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What deal did Donald Trump make with Goldman Sachs? |
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What deal did Donald Trump make with Goldman Sachs?
By Jon Rappoport
Wall Street On Parade (January 9) details the boggling
Goldman Sachs presence on Trump's team. My comments will follow the list
of names.
"Stephen Bannon, another former Goldman Sachs banker, was named by Trump as his Chief Strategist in the White House."
"The sitting President of Goldman Sachs, Gary Cohn, has been
named by Trump as Director of the National Economic Council, which,
according to its website, coordinates 'policy-making for domestic and
international economic issues'."
"...Trump nominated a Goldman Sachs outside lawyer, Jay
Clayton of Sullivan & Cromwell, to serve as Wall Street's top cop as
Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission."
"...Clayton's wife currently works as a Vice President at Goldman Sachs."
"According to Politico, Goldman Sachs partner, Dina Powell,
President of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, is Ivanka's 'top adviser on
policy and staffing'."
"Then there is Erin Walsh who had worked at Goldman Sachs
since 2010 as an Executive Director and head of its Office of Corporate
Engagement for Asia Pacific...Walsh is now part of Trump's transition
landing team for the State Department and is engaged in prepping the
just retired CEO of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson, for his Senate
confirmation hearing this week to become the Secretary of the Department
of State, according to Politico."
"And there is yet another former Goldman Sachs banker, Anthony Scaramucci, who sits on Trump's transition team."
The first question is: would a Trump-Goldman deal benefit Trump in a personal way? Wall Street On Parade offers possible clues.
"Now the Dow Jones company, MarketWatch, has reported that Trump's debt is held by more than 150 Wall Street firms. The New York Times has reported
that Goldman Sachs Mortgage Company holds a loan on an office tower at
1290 Avenue of the Americas, a building that is 30 percent owned by
Donald Trump."
"Some of the Trump debt held by Wall Street firms, according
to media reports, includes Donald Trump's personal guarantee in the
event of a default. The true owners of other Trump debt are shielded
behind secretive Limited Liability Corporations..."
If Trump is in trouble with those loans, if he's in danger of
not being able to make his payments, then that fact could form the
basis of a Goldman Sachs deal. Trump gets loan protection, Goldman gets a
number of influential (and self-serving) seats at the big table in
Trump's administration.
Beyond this, Goldman Sachs is...I'll let Matt Taibbi describe them. From his classic 2010 Rolling Stone article:
"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 [2008], 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."
"By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's
last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the
architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel
trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall
Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26
years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup - which in turn
got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain,
the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for
his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain
enjoyed a multi-billion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions
in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company.
And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself
and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as
his bank was self-destructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of
staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief
of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the
former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out
insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after
Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national
banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of
the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve
Bank of New York - which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing
Goldman..."
"The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to
turn all of America into a giant pump-and-dump scam, manipulating whole
economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or
that market collapses, and all the time gorging itself on the unseen
costs that are breaking families everywhere - high gas prices, rising
consumer credit rates, half-eaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future
taxes to pay off bailouts..."
So, Goldman Sachs wants to keep on doing what it has been
doing. On the other hand, Trump wants a rising stock market---a symbolic
signal that the economy is strong. Understanding that the market is
manipulated by insiders, Trump would know where to go to make a deal.
Goldman gives him rising market numbers, and Trump gives them what they want. How much of what they want?
Another area where Goldman could provide help: assembling the
funding for a major part of what appears to be an FDR New-Deal project
to rebuild America's infrastructure, putting large numbers of unemployed
people back to work. The cost? At least a trillion dollars. Convincing
Congress to back this plan---and also support Trump's tax cuts---could
run into a serious roadblock. The money has to come from somewhere.
It might be useful to analyze the ominous levels of public
debt accumulated by state governments. The debt is floated on bond
issues, and someone has to underwrite and guarantee those issues. Banks
like Goldman Sachs are in that business. Trump may have approached
Goldman with the premise that, by creating whole swaths of new jobs
across the country, the states' tax revenues will rise, and therefore
the payback on Goldman's investments will become more secure.
It seems certain that Trump is leaning heavily on Goldman to run interference for him. He is walking a risk-laden path.
Partnering with a vampire squid doesn't inspire confidence.
Since I began writing and speaking about Trump, I've
emphasized that his millions of supporters---who actually want more
freedom and more of what America should stand for---have to hold his
feet to the fire when he takes a direction that spells trouble and runs
counter to his announced aims.
He is doing that now.
Here are two final quotes from Wall Street On Parade: "During
the primary campaign, when it emerged that Trump's opponent Ted Cruz
had received a loan from Goldman Sachs, Trump said that Cruz was 'owned'
by Goldman Sachs."
"During his political campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly
railed against Wall Street with a specific focus on Goldman Sachs. In
the final days of his campaign, Trump released an advertisement...that
featured his opponent, Hillary Clinton, shaking hands with Goldman Sachs
CEO Lloyd Blankfein. As the image flickers on the screen, Trump does a
voice over, stating: 'It's a global power structure that is responsible
for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped
our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a
handful of large corporations and political entities.' As the ad ends,
Trump bares his soul: 'I'm doing this for the people and for the
movement and we will take back this country for you and we will make
America great again'."
Has Trump convinced Goldman Sachs they can still make
sky-high money in a genuinely strong American economy, with millions of
new jobs? And without fake bubbles and crashes?
Has he decided he must have Goldman on his side, if he's
going to make economic progress---that, because of their power, there is
no way around them?
Or is Goldman playing along and working Trump and outflanking him?
Finally, I wouldn't bother bringing any of this up if I
didn't think Trump wants to do good things for this country. I have
enumerated those intentions of his in other articles. Right out front,
he continues his war against major media. He doesn't let up. This is
vital, because those media have been functioning as the prime eyes,
ears, and mouths of the nation---and they are falling rapidly from that
precipice. Which is a cause for celebration.
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Jon Rappoport
The
author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM
THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US
Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a
consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the
expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he
has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles
on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin
Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and
Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics,
health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.
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