And as the SEC has shown, bureaucrats
and regulators are easily distracted by internet porn. So the
regulations don't help a whole lot if the police are sitting in their
offices watching "Debbie Does Dallas" instead of watching Lehman
Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, et al.
Government: the last refuge of the incompetent (and, apparently, office
porn viewing). But I understand that it's starting to pay better. And
apparently, you can spend 8 hours a day surfing porn sites.
So hooray for higher paid incompetent regulators.... Oh wait....
David
"Everything
government touches turns to crap"--Ringo
Starr
On 4/23/2010 11:57 AM, [email protected] wrote:
natrionalreview online
April 23, 2010 4:00 A.M.
Goldman
Sachs and the Left
An
impressionistic study in cronyism.
President
Obama was in the Big Apple on Thursday, for another lecture on big, bad
Wall Street. The dutiful, third-row appearance by Lloyd Blankfein,
Goldman Sachs’s CEO, said it all: More than any other firm, Goldman
is confident in its ability to cozy up to the Democrats that regulate
it, and to favorably shape the current congressional negotiations on financial reform.
"They’ve been wired through the Clinton years, the Bush years,
and before that, they have a lot of heavy hitters,†Rep. Peter
DeFazio (D., Ore.) tells us. “They’re well connected. . . .
They’re aggressive.†DeFazio, along with Rep. Elijah Cummings (D.,
Md.), urged the Securities and Exchange Commission this week to widen
its current investigation of the firm to include securities
underwritten by Goldman and backed by American International Group, the
bailed-out insurer, to probe for “fraudulent conduct†and
“ill-gotten gains.â€
“From the beginning, I’ve thought that the deal Goldman
Sachs got via Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on their bad bets through
AIG kind of stunk,†DeFazio says. “They got $13 billion from AIG
last year. I’m looking for any legal way to recoup that money for the
people of the United States.â€
With former senior aides to Obama, Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.), the
chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and other Democrats
on its payroll, Goldman isn’t fretting about DeFazio and company. As
Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner reports, four of the five in-house
lobbyists at Goldman were Democratic staffers on Capitol Hill, with the
remaining one a contributor to Hillary Clinton’s presidential
campaign. Directing Goldman’s Washington shop is Michael Paese,
Frank’s former go-to committee staffer, who had responsibility for
committee policy related to the banking, securities, and insurance industries. One of
Paese’s deputies is Ken Connolly, a veteran of the Senate Environment
and Public Works Committee. And this week, Paese’s bosses enlisted
Greg Craig, Obama’s former White House counsel, through the law firm
Skadden Arps, just days after Goldman was charged with fraud by the SEC.
The relationship between the government and Goldman is fluid and open.
Frank’s staff, for one, is a training ground for big-banking
lobbyists, and Goldman remains a soft landing spot for supportive
ex-officials and former policymakers. Peter Roberson, who worked on the
Boston congressman’s capital-markets team, recently left the House Finance Committee’s staff to
join the world’s top clearinghouse for over-the-counter derivatives.
Frank himself admits that the revolving door is unseemly. After
Roberson quit, Frank publicly criticized him, a little tantrum to hide
bigger problems.
Over on Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House has friendships with many
senior Goldman lobbyists outside of the bank’s immediate team of
Washington operatives: former House minority leader Dick Gephardt;
Janice O’Connell, a former adviser to Chris Dodd (D., Conn.), the
chairman of the Senate Banking Committee; and former Tennessee
congressman Harold Ford Sr., to name a few. Another Goldman-enlisted
Washington warrior is Steve Elmendorf, John Kerry’s deputy campaign
manager in 2004. Prominent Republicans, of course, are also part of the
operation, with Ken Duberstein, a Reagan White House chief of staff,
and Eric Ueland, former chief of staff to Bill Frist, the former Senate
majority leader, on board. Altogether, the bank employs 41 lobbyists
and 13 outside firms.
According to the Hill, Goldman has
devoted $18 million over the last decade to lobbying members of
Congress and “millions more to contributing to lawmakers’
campaigns.†It’s an immense, sprawling operation, buoyed by
countless buddies inside the Obama administration, as detailed by Michelle Malkin earlier this
week. Senior officials such as Mark Patterson, Tim Geithner’s chief
of staff, are former Goldman lobbyists. Patterson, in fact, had
Paese’s position before Paese.
Analysis by the Christian Science Monitor shows
that Goldman increased its lobbying by more than 70 percent over the
past year, spending $2.8 million in the process, and it doesn’t end
with Goldman. According to Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C., watchdog
group, 940 former public officials are now registered lobbyists on
behalf of banks and investment houses. The Center for Responsive
Politics counts 56 former congressional aides on the Senate and House
Banking Committees who went on to lobby for the financial sector. For Goldman,
the intermingling is policy. A company insider tells Politico that the firm’s Washington operation
is “a very conscious, long-term effort that is very deliberate and is
intended to address this two-pronged need of understanding the
political process and understanding our business.â€
For all of his talk about reforming Wall Street, President Obama has
been powerless to stop the influence of lobbyists on his financial
agenda, preferring to put his hand out, rather than up — his
presidential campaign collected more than $1 million from Goldman
employees, a wad of dough the president refuses to return. Obama’s
hesitancy to return his bundle of Goldman cash is shared by Senate
majority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), who was recently hosted by
Goldman’s president at a fundraiser in New York. Other tentacles
slither throughout the Democratic caucus. Since 1990, according to OpenSecrets.org, Goldman has donated over
$31 million to political-action committees and candidates, with 64
percent of those donations going to Democrats.
Despite’s Obama’s tough words at the Cooper Union, the symbiosis
between Goldman’s lobbyists and the Democrats that regulate it has
long been a work of political impressionism. Close up, it looks
disconnected and blurred, but if you step back, the shape of it all
falls into focus: Democrats hoard Goldman cash, Goldman hoards
Democrats, and the American people lose.
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