[lit-ideas] Link

Anybody listen to yesterday's On Point?    Goldman Sachs is behind the 
country's pump and dump credit crisis, the oil price run up last summer, the 
Internet bubble and crash of the early 2000's.  They are the government.  They 
changed the law that prevented excessive leveraging (lending more than $12 for 
every dollar you have in reserve).  It's not their fault they did this because 
they weren't stopped by the government they took over.  (Not in the show: This 
is consistent with what I've been reading about the myth of the self correcting 
efficient market.  There has never been such thing.  It's also consistent 
with our poor educational system.  The educational system was originally set up 
to create a workforce; the workforce is now elsewhere, and an educated 
citizenry would be a wet blanket on all this fun.)  I don't quite understand 
the oil thing though.  Oil is running down.  That's just a fact.  I guess they 
just exploited it.  
 
Once upon a time we invested in real production, how boring.  Now we gamble.  
Basically what happened/happens is they place bets that companies will go under 
or won't.  GS's bets (credit default swaps) on AIG lost and GS would have gone 
bankrupt.  Instead they got dad to bail them out.  Then they reassure China 
that the dollar is sound, please lend us more...  I just wonder how they're 
going to pay for all this healthcare they want to enact.  We (generously, we, 
GS actually) have China in a stranglehold; they're one of our main bankers and 
we're bankrupt.  If we go under, what happens to China's investments?  China's 
been buying shorter term treasuries and is buying commodities (oil, coal, 
copper, food) without dollars, the now waning reserve currency.  More and more 
BRIC talks about 'special drawing rights' and other potential currencies to 
replace the dollar; the Japanese want treasury bonds denominated in yen.  
Perhaps it's the great man
 theory of history.  A few people can make a huge difference...
 
http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/07/goldman-sachs
 
 

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