Thursday, November 5, 2009

Goldman Infiltrates Gov - And Got $54 Billion of Risk Capital!

The Government has shoveled $54 Billion to Goldman, according to Dylan Ratigan, in the form of TARP $ wheeled from AIG, loans from the Fed and $30 Billion from FDIC, all at little or no interest. In September of 08 the Fed allowed Goldman and other Investment Banks to become Bank Holding Companies so that they could receive huge loans from the FDIC and other funding only available to Bank Holding Companies ("BHCs".) And these BHCs who were formerly investment banks are not required to engage in "usual and customary" banking activities like consumer or commercial loans. WHY NOT???
Goldman has used our money as risk capital to continue to generate huge profits from gargantuan risk - similar to the 30 to 40-1 leverage which led to our current financial holocaust. Once again Goldman is using our money not for real investment to provide capital formation which will create jobs, but for contrived innovated financial investment to create swine-bonuses for itself! And "our" pay "Czar" and our-Congress have silently watched or claimed there is nothing they can do - because "Goldman paid back their original TARP dollars" - what a load of crap!
Everyone in Congress, and Obama, talks about the importance of job creation and the importance of "small business" in the process. No one really has addressed the abject failure of the SBA (Small Business Administration) to come to grips with the red tape and untenable barriers to obtaining funding for expansion or for a new, reasonable start up business! The requirements to obtain funding are infinitely more restrictive than the give-aways to Goldman and AIG and CITI and MORGAN and BANK OF AMERICA; and a host of others who sabatoged our economy and devestated the lives of so many millions of their fellow Americans.
It is time for Congress and our President to allocate $54 Billion to fund a special SBA unit to short cut all the bureaurocratic hurdles and provide funds for small business using the business as collateral, not the personal signiture of the entrepreneur who can not obtain a bank loan because of a variety of reasons - (many stemming from the financial holocost (caust) or from health insurance problems.) If taxpayers can give money to the failed financial institutions who caused the great recession with little hope of repayment - THEN WHY NOT PROVIDE FUNDING FOR RATIONAL BUSINESSES WHICH WILL IMMEDIATELY CREATE NEW JOBS!
Today the SBA is more concerned with personal signitures than with job creation. All the platitudes from Congress about their expressed concern for small business (which is resposible for more job creation than big business) is not backed up by empirical evidence that politicians give a shit about anything but being elected and getting along with campaign contributors from Wall Street and the Monopolistic Health Ins. Carriers! This applies to both sides of the aisle. The New Deal worked because Roosevelt appionted strong individuals to responsible positions and let them make independant decisions without committee bureaucratic mind numbing mechanically operative cover your ass inertia. Why not appoint Jack Welch to circumvent all the BS and establish a method to bypass the barrier of the personal signiture to fund deserving businesses with appropriate business plans based on logical executive summaries and appropriate financial projections from suitable accountants?
Right now we are going nowhere fast as unemployment accelerates - while Goldman uses our money for itself! What do we really have to lose - besides time and a more functional capital formation process. If Congress remains crippled by an over-concern for how the SBA gets repaid - then to not realistically, objectively and pragmatically focus on the benefits of non-recourse SBA funding (notwithstanding the fact that all loans will not work) will cause the jobless to continue to tragically suffer as well as our entire country. The entire country suffers as local tax bases continue to go down the toilet along with all other streams of tax revenues from income; and this exacerbates all kinds of societal problems. So the equation between more of the same and doing something new clearly results in concretely favoring small business for a change - lip service just makes the liar feel better. Focus on the awful fact that TRILLIONS HAVE ALREADY BEEN COMMITED TO THE CULPRITS WHO I WROTE ABOUT IN MY NEW BOOK - HOW WE GOT SWINDLED BY WALL STREET GODFATHERS, GREED AND FINANCIAL DARWINISM!
If Congress really cares about a rational way to immediately provide jobs and capital formation it only makes sense to take the $54 billion back from Goldman, or at least make Goldman fund the new SBA section to provide immediate, non-recourse funding for deserving small businesses.