Saturday, April 17, 2010

Goldman Sachs executives charged with defrauding investors by SEC; Republicans vow to oppose Wall Street reform by any means.

How very unusual. Who could have possibly seen this coming? We are perhaps, finally, getting to the point of holding some of these monsters accountable for their part in the financial meltdown of a few years ago, for which the American taxpayers are still paying for, and the Republican Party unanimously opposes any sort of Wall Street Reform.


For the first part of the story, here’s a sample from Yahoo News.

WASHINGTON – The government on Friday accused Wall Street's most powerful firm of fraud, saying Goldman Sachs & Co. sold mortgage investments without telling the buyers that the securities were crafted with input from a client who was betting on them to fail.

And fail they did. The securities cost investors close to $1 billion while helping Goldman client Paulson & Co., a hedge fund, capitalize on the housing bust. The Goldman executive accused of shepherding the deal allegedly boasted about the "exotic trades" he created "without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!"

The civil charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission are the government's most significant legal action related to the mortgage meltdown that ignited the financial crisis and helped plunge the country into recession.

The news sent Goldman Sachs shares and the stock market reeling as the SEC said other financial deals related to the meltdown continue to be investigated. It was a blow to the reputation of a financial giant that had emerged relatively unscathed from the economic crisis.



And, for the next part, from Talking Points Memo:


Every member of the Senate Republican Caucus has signed a letter, delivered to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, expressing opposition to the Democrats' financial regulatory reform bill, which they all claim will lead to more Wall Street bailouts.

"We are united in our opposition to the partisan legislation reported by the Senate Banking Committee," the letter reads. "As currently constructed, this bill allows for endless taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street and establishes new and unlimited regulatory powers that will stifle small businesses and community banks."


My, my. Their strategy seems to be, now that the Dems do not have (and really never had) a filibuster-proof majority, to not even let the subject be debated. However, they apparently realize the slippery slope they seem to be on. Therefore, they want to try to couch their opposition to any sort of reform as opposition to “endless taxpayer bailouts.”

Whenever I think that the Republican Party can’t go an lower, they come up and show me wrong. They really don’t even care that they have been called out on several fronts about how stupid this characterization is of the Democratic proposals. They just want to oppose it, because any sort of “win” for President Obama is a loss for them. And, of course, it follows that any sort of loss for Obama is a win for them, regardless of what it means to the health and well being of the United States of America. They don’t care that people are already calling “bullshit” on this. They do not care their actions have shown to be totally misguided by the SEC charges, on the very day that they came out with their unified opposition.

All the Republican Party wants, at this point, is to have the support of their tea-partying, Obama hating base. That’s all they want, because Republicans are obviously looking forward to the next election where they believe their energized base will vote Republicans back in power. What actually happens to the United States, as a whole, matters very little to these… people. I was trying to come up with an appropriate adjective to describe what these people truly are, but I failed.

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