
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. (Credit: flickr / cc / Fortune Live Media)
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Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. (Credit: flickr / cc / Fortune Live Media)
On June 11, Goldman Sachs agreed to pay $67m to settle a suit charging the firm and others with colluding to drive down the price of takeovers.
For another firm, paying out tens of millions of dollars to resolve allegations of collusion might provoke an existential crisis. Not for Goldman. The firm did not admit to any wrongdoing and said in a statement: "We're pleased to put the matter behind us."
That seems to sum up how Goldman would like to handle everything related to its role in politics and markets over the last two decades. The rest of us shouldn't be too ready to do so.
To be sure, Goldman Sachs is not solely or even primarily responsible for the 2008 financial crash and the ensuing, worldwide Great Recession. There's plenty of blame to go around.
But as the leading firm on Wall Street before the crash, as the company most entangled in high-level policymaking, as an innovator of overly complicated and socially destructive trading products and schemes, as an orchestrator of financial deregulation, as an enterprise with tentacles extending so far that it has been accused of manipulating aluminum markets, Goldman Sachs surely deserves plenty of blame.
Not for nothing did columnist Matt Taibbi famously call the firm "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity".
Wall Street has a long list of malefactions for which it must answer. As both the leading firm on Wall Street and a perpetrator of so many abuses, Goldman Sachs can fairly be treated as a stand-in for Wall Street overall. Consider:
Over the last few decades Goldman has become emblematic of the problem. Wall Street firms have grown too big, and Wall Street has taken over too much of our economy and gained too much influence in and over our government. The financial services sector is supposed to serve the rest of the economy, not the other way around. And the government must control Big Finance, not the other way around.
Four years after the passage of the Dodd-Frank reform legislation, many of its key features have yet to be implemented -the delay itself is due to the ongoing political power of Wall Street. But neither the Street nor Goldman have the same political juice they did before the crash, and there is some evidence that Goldman and the financial sector are slowly retreating to a more manageable size. The trend lines are not yet clear, however.
What should be clear is that we cannot "put the matter behind us". Banks wrecked the economy once - forcing millions out of their homes, throwing tens of millions out of their jobs, throwing entire nations into crisis - and they will do it again, unless we take steps to prevent it.
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On June 11, Goldman Sachs agreed to pay $67m to settle a suit charging the firm and others with colluding to drive down the price of takeovers.
For another firm, paying out tens of millions of dollars to resolve allegations of collusion might provoke an existential crisis. Not for Goldman. The firm did not admit to any wrongdoing and said in a statement: "We're pleased to put the matter behind us."
That seems to sum up how Goldman would like to handle everything related to its role in politics and markets over the last two decades. The rest of us shouldn't be too ready to do so.
To be sure, Goldman Sachs is not solely or even primarily responsible for the 2008 financial crash and the ensuing, worldwide Great Recession. There's plenty of blame to go around.
But as the leading firm on Wall Street before the crash, as the company most entangled in high-level policymaking, as an innovator of overly complicated and socially destructive trading products and schemes, as an orchestrator of financial deregulation, as an enterprise with tentacles extending so far that it has been accused of manipulating aluminum markets, Goldman Sachs surely deserves plenty of blame.
Not for nothing did columnist Matt Taibbi famously call the firm "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity".
Wall Street has a long list of malefactions for which it must answer. As both the leading firm on Wall Street and a perpetrator of so many abuses, Goldman Sachs can fairly be treated as a stand-in for Wall Street overall. Consider:
Over the last few decades Goldman has become emblematic of the problem. Wall Street firms have grown too big, and Wall Street has taken over too much of our economy and gained too much influence in and over our government. The financial services sector is supposed to serve the rest of the economy, not the other way around. And the government must control Big Finance, not the other way around.
Four years after the passage of the Dodd-Frank reform legislation, many of its key features have yet to be implemented -the delay itself is due to the ongoing political power of Wall Street. But neither the Street nor Goldman have the same political juice they did before the crash, and there is some evidence that Goldman and the financial sector are slowly retreating to a more manageable size. The trend lines are not yet clear, however.
What should be clear is that we cannot "put the matter behind us". Banks wrecked the economy once - forcing millions out of their homes, throwing tens of millions out of their jobs, throwing entire nations into crisis - and they will do it again, unless we take steps to prevent it.
On June 11, Goldman Sachs agreed to pay $67m to settle a suit charging the firm and others with colluding to drive down the price of takeovers.
For another firm, paying out tens of millions of dollars to resolve allegations of collusion might provoke an existential crisis. Not for Goldman. The firm did not admit to any wrongdoing and said in a statement: "We're pleased to put the matter behind us."
That seems to sum up how Goldman would like to handle everything related to its role in politics and markets over the last two decades. The rest of us shouldn't be too ready to do so.
To be sure, Goldman Sachs is not solely or even primarily responsible for the 2008 financial crash and the ensuing, worldwide Great Recession. There's plenty of blame to go around.
But as the leading firm on Wall Street before the crash, as the company most entangled in high-level policymaking, as an innovator of overly complicated and socially destructive trading products and schemes, as an orchestrator of financial deregulation, as an enterprise with tentacles extending so far that it has been accused of manipulating aluminum markets, Goldman Sachs surely deserves plenty of blame.
Not for nothing did columnist Matt Taibbi famously call the firm "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity".
Wall Street has a long list of malefactions for which it must answer. As both the leading firm on Wall Street and a perpetrator of so many abuses, Goldman Sachs can fairly be treated as a stand-in for Wall Street overall. Consider:
Over the last few decades Goldman has become emblematic of the problem. Wall Street firms have grown too big, and Wall Street has taken over too much of our economy and gained too much influence in and over our government. The financial services sector is supposed to serve the rest of the economy, not the other way around. And the government must control Big Finance, not the other way around.
Four years after the passage of the Dodd-Frank reform legislation, many of its key features have yet to be implemented -the delay itself is due to the ongoing political power of Wall Street. But neither the Street nor Goldman have the same political juice they did before the crash, and there is some evidence that Goldman and the financial sector are slowly retreating to a more manageable size. The trend lines are not yet clear, however.
What should be clear is that we cannot "put the matter behind us". Banks wrecked the economy once - forcing millions out of their homes, throwing tens of millions out of their jobs, throwing entire nations into crisis - and they will do it again, unless we take steps to prevent it.