The New United States of Goldman Sachs

If you're not angry about the role Goldman Sachs is playing in our country, then you just don't know all the facts yet. On Monday, we covered the "magical" 2009 third quarter earnings for GS of $3,400,000,000 after they had received $70,000,000,000 from the taxpayers just a year ago.

Amazingly, no one has demanded anything be done about this "windfall" profit. There have been no screaming headlines or news specials about making a record $3.4 billion in one quarter. Their executives are not hounded by protestors around their homes nor do they face sarcastic reporters yelling questions as they try to leave their offices.

Today, we discovered that the government and Goldman Sachs have been too close for comfort at least since the Bush administration. His Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, held a secret meeting with the board of Goldman Sachs in a Moscow hotel in 2008 between the demise of Bear Stearns and the fall of Lehman Brothers (former competitor with GS). It was supposed to be a purely social occasion for the former Goldman Sachs CEO. But he ended up telling his old friends all about his upcoming big speech and the gathering storm at Treasury -- quite a conflict of interest. For the whole story of the meeting, see the Business Insider article below.
This week Adam Storch, VP of Goldman Sachs Business Intelligence Group, was named the SEC as the Chief Operating Officer for enforcement. So we began researching other Obama administration executives with ties to Goldman Sachs. The list so far includes:

* Pete Coneway, Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein

* Diana Farrell, Deputy director of Obama's National Economic Council

* Michael Froman, Obama adviser and former assistant to Robert Rubin

* Jason Furman, Obama Campaign Economic Policy Director

* Tim Geithner, Current Treasury Secretary

* Gary Gensler, Chairman of Commodity Futures Trading Commission

* Bob Hormats, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs

* James A Johnson, Fannie Mae

* Reuben Jeffery III, Undersecretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Agriculture

* Neel Kashkari, Treasury official in charge of TARP

* James C Langdon Jr., Treasury, US Mint, Department of Public Debt

* Philip D Murphy, Ambassador to Germany-Designate

* Mark Patterson, Chief of Staff to Tim Geithner

* Karthik Ramanathan, Acting Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets

* Robert E Rubin, Former Treasury Secretary, Transition Advisory Board

* Faryar Shirzad, Global Head of Government Affairs

* Robert K Steel, Under Secretary of Treasury

* Larry Summers, Director of the National Economic Council

* John Whitehead, Advisor

* Robert Zoellick, US Trade Representative and World Bank president

Why isn't someone calling for a thorough investigation of the penetration of Goldman Sachs into Obama's administration, especially at Treasury? What about the Federal Reserve? Is it not unfair for this privileged bank to be making record profits without repaying their creditors (the US taxpayers)? This does not sound like free market capitalism to me.