Matt Taibbi, the con­tro­ver­sial Rolling Stone inves­tiga­tive colum­nist who has been stalk­ing Gold­man Sachs, et al, to unearth the deep dark secrets as well as the alchemists of the cur­rent credit cri­sis, boldly alleges that Gold­man Sachs has been "engi­neer­ing every major mar­ket manip­u­la­tion since the Great Depres­sion." The arti­cle cov­ers a lot of ground, and while it may be dif­fi­cult to agree with all of it, there are some glar­ing and enlight­en­ing con­fir­ma­tions that a good deal of it is plau­si­ble. For cer­tain, this Rolling Stone arti­cle will make for great week­end reading.

Felix Salmon: Matt Taibbi’s 12-page screed on Gold­man Sachs has appeared on news­stands... Suf­fice to say that in the sec­ond sen­tence of the piece Taibbi describes Gold­man as “a great vam­pire squid wrapped around the face of human­ity”; later on, he calls it “the planet-eating Death Star of polit­i­cal influ­ence”. He’s also a dab hand at the pen-portrait:

Rubin was the pro­to­typ­i­cal Gold­man banker. He was prob­a­bly born in a $4,000 suit, he had a face that seemed per­ma­nently frozen just short of an apol­ogy for being so much smarter than you, and he exuded a Spock-like, emotion-neutral exte­rior; the only human feel­ing you could imag­ine him expe­ri­enc­ing was a nigh­mare about being forced to fly coach.

Taibbi makes the case that it’s not just wheat futures which have been over­run by index spec­u­la­tion, but com­modi­ties in gen­eral and oil in par­tic­u­lar. Indeed, Taibbi puts Gold­man, Zelig-like, at the cen­ter of no fewer than four spec­u­la­tive bub­bles: one in the 1920s in which Goldman-controlled enti­ties ended up los­ing an aston­ish­ing $475 bil­lion in today’s dol­lars; the tech bub­ble; the hous­ing bub­ble; and the oil-price bub­ble end­ing in 2008. He calls the US “a gang­ster state, run­ning on gang­ster eco­nom­ics”, and is very explicit about exactly who he thinks the gang­sters are. (Clue: they paid just $14 mil­lion in tax on $2 bil­lion in 2008 profits.)

To view the whole arti­cle, click here.

Hat tip: Zero Hedge

Source: Felix Salmon, Reuters, June 24, 2009 — Matt Taibbi vs. Gold­man Sachs

Read more from the author/contributor here.

Comments

3 Responses to “Goldman Sachs: "Engineering Every Major Market Manipulation Since The Great Depression"”

1. Denise Hubbard Says:
   June 26th, 2009 at 2:03 pm

   The SEC just requested a copy of the new movie about this called Stock Shock. Finally doing some­thing pro-active!!!! Arti­cle here:
   http://satwaves.com/blog/2009/06/26/sec-investigating-illegal-naked-short-selling/ Go Matt and Stock Shock!!

2. Mio Pais Says:
   June 28th, 2009 at 4:45 pm

   Thank god some­one in the com­men­tariat besides Tyler Dur­den has some balls, and the styl­is­tic chops to make bad news fun.

3. Crude Oil Trader Says:
   June 30th, 2009 at 3:40 pm

   Don't fight it, just trade it!