Vampirski ligenj Goldman Sachs

Ker si ne domišljam, da veliko bralcev zanimajo finance, ne pišem kaj veliko o tem (ok, v resnici ne pišem o ničemer). No, tokrat pa en članek, vreden branja, že zaradi odmevnosti. Sicer dokaj populističen in mestoma malo naiven članek (izšel je v ne prav finančnem Rolling Stone-u), ampak sila zabaven članek o najboljši investicijski banki na Wall Streetu in neverjetni spregi s politiko. Četudi ne pove ničesar zares novega in Goldmanu ničesar zares ne dokaže, so dovolj zgovorni že podatki o tem, kje povsod je Goldman zraven in koliko davkov plačujejo.

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.

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.

Toplo priporočam branje celote.

Malo populizma, vendar zelo zabavnega in usmerjenega v pravo smer (po mojem skromnem mnenju, seveda).

In če smo se že spravili na Goldmana, Jon Stewart po mojem dobro ujame sentiment javnosti: