Inside The Great American Bubble Machine

I was sent this article by a buddy of mine and while its very long (tl;dr for a lot of you) it's very interesting and I felt like sharing it.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...bubble_machine
From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they're about to do it again

A few snippets

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Page 1

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Page 3

The basic scam in the Internet Age is pretty easy even for the financially illiterate to grasp. Companies that weren't much more than potfueled ideas scrawled on napkins by uptoolate bongsmokers were taken public via IPOs, hyped in the media and sold to the public for mega-millions. It was as if banks like Goldman were wrapping ribbons around watermelons, tossing them out 50-story windows and opening the phones for bids. In this game you were a winner only if you took your money out before the melon hit the pavement.

---

And one of my favorites

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Page 6

And here's the real punch line. After playing an intimate role in four historic bubble catastrophes, after helping $5 trillion in wealth disappear from the NASDAQ, after pawning off thousands of toxic mortgages on pensioners and cities, after helping to drive the price of gas up to $4 a gallon and to push 100 million people around the world into hunger, after securing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars through a series of bailouts overseen by its former CEO, what did Goldman Sachs give back to the people of the United States in 2008?

Fourteen million dollars.

That is what the firm paid in taxes in 2008, an effective tax rate of exactly one, read it, one percent. The bank paid out $10 billion in compensation and benefits that same year and made a profit of more than $2 billion — yet it paid the Treasury less than a third of what it forked over to CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who made $42.9 million last year.

---

sorry but i do not find this interesting at all

a corporation devoted to handling money is making money and taking money weee shock enron scandal call the polic

edit: FEDERAL RESERVE GONNA KILL YOUR DAUGHTGER

ZEITGEIST did it first.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TheOriginalGrumpySpy

ZEITGEIST did it first.

---

yeah but anyone who takes zeitgeist seriously deserves a punch in the throat or two

You can trust the goverment- ask any Indian.

beef shut the fuck up

this has nothing to do with the government you tool

it has a little to do with the government

Are you saying that Indians don't know what government is?

New world order bullshit.

"debt runs the system"

Fuck offf.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by victrola

Are you saying that Indians don't know what government is?

---

would you like some blankets mon ami?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by coqauvin

would you like some blankets mon ami?

---

They better be 150 thread or better, or your family will be sent back.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by coqauvin

yeah but anyone who takes zeitgeist seriously deserves a punch in the throat or two

---

The 2nd Zeitgeist was unlikely to have been a surprise to anyone, though

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/7710/boom03.jpg
Don't worry guys, the laws have apparently magically changed so that this will go on forever!

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/9814/boom04.jpg
OMG WHAT HAPPENED NO ONE COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS!!!!!!!!!11