For those of you who haven’t read Matt Taibbi’s scathing Rolling Stone commentary on Goldman Sachs, entitled, “The Great American Bubble Machine,” it’s well worth a look. In it, he refers to the banking behemoth as a “Great Vampire Squid wrapped around the face of humanity.”
Blaming Goldman for both engineering and profiting off of every major bubble since the great depression, Taibbi describes the elaborate political network of Goldman Sachs alums who represent some of the most powerful people on the planet.
As the flak began rolling in from financial commentators and Goldman itself, the chief rebuttal to Taibbi’s thesis seemed to be,
“Well, Goldman is just smarter than everyone else, they were ahead of the curve, and so they took the greatest advantage.”
This justification sums up how frightening the world we live in really is. According to the free marketeers, then, it is the duty of our best and brightest to exploit those that are less talented and have less foresight.
There is no other way to read that comment. Goldman apparently believes that, as the leading financial conglomerate in the world, it has some sort of manifest destiny to rape, pillage, and plunder. And God Help anyone who tries to get in their way or question their underhanded tactics and motives.
From my point of view, I don’t see a great deal of intelligence in the actions of Goldman Sachs. Craftiness, sure. Manipulation, absolutely. But Goldman Sachs has never created anything. They have never contributed anything to this world. They do not possess anything resembling real genius. They have proudly installed themselves as an over-nourished barnacle on the ship of the world economy. That will be their legacy. Not a legacy of innovation, or contribution, or enlightenment, just one of suction.
And thanks to Matt Taibbi, many more folks are aware of just how much Goldman Sacks sucks.
