A bet on Obama turns to Gold for Goldman

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America's Best Investment the Last Year - Obama's Presidential Campaign

So we just suffered through the worst year since the Great depression and the collapsing economy wiped out more than half of people's savings and investments along with a big chunk of their home and other real estate values. The stock market has now recovered about 40-50% of it's value. The Dow Jones hit 10,000 for the first time in a year.

Home prices have stabilized although below the value of the past few years. Unemployment is way up but economists say we are out of the recession. Oil prices have settled at about twice what they were before the economic crash. Even billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett lost a lot of value over the past year.



At least things seem to have stopped losing value and we can catch our breath. All in all we seem happy to be where we are which is far worse off than we were a year or two ago. Still some people managed to make a lot of money on the pain and suffering of the rest of the world, a whole lot of money.



There was an investment you could have made that would have made you wealthy in the past year. If you were a Goldman Sachs employee your investment in Barack Obama's presidential campaign resulted in the highest earnings per quarter for employees in history in this, Goldman's 140th year in business. Goldman employees donated about $1 million to Obama's campaign, helped raise a total of over $21 million from the Wall Street financial community and of course have helped guide his career since his start in politics.

Goldman's financial contributions to Obama amounted to about $32 per employee (there are 31,700 Goldman employees). The money Goldman earned in 2009 and is paying for wages and benefits just through the last nine months since Obama took office average $527,192 per employee. Imagine if you gave someone $32 last year and already were paid back over half a million dollars.



Goldman generated $35.6 billion in revenue so far this year, an increase of 49% over last year. 47% is allocated to the employees, a total of $16.7 billion. The only better year was 2007 when $16.9 billion was set aside and the only better quarter was the last quarter of this year.



Besides the billions of dollars in pay this year, the stock value has also been astronomical for Goldman's. They are the only financial services company to achieve such staggering success as their stock value increased from $53.31 a share when Obama was elected to about $187.32 today, an increase of over 3.5 times in less than a year.

Compare Goldman's to the next largest investment bank and another Obama backer JP Morgan. Morgan also had a great year but allocated just $8.79 billion to employees, half of the Goldman allocation. The Morgan stock hit $23.38 when Obama got elected and today is up to $46.83, double the value but far below the Goldman record pace.

Goldman was a major player in the sub-prime mortgage market and oil futures market whose wild swings drove the world into economic chaos. They also were selling mortgage packages to clients while they were spending their own money betting the mortgage market would collapse. It earned them the record earnings in 2007 and cost them $60 million in state fines so far. However, the fine was paid with no admission of guilt to limit the corporate liability and allow the expense to be deducted. Some people have all the breaks it seems.



In addition, Goldman received $10 billion in bank bailout funds last year and billions more from the AIG bailout. The bank funds were repaid so the federal government could not challenge the payoffs to their employees. Yet to be determined is the long term relationship between Goldman and Obama to explain why one of the largest investment banks in the world took a state senator from Illinois under their wing and led him to the presidency of the nation.



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Obama's Bad Boys and How to Punish Them in Style - Bank of America and North Korea

Okay, today's lesson is how to punish the bad guys and look good to the public while really not hurting the bad guys too much in the process.

Bank of America

First we have Bank of America, the giant bank that teetered on the brink of bankruptcy because of a series of stupid and possibly illegal actions. This was the bank Bush and Obama virtually forced to absorb the investment firm of Lehman during the financial meltdown. So in return for doing the government's dirty work with Lehman, the Bank of America gets a $25 billion bank bail out from the US taxpayer. It then says it must pay $5.8 billion in bonuses to the very employees that nearly bankrupted Lehman, bonus payments which the Obama administration allows to happen.




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To punish them, however, the Security and Exchange Commission under Obama charges the Bank with lying to their stockholders about the Lehman bonuses and negotiates a fine of $31 million for the action. So, the Bank violates the law and gets fined $31 million while also being given $25 billion in taxpayer money. In addition the $5.8 billion in bonuses get paid. So we the people nailed the bad guys for $31 million while letting them get away with $31.8 billion. It seems to me we just lost $31.49 billion with the Obama settlement.

Gored Again by Gore in North Korea

Speaking of good friends of the president, there is the case of former Vice President Al Gore who we have already shown made about $100 million off the environment while telling the US Senate every cent he gets from his environmental work goes to non-profit groups. He stands to make over a billion more if Congress would pass the Obama "Cap and trade" scam which was devised by Gore and his partner Goldman Sachs. Yes, the same silent partner serving Obama.





Now Gore has two of his staff captured by the North Koreans, staff who call themselves journalists, who supposedly "accidently" wandered into the most secure Communist country left on earth. They were sentenced to 12 years in prison, rather harsh except North Korea has made it a practice to bully the Obama boys ever since the president promised to sit down and talk with them. Until now Obama said he would only talk to them if Russia, China and Japan among others were involved.





Today the White House sent in former president Bill Clinton on a private jet to negotiate for their release. I don't suppose there is any connection between Bill and Hillary, his wife and the Secretary of State, who has been getting run over by Obama's legion of foreign policy advisors. And it is also probably just coincidence that the journalists are Al Gore employees, his former VP.

So the White House pulls an end run on our allies cutting China, Russia and Japan out of the negotiations with North Korea with this sham all for political expediency to make Barack and Hillary look like they are actually accomplishing something in foreign policy which they are not. Al Gore, who has already made tens of millions off the administration, gets his employees saved at taxpayer expense and it will not be cheap.





Congress should investigate the circumstances of this action and at a minimum demand Gore pay the cost. Why in the world were his employees wandering into North Korea in the first place? Does this incredible action of sending a former US president into a hostile country to save a couple of people who violated the law of Korea in the first place have anything to do with the fact Iran has now captured three more stupid Americans who supposedly wandered into Iran last week and now it looks like both the bad boys, Iran and North Korea, have the Obama administration right where they want them.





Look for us to pay millions if not billions to these former enemies to get them to sit down and talk about all the wonderful ways we can work with and help countries dedicated to destroying our government. If this is the future direction of the Obama foreign policy then I think we need to re-examine our role in the world. Policeman or patsy, which are we?