Goldman makes nice with financial crisis panel
Apparently, all it took was a subpoena up the tush to make Goldman Sachs cooperate with a Washington committee looking into the financial crisis.
A source at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which is headed by former California State Treasurer Phil Angelides, tells me that Goldman has been “cooperating since the subpoena” was dropped on the firm a couple of weeks ago.
That resulted in a whole lot of bad publicity for Goldman, which ought to be used to it by now.
A bunch of lesser Goldman geniuses have already been interviewed by Angelides’ guys in advance of a hearing this week.
The committee is looking into the relationship between Goldman and American International Group as part of its bigger quest to find out what went wrong in the nation’s financial system.
Goldman seems to have made out particularly well when the government bailed out AIG and people are still trying to figure it out.
At first Goldman pretended to be complying with Angelides’ requests by reportedly dumping a billion pages of documents on the committee.
I thought that was pretty clever — as obstructive to the orderly process as when Fidel Castro released all his prisoners in 1980 so they could participate in the Mariel Boatlift to Miami.
But members of Angelides’ committee — and, for that matter, anyone investigating the financial crisis — will get nowhere until they ask questions about the special relationship between Goldman Chairman Lloyd (“Doing God’s Work”) Blankfein and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.
Look at Paulson’s phone records and ask him what kind of information he conveyed to his friend Blankfein in all those calls. Then ask Blankfein what he did with that information. Take my word on this. It’s the key that unlocks everything.
Over the weekend I offered to meet with Blankfein so he could explain to me what he and Paulson had been up to. So far, no response.
I’ve also been trying to get in touch with Paulson. As they say on “Law & Order,” the first guy to flip gets the best deal.
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New home sales were at historically low levels in May. And home resales, reported earlier in the month, were also lousy.
Does this surprise anyone? People who were planning to buy a house did so before the government’s $8,000 tax incentive expired. Now there are fewer buyers.
The same thing happened in the auto market when Cash For Clunkers expired.
The first-quarter gross domestic product keeps receding with each new revision and is now at a point where the opening months of 2010 look pretty pathetic economy-wise. Without incentives, the economy goes dormant.
This new downturn in housing is going to be a lot more dangerous because banks are holding off writing down their real estate assets in hopes that the market will turn around.
And Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were already a mess when taken over by the government in 2008, aren’t any better.
With all this bad news in mind, I took it upon myself last week to call one of President Obama‘s top economic advisers. I gave him my suggestion: change the options on retirement plans so people can invest in a piece of real estate.
People who are investing for retirement are natural buyers of real estate — especially in hard hit sunshine states — and a move like this will help sell some homes while costing taxpayers nothing and doing no further damage to the federal budget deficit.
Obama’s adviser listened, and I’m still waiting for a reaction. The administration will eventually have to use some version of my suggestion because they are out of other deficit spending options.
At the G20 meeting of nations in Toronto this weekend, finance ministers vowed to start concentrating on lowering budget deficits (which means less spending) at the same time economies worldwide are in trouble and needs more spending.
So, exactly how’s that gonna work without a plan that allows spending and doesn’t impact the deficit — a plan, in other words, like mine.
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Do you remember the nifty Soap on a Rope, which you hung around your neck so you couldn’t drop it in the shower?
Well, tying a string to the stuff on your desk at work might not be a bad idea if a survey from Office Max is correct.
According to the office-product retailer, 42 percent of the peo ple it asked admitted taking something from a col league’s desk and not re turning it.
Eighty-four percent of those who “borrowed” things say they intended to return them.
But 26 percent didn’t think the item would be missed and 23 percent were seeking revenge for items not returned to them. (Some obviously thought more than one thing because the totals adds up to more than 100 percent.)
Most employers are looking for ideas to stop the pilfering — hence my idea, Stapler on a Rope. But be careful with Scissors on a String or you might give yourself a surprise tracheotomy.