, but what makes Goldman stand out is its truly bizarre
cultist/religious belief in the rightness of what it does.
The point was driven home in England last year, when Goldman's
international adviser, sounding exactly like a character in Atlas
Shrugged, told an audience at St Paul's Cathedral that "The injunction
of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of
self-interest". A few weeks later, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein told the
Times that he was doing "God's work".
Even if he stands to make a buck at it, even your average used-car
salesman won't sell some working father a car with wobbly brakes, then
buy life insurance policies on that customer and his kids. But this is
done almost as a matter of routine in the financial services industry,
where the attitude after the inevitable pileup would be that that family
was dumb for getting into the car in the first place. Caveat emptor, dude!
People have to understand this Randian mindset is now ingrained in the
American character. You have to live here to see it. There's a hatred
toward "moochers" and "parasites" ? the Tea Party movement, which is
mainly a bunch of pissed off suburban white people whining about
minorities consuming social services, describes the battle as being
between "water-carriers" and "water-drinkers". And regulation of any
kind is deeply resisted, even after a disaster as sweeping as the 2008
crash.
This debate is going to be crystallised in the Goldman case. Much of
America is going to reflexively insist that Goldman's only crime was
being smarter and better at making money than IKB and ABN-Amro, and that
the intrusive, meddling government (in the American narrative, always
the bad guy!) should get off Goldman's Armani-clad back. Another side is
going to argue that Goldman winning this case would be a rebuke to the
whole idea of civilisation ? which, after all, is really just a
collective decision by all of us not to screw each other over even when
we can. It's an important moment in the history of modern global
capitalism: whether or not to move forward into a world of greed without
limits.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
