Talk:Goldman Sachs

World Food Crisis

I created this page a few days ago because Goldman Sachs was referenced by a lot of articles, and I keep seeing and hearing about it everywhere. "Blah blah blah, it's all Goldman Sachs, it's Them and not Any Other Investment Bank, nope, the only one I can name! Also something something Rothschilds". Anyway, someone added that Goldman was responsible for the 2008 world food crisis, which I found both interesting and suspicious. A single firm jacking up the price of a HUUUGE sector of the economy like all of food seems a bit far fetched. So I did a bit of research, "research" being defined as "reading wikipedia", and found quite a few counter-sources to this claim. So I added one to the GS and the world food crisis article. Later, I noticed the sources and counter-claims were removed.

Is this because we are absolutely certain GS was the evil mastermind of the rising food prices and not, you know, skyrocketing oil prices and the Dollar and Euro at risk of turning into toilet paper? CorruptUser (talk) 00:24, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Conspiracies

The conspiracy theories don't just use GS as a proxy for racism. They have their own unique spins that should be addressed.

This includes things like

• Fed obsession, where Goldman Sachs is a direct feeder to the fed, and intentionally tries to place its employees on the federal reserve board.
• Secret Harvard clubs that determines who can be an employee of GS
• Economic index manipulation(okay that one actually happened, but a list with two items seemed short). Ikanreed (talk) 15:00, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Article is appalling

This topic is a bit outside of my purview -- not something I know enough about to confidently edit. That said, it's mind-boggling that it lacks any serious analysis of the corporatist, revolving door bullshit and so much else. No, we get some crap about them funding some schools for black waifs. Kee-rist. Who gives a shit that it's a firm founded by Jewish guys -- it is a pit of capitalist corruption and needs to be analyzed as such. I hope someone digs into the work of Yves Smith -- who worked for GS -- and does this page some justice.---Mona- (talk) 06:01, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Add stuff, referenced? - David Gerard (talk) 07:15, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Than DO IT, Mona, with references, it's a wiki. And the guys who care about the Goldman's being Jewish overmuch are of course those, who peddle antisemitic conspiracy theories, which means mostly wingnuts, but not only.--Arisboch ☞✍☜☞✉☜ ∈)☼(∋ 13:30, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Here, I found an article about our Lord and Savior Gleen Greenwald regarding Goldman Sachs.

And the reason for the "black waifs" portion is that they were involved in a major conspiracy; a conspiracy for good. Because people are complicated, and despite what you think, corporations are not some nebulous entity from dimensions Man was not meant to comprehend, but organizations of people, and as such can indeed do good or bad things.

Oh and please stop misusing the term "corporatist". "Corporatism" is the idea that like-minded individuals can form organizations to achieve goals, like the United Auto Workers union or the ACLU, and that these organizations should have some rights and protections granted by law, like the ability to collectively bargain or file lawsuits. CorruptUser (talk) 14:27, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Greenwald was with Wachtell, Lipton for almost 2 years serving as Goldman Sachs lawyers. He got out because it was destroying his soul. My understanding of large corporations comes from professional experience with them, and if you think they actually give a rat's ass about the public good you may as well be on very hard drugs. Any large and very powerful human institution needs accountability, and the role of skeptics is to be adversarial and check their power by examining them closely. Emphasizing self-serving charity work that is a miniscule portion of their financial doings -- when the main doings are almost entirely neglected -- is preposterous. I'm not going to edit this article, pace Arisboch. But I read this entry and realized (again) how deeply awful many of the articles here truly are. Shallow, unsourced and just plain dumb.

As for coproratism, I shall continue employing the term because it is applicable.---Mona- (talk) 14:51, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Why does it not surprise me in the least that Mona despises Goldman Sachs? And why does it not surprise me that she wants to downplay the fact that Goldman Sachs is often smeared by right-wing antisemitic "critics of capitalism"? Mona, let's face it; as long as capitalism existed there were banks. And as long as capitalism exists there will be banks. And it matters little whether they are Goldman Sachs, the Royal Bank of Scotland or Credit Suisse. If you rage against the current economic system, banks are not the right target. But maybe your lord and savior told you that they were mean to him when he worked for them, so... Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 14:57, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

And it gets personal again *shakes head*. Objectively, as someone who worked in the investment banking industry for 16 years, this is not a very good article. I will cast my mind to making it a little better. Great that the black waifs section is in there - that is truly interesting. An awful lot of negative stuff specific to GS isn't though.--TheroadtoWiganPier (talk) 15:08, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

"I will cast my mind to making it a little better." That'd be great, and yeah, the truckloads of negative stuff is missing. Having the black waif shtick constitute so much of the article is risible, but it it'd be worth including in a properly extensive entry.---Mona- (talk) 15:15, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

No, I don't think that people whose goal is "make as much money as possible" are going to be working for the public good. Just that people do indeed have ethics, and sometimes they will indeed do the right thing. And of course they need accountability; I'm not arguing that. And yes skeptics should be adversarial. But at the same time, those "skeptics" need skeptics of their own. And how exactly is "providing education for more black people than the entire Deep South" a "self serving interest"? What, you think their evil plan is that by ensuring more people have education the result will be more businesses available 20 years later for them to do business with? OH MAH GOD HOW NEFARIOUS! That's almost as vile as MY plan to encourage women's rights in the Third World in order to effectively double the pool of Third World scientists, thus accelerating research and (hopefully) longevity research allowing me to survive long enough to see a spaceflight mission to Alpha Centauri! MUAWWAHAHAH! CorruptUser (talk) 15:23, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

The fact of the matter is that Goldman Sachs is neither much better nor much worse thaen any other major bank. The main reason we cover it at all (and the main reason we don't cover - say - credit Suisse) is the fact that Goldman Sachs is often employed by Antisemites as a dog whistle term in lieu of "Jewish Bankers" and the likes Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 15:29, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I do want to make one edit. The blacks waifs bit isn't even about Goldman Sachs per se, which didn't give a cent to this fund (or at least the source doesn't say so). Paul Sacks, over 100 years ago, was friends with the Rosenwald guy who did fund the schools. If this info is even to remain, it should be as a footnote or something; it is not about GS, and certainly not about the GS Leviathan of today. But perhaps someone else would first like to make an edit accommodating these facts?---Mona- (talk) 15:38, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

"The main reason we cover it at all" I've no objection to addressing that GS has replaced the Rothschilds for some of the far right antisemites. But that should not be the main point about the entity in an encylopedia. That point entirely aside, GS does a lot of bad shit and is large enough to drive a lot of it on an international scale.---Mona- (talk) 15:42, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes indeed the dog whistley reason for the existence of this article is very evident from just reading it. However, that does not mean it is not poor and very incomplete - it is. There are also a whole host of other banking subjects that could make for excellent RW articles. By all means write Credit Suisse or JP Morgan (the latter could be a corker, actually). --TheroadtoWiganPier (talk) 15:46, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I would've used Morgan Stanley or Deutsche Bank. But anyway, I'm going to pre-empt the inevitable "Whataboutism".

There is a mid-sized town in Stateasota with a population of both black people and white people. There is a law on the books against shoplifting, which carries a penalty of hand amputation. In recent years, a number of teenagers shoplift, in proportions of white petty criminals to black ones relatively equal to the populations. But in the overwhelming majority of times when the crime is pursued by the police, it's a black teenager. A black teen is sentenced to amputation, but he makes an appeal to the Supreme Court of Stateasota. His attorney presents the evidence that the application of the law is blatantly racist, because two criminals with the same crime would have massively different outcomes based on their race. Should the judge dismiss this argument as "whataboutism"? After all, the teenager is clearly guilty and the law is clear on the matter, so saying "well what about white criminals, huh?" is whataboutism, right? Wrong. When the system itself is biased, it's fair to bring up the bias of the system as a defense, because the bias of the system can be far more serious than the crime itself, and sentencing only black kids to the chopping block is itself a worse crime against humanity than sentencing no kids to the chopping block.

In the case of Goldman Sachs, where they are blantantly guilty of some things, yes, they shouldn't be allowed to get away with a crime. At the same time, where Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank are blatantly guilty the same crimes, they should also be held accountable. But if ONLY Goldman Sachs is being held accountable, there is a far more serious problem that needs to be addressed. A law that only applies to some is worse than no law at all. So a question we should raise when people are calling for the chopping block for Goldman Sachs and almost never any other investment bank is whether or not Goldman Sachs is indeed committing proportionately more crimes than the average. CorruptUser (talk) 15:56, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

"But others did bad things too!" is not a good argument for this article not to exist. Saying you're going to "pre-empt" the whataboutery by then engaging in it doesn't make your argument not whataboutery. Your arguments through this section are terrible - David Gerard (talk) 16:02, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

First of all, I created this article, so I'm probably not going to argue it shouldn't exist. Second, Mona has a history of accusing people of "whataboutism". She'd say "Entity A did X", someone would respond "Entity B did Y which is far worse", and she'd reply "WHATABOUTISM!". In pure logic she'd be right, the responder is making a Not As Bad As fallacy, Entity A did indeed do X. But this isn't the magical world of logic, this is the real world. Society focusing on Goldman Sachs and only Goldman Sachs is a problem, and can be a sign of either a strange obsession or bigotry. That does not mean that only going after one criminal is necessarily worse than going after no criminals; I'd feel safer in a society where the police only arrest Chinese murderers than a society that arrests no murderers at all, even if I was Chinese myself (though I'd be justifiably upset). The people that harp on Goldman Sachs never seem to have anywhere remotely near the criticism for the other firms. The question then becomes, is GS truly a hive of scum and villainy far worse than all the others, or are they the only ones being watched? If the former, then yes, go after them. If the latter, then perhaps we should ban ALL of the investment banks and not use GS as the face of the action.

Let me give a relatively simple heuristic for when the "not as bad as" fallacy should and should not be used.

Case 1) X is far worse than the average. Not as bad as should not be used.

Case 2) X is far better than the average. Not as bad as can be used.

A man being investigated for rape, for example, has no defense in saying that the police are currently ignoring an open and shut murder case and should investigate that first. A man being investigated for feeding the homeless, for example, does.

A lot of it comes down to time vs reward as well. We shouldn't let all petty crimes get away, and at the same time serious crimes deserve more attention. We have limited resources to work with though. If fixing McDonald's unfair wages requires just a letter campaign but stopping slave labor in Cameroon requires a full scale invasion, you get more benefit from going after McD than Cameroon.CorruptUser (talk) 17:17, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

CorruptUser addresses the main issue succinctly and manages to present the important facts in a neat analogy. Also as to a reply to Mona: RW is not in fact an encyclopedia. We do not have to be nor do we intend to be encyclopedic. Technically speaking, the history of Israel for example would be off-mission (though it is clearly grandfathered in), whereas some Rabbi in Israel claiming he can heal Islam with red trousers would clearly be on mission (if such a thing actually existed). Hence, every bank ever is not on mission, but the dog whistles employed against a handful of banks is on mission. Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 16:16, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

"In pure logic she'd be right," Yes, and that's where you should have stopped -- the whataboutery is as fallacious here as in most other instances. Goldman Sachs is held up as a corrupt and horrid entity because it is probably the largest banking empire in America. It's executives, Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson, served as Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, respectively. Timothy Geithner, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, was SecTreas in the Obama administration. Lower-level GS people also rotate in and out of government in a corrupt scheme of regulators turning regulator, and back again. Many grotesqueries result from this awful "system." Some Jewish names involved is the least interesting thing about GS or the corruption it commits and drives.---Mona- (talk) 18:12, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Ignoring the current argument for now, is Goldman Sachs's misdeeds themselves even remotely missional? Because Goldman Sachs's use in conspiracy theories is. CorruptUser (talk) 18:49, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

IF Goldman Sachs is to have an article, failing to address its "misdeeds" would be preposterous. Warm fuzzies about a guy over 100 years ago knowing a guy who gave money to build black schools is a joke in the larger scheme of GS behavior. You want to address why saying a particular kind of thing (Jewish conspiracies and such) about GS is bad. Fine. But to then leave out the glaring corruption and severe harm it does is -- to omit any of the bad things that CAN and should be said about GS -- I mean, that's just wrong. And that's all I have to say on this topic.---Mona- (talk) 18:57, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ What right do you and you alone have to decide what is and isn't appropriate for an article? CorruptUser (talk) 19:14, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I, and I alone, am entitled to my, and mine alone, opinion and judgment on the matter. Bye now.---Mona- (talk) 19:19, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

The way you formulated your opinion, Mona, it sounded as if you thought your opinion was enough to override long-standing (tacit) consensus. Let's just say that this opinion has arisen before. Maybe you should be more careful with your words. Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 19:39, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

You really need to stop threatening other users on wiki - David Gerard (talk) 20:52, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Wait? Who was threatening someone here? Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 20:58, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

An example for a conspiracy to corner the market - involving neither Goldman nor Banks

I don't know whether you ever heard of it, but way back in the twentieth century, two brothers (sons of H.L. Hunt of Texas, one of whose children was Lamar Hunt, the founder of the American Football League) tried to corner the market in silver. While they did manage to raise the price of silver to a ridiculous height never seen before or since (in real terms) and they even forced some countries to eliminate silver coins due to their cost, they ultimately failed in their stated goal. Basically, the government just changed the rules on options on silver and that was that. Wikipedia has an article on that. Notice how it is in fact possible to create a speculation bubble around one product with enough money, but it is not possible to ultimately profit from said speculation and it is not possible to do the same with more thaen one good at the same time. Hence the charge of Goldman Sachs being responsible for the food price rises is likely to be BS Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 16:21, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

An entire new section for your whataboutery. This article is about Goldman Sachs. Moreover, you have amply demonstrated yourself to be a grossly bad faith user and for that reason I do not accept any of your judgments, about what is or is not properly within the mission here, or anything else.---Mona- (talk) 18:17, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I would second that. That's material for a separate article, and if you gave a hoot about article content in general you'd be off writing that in that article rather than in the talk of this one - David Gerard (talk) 18:32, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually this was a way of proposing an article on this / asking whether it would be on mission and contextualizing the "accusation" that Goldman Sachs alone is able to drive the price of anything let alone food and profit from it. This story hints on the assumption that they can't. After all, the Hunt brothers hoarded literal tons of actual physical silver to achieve their speculation. You can't hoard megatons of food for years. And please, David Gerard, try to divorce yourself from the conflict between Mona and myself. Unpleasant things have been said and maybe even mistakes were made, but there is no need, to dismiss the arguments of either side for said reasons. Of course you can chose to value a certain source less if its contents appeal to either of us on the issue of Zionism/Israel, as we both have publicly known opinions on this issue. However, this should not affect anybody's judgment as to my competence and the quality of my sources on issues unrelated to Zionism / Mister Greenwald or Islam. Mona unfortunately seems to write only about said issue or find some way to dredge it into the topic... Anyway: Point is, the silver speculation is an interesting tidbit but I don't think it is missional. We might use it as an aside to dispel the myth of gold or precious metal being of stable worth, though... Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 19:37, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I think the person that needs to divorce themselves from said conflict is actually you, not David or any other editor. As for your supposition that one institution cannot manipulate a commodity price on its own, there is considerable merit in that.--TheroadtoWiganPier (talk) 22:50, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Can we please discuss the issue this is actually about? Not some thing Mona or I said or didn't say with regards to some other, unrelated, topic? Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 22:54, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I only tweaked the "revolving door" section to establish that it is proper to be concerned about this as a serious problem. The last paragraph still makes me gag -- something one partner did over a hundred years ago does not begin to diminish the scandalous behavior of GS the Leviathan -- and virtually all of Wall Street --- today. But this article isn't one I'm prepared to go the mat for.---Mona- (talk) 03:59, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

I already tweaked the wording on the last para - check the edit history. Not sure why this should make you gag as it actually happened and is an interesting example of a worthy conspiracy.--TheroadtoWiganPier (talk) 04:02, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

It strikes me as along the jarring lines of: "Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"---Mona- (talk) 04:34, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with their problematic behaviour today, it's a complete red herring - David Gerard (talk) 10:18, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Can you think of anywhere else it might be appropriate David? It's a nice example of an unlikely "conspiracy".--TheroadtoWiganPier (talk) 10:48, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

"Can you think of anywhere else it might be appropriate" It would be a nice example of a good conspiracy for the Conspiracy Theory article? That they're Jewish could be pointed out since so many of the pernicious theories involve Jews.---Mona- (talk) 12:02, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Just like to point out, that two people did manage to manipulate the onion market. Which is why CMEX won't let you speculate on onions. CorruptUser (talk) 12:10, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

source? Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 16:54, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Onion Futures Act CorruptUser (talk) 17:00, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Just onions, not bell peppers? What a magic fruit, indeed, not only the ones from the awesome comic by Smolderen.--Arisboch ☞✍☜☞✉☜ ∈)☼(∋ 17:03, 6 September 2015 (UTC)