Goldman Sachs 33 Year Stranglehold on Nashville

Goldman Sachs and Nashville will boost city-backed debt by almost 40 percent to borrow $633 million for a new convention center.

A riverboat gamble with very little upside?

The city plans to pay off the debt over the next 33 years with a series of revenue streams targeting visitors to Nashville. But it has pledged to use a $130 million-a-year pool of general fund revenues — excluding sales and property taxes — if there's a shortfall, as critics expect based on the struggles of convention halls around the country. 

Metro payments on the debt will average $39 million to $40 million a year. {more}

Lucky for Nashville, the municipal bonds for the center were sold before the SEC civil suit against Goldman was announced.

"I think Nashville's convention center deal is just another example of how elected officials are induced to approve a financing with promises that the public's guarantees will never be necessary, that the project will pay for itself," said council member Emily Evans, who used to work on the other side of the dais in the municipal bond business. "Yet once the votes are counted, the city's assumption of risk becomes a major sales point for investors, and protecting the taxpayer is forgotten."

Goldman, Sachs is the book-runner for {the bond} offering. Other members of the syndicate are Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Fifth Third Securities Inc., Harvestons Securities Inc., Mesirow Financial Inc., Morgan Keegan & Co., Morgan Stanley, and Stephens Inc. {more}

The Goldman Defense: Caveat Emptor 

The essential thrust: buyer beware.

Did Goldman scam the Nashville politicians into a heavy debt for a convention center that will rely on an economy improving to past peak levels in order to pay off the debt with extortion fees to visitors to the city?

Will taxpayers be the losers because revenues will be way short of the Goldman projections? Cutbacks to city services to service the debt? Goldman would love to have Nashville as one of its 'assets.'

Play with the devil and you may get burned. Buyer beware indeed.

Obama on 60 Minutes: "I Did Not Run For Office To Be Helping Out A Bunch Of Fat Cat Bankers On Wall Street"

But he sure took a lot of money from them for his campaign. Almost a million from Goldman Sachs alone.

His administration's economic team is a Who's Who of Wall Street Insiders.

A dog tends not to bite the hand that feeds him.









Video of Obama's 'bad banker' performance on 60 Minutes.


Mr. Obama is scheduled on Monday morning {Dec. 14} to meet with bankers to exchange ideas on ways to increase lending; to review the financial-industry regulatory bill moving through Congress; and to discuss bankers' compensation, the White House and industry representatives said.

Mr. Obama will meet with some of the country's top bankers, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s Lloyd Blankfein, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s Jamie Dimon, and Bank of America Corp.'s Ken Lewis. {more}


I wonder if they will discuss the latest scheme/scam of 'cap and trade.' I can see the bankers drooling/foaming at the mouth over the prospect of stealing a few more trillion dollars. They might even talk a little about a new carbon based currency for the world with Wall Street leading the way.

But this latest Wall Street/Federal Reserve endeavor wouldn't be helping the 'fat cats.' It would all be to 'save the planet.' Obama wouldn't lie about something as serious as that ... would he?

The 'Pay Czar' scam continues

"I will pinch the life blood from the middle and lower classes"

                                             Kenny Feinberg

The Obama 'pay czar' proclamations about controlling the wall street insiders pay is not about them, it is about us. It's setting the stage for the middle class to become the lower class and to sink into a caste system. This theater production will not harm the bankers, it is aimed at preparing  the rest of us to accept becoming one of the controlled poor through unemployment and the drastic lowing of income.

See: 9/11 Cover Up Arbitrator, Kenneth Feinberg, Named as Latest Obama Czar

Feinberg is saying that we had better be careful. All of those wall street geniuses may leave to a foreign country if their compensation for crimes is cut. 

Pay cuts run risk of talent exodus

Pay czar says limits are to shield taxpayers, not punish executives

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration's pay czar said Thursday that he hoped his move to slash the salaries of the highest-paid employees at the seven largest recipients of federal bailout money would not lead to an exodus of talent that would prevent the taxpayers from being repaid.

President Barack Obama praised the work done by Feinberg, who he said "was faced with the difficult task of striking the proper balance between standing up for taxpayers and returning a measure of stability to our financial system."

Feinberg's and Obama's comments came after the Federal Reserve proposed two initiatives to review incentive programs at hundreds of banks in an attempt to reduce risky practices that helped trigger the financial crisis."Compensation practices at some banking organizations have led to misaligned incentives and excessive risk-taking, contributing to bank losses and financial instability," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said. "The Federal Reserve is working to ensure that compensation packages appropriately tie rewards to longer-term performance and do not create undue risk for the firm or the financial system." {read the rest of the cover up story}

It seems like the Federal Reserve is giving the talking points to the Obama administration using Feinberg as the front man for this current financial psyops. 

Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve must 'vanish from the pages of time'

Inbreeding of the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, the U.S. government and the international banking mafia has resulted in an economic degenerate mongrel child hell bent on destroying us. The message I get from this defective offspring is.... "shut up, give us the money or we will take you down."



What do we do about this?



Mrs. Sheehan says "no guillotine brigades will march down Wall Street" but maybe we're just not yet hungry enough for that...yet.

Capitalism: An Apathy Story

Cindy Sheehan

This Thursday, in a move that would make Baron von Louis Rothschild blush with shame (or burst with pride), Goldman Sachs will announce that it is more than doubling its bonus pool: from 11 billion in 2007 to 23 billion in 2008.

The Robber Class doesn’t frustrate me nearly as much as the Robbed Class. Robbers will be Robbers only as long as we in the Robbed Class let them. {more}

GQ magazine, put together a list of The 50 Most Powerful People in D.C. Except for maybe a couple of ringers, most of these are the names and faces of traitors. Isn't treason to our country and constitution a crime that should never be allowed to continue?



The top 3...Emanuel, Gates and Bernanke

Dick Cheney came in at number 9. Just behind Nancy Pelosi and well ahead of Hillary Clinton.

GQ, being a prime example of a tool for the breakdown of our culture, still gives a good pictorial of the inbred children of a system that seems destined to 'vanish from the pages of time.'

Thieves

Ever been broken into? Stolen from on a very personal level? It really pisses you off for a while doesn't it.

Maybe the glass door isn't broken right now but robbery and theft go on every day. The thieves are called Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, the U.S. government and corporations who's aim is to not break glass but to break our spirit. Control is easier that way.

Scott Crieghton gives us some numbers from the theft. Some of this money, in theory, is stolen from me....and you. And yet we don't feel the anger the same as if our physical homes were broken into.

Tarp money, what Tarp money?

NY AG Andrew Cuomo has reported that more than 4,700 employees of the 9 top banks that received Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money, have been given bonuses in excess of $1 million dollars. 836 of them received more than $3 million.

Citigroup Inc. gave employees $5.33 BILLION in bonuses for 2008

• reported $27 billion in losses for 2008
• gave 738 of its employees bonuses of at least $1 million
• gave 44 of it’s employees bonuses of at least $5 million
  
• received total of $45 billion in government money
• has NOT repaid TARP loans to date

Bank of America Corp. gave employees $3.3 BILLION in bonuses for 2008

• earned only $2.56 billion in 2008
• gave 172 of it’s employees bonuses of at least $1 million
• received total of $45 billion in government money
• bought Merrill Lynch with $20 BILLION of the TARP money
• Merrill Lynch lost $30 BILLION in 2008
• Merrill Lynch paid 696 employees at least $1 million in bonuses
• has NOT repaid TARP loans to date

JP Morgan Chase. Has not disclosed exactly how much they have paid in bonuses (at least $2.26 BILLION in bonuses for 2008)

• gave 1,626 of it’s employees bonuses of at least $1 million
• gave at least 200 employees bonuses of at least $3 million
• gave out more in bonuses than they made in 2008
  
• received $25 billion in TARP funds
• has paid the TARP funds back

Goldman Sachs. has not disclosed exactly how much they have paid in bonuses (at least $1.6 BILLION in bonuses for 2008)

• gave 953 of it’s employees bonuses of at least $1 million
• gave at least 200 employees bonuses of at least $3 million
• gave out more in bonuses than they made in profits for 2008
  
• received $10 billion in TARP funds
• has paid the TARP funds back [source]

Pretty unbelievable if you really look at it and that's just one example of the high level theft.

We could go on all day describing the techniques of the breakers and enterers but most folks seem to be resigned to accepting the thievery, lies and war. It's all so abstract that it's hard for the masses to grasp. We hope that it really can't be happening.

Thievery without the broken glass at your doorstep doesn't piss us off very much. The slow burn of the theft of our future that requires our labor and our lives in incremental doses should be getting us plenty mad but it's not.

Without anger or some kind of emotional attachment to what is being stolen, we just sort of lie in bed with the covers over our heads and hope that the thieves don't hurt us too bad.

And that's just the way the current crop of criminals want it.