Goldman Sach - Golden once again!

-
The Washington Post is reporting that Goldman Sachs has had a highly profitable quarter:

"...Goldman said its profits were $1.8 billion, or $3.39 a share, compared to $1.5 billion, or $3.23 a share in the same period a year earlier. That was more than double the $1.6o a share, analysts had been expecting on average."

The company is now promising to return the TARP funds they were given when Hank Paulson, one of their own, was the Treasury Secretary.

Some experts, however, are not happy to hear that profitable financial institutions want to pay back the money. Seems it will expand that separation between healthy and diseased banks we've been so worried about. Diseased banks will remain diseased - and like lepers of old, they will be shunned and isolated, causing them to eventually collapse.

So the theory goes.

I wonder just how long these experts think the US government should keep diseased firms on life support.

I think Goldman should pay back the TARP loan with interest. But I wonder - will Goldman Sachs pay back the backdoor TARP payouts they got from AIG?

All in all, there's no doubt that the crash of the US economy has been good to Goldman.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The October Rose

-
Image
‘Tis the season to bring love and joy into the world – and here’s one of the loveliest stories of the year… It’s a story that begins in October 2008, when the economy is in a state of collapse; the culture is in crisis, and faith in humanity – at least, my faith in humanity – is at an all-time low. It is precisely at this time that my next-door neighbor, Annie Jennings, comes home from high school bearing an orange rose. She presents this flower to her mother, Ellen, with the announcement that she is one of the “Sweet 16,” a member of Libertyville High School’s Homecoming Court. Annie is not quite 18 years old, a high school senior with stick-straight, sandy blond hair, glasses and a big smile. We hire her to feed our cat whenever we head out of town and we leave knowing our cat is in very good hands. So when I learn of her selection as a member of the homecoming court, I am intrigued. This is the girl who watches my cat, after all. Ellen is curious about what it means to...
Read more

On the failure of "the invisible hand" to influence our financial sector

-
In Alan Greenspan's book, The Age of Turbulence , one of the issues he explores is the failure of economic populism in Latin America. Here are his thoughts: " The dictionary defines 'populism' as a political philosophy that supports the rights and power of the people, usually in opposition to a privileged elite. I see economic populism as a response by an impoverished populace to a failing society, one characterized by an economic elite who are perceived as oppressors. Under economic populism, the government accedes to the demands of the people, with little regard for either individual rights or the economic realities of how the wealth of a nation is increased or even sustained." So in Greenspan's view as a self-described Libertarian Republican, economic populism comes to life in "failing societies" that have significant income inequality and are dominated by an economic elite. And in Greenspan's mind, it is not the government that can make t...
Read more

"Good-bye to all that..."

-
Harry Patch died last week in England. It was the expected outcome for a man of 111. But it is a notable death because with Harry Patch goes the last living memory of trench warfare experienced nearly a century ago during The Great War - known now as World War 1. This story on CNN.com is a wonderful summary of Patch's life. He was a plumber before and after his stint in the trenches. He saw some of the worst warfare man has ever experienced: "He fought and was seriously wounded in Ypres, Belgium, in 1917 at the Battle of Passchendaele, in which 70,000 of his fellow soldiers died -- including three of his close friends." That's a placid little sentence to describe the slaughter of 70,000 men. A horror Patch refused to talk about until he turned 100 years old. Here's a YouTube video that shows some photos and film footage from the Battle of Passchendaele: You can hear the survivor's voice in this video shot at Passchendaele about two years ag...
Read more