The same day President Obama got his watered down Financial Reform bill through Congress his Administration let the top Wall Street contributor to his campaign, bad boy Goldman Sachs, off the hook with a paltry settlement for financial misconduct to the surprise of Wall Street watchers.
While claiming victory with the financial regulations, it might prove bittersweet to the Administration since Goldman, whose reckless investing many believe nearly brought down the economy, was given a paltry fine of $550 million for stock fraud and lying to investors.
The total fine for Goldman, while not admitting guilt, was half of what the street expected and amounted to just 15 days profit at Wall Street's most profitable bad boy. Since the American public lost trillions of dollars because of this and other actions by Goldman and others it was sorry testament to the enforcement capability of the Administration as they failed to make Goldman an example of Wall Street excess.
To add insult to injury for the American public, the terms of the settlement which allowed Goldman to pay the fine but plea no contest, thus avoid pleading guilty, also allows Goldman to write off the entire cost of the fine, all $550 million, as a business expense thus gaining a huge tax windfall for defrauding investors. Some punishment.
The Obama administration already let Goldman recover 100% of their derivative exposure, which did bring down the economy, when Goldman received $12.9 billion, yes billion, from the federal money going to AIG. In addition Goldman was granted access to discounted Fed funds thus insuring they would make billions of dollars in profits, and spend billions of dollars on executive bonuses, even though their actions helped cause the world economic collapse.
It is clear the Democrats are incapable of launching any kind of reasonable investigation of Goldman with all the former Goldman employees working for the Obama administration, so maybe a Republican victory in the midterm elections could finally result in unveiling the deep, dark secrets of the relationship between Barack Obama and Goldman Sachs.
No answers have ever been offered to questions like the role Goldman played in Obama's 2006 Illinois Senate race when Obama was an underdog and his opponents in the democratic primary and the general election both withdrew from the campaign at the last minute. There are claims one sold his business to Goldman and the other worked for Goldman.
Goldman secretly met with Obama in Chicago before the presidential campaign and became his largest Wall Street contributor as well as bundler for many millions more in contributions. They also sponsored a secret debate in NYC for Obama with Tom Brokaw as moderator to prep him for debating Hillary Clinton in the primary.
Was there any coincidence that the Goldman settlement came the same day as the new financial regulations were approved to crack down on Wall Street? Of course the new regulations are not effective until Obama signs them and he won't do that until next week.
How did Goldman manage to do what they did and only get a slight slap on the wrist when it cost the taxpayers trillions of dollars in losses? Was there any discussion about Goldman between Obama and Warren Buffett, one of the largest stockholders in Goldman, when they met privately the day the settlement was announced.
If the Democrat leaders in Congress are going to ignore the suspicious activity between Goldman and Obama and his campaign, not to mention their influence on his staff which has benefitted Goldman to the tune of billions of dollars since Obama got elected, then what value is any financial reform?
When the truth about what transpired comes out it may indeed be a bittersweet victory for the administration for how can they claim they have cracked down on Wall Street when they just allowed their biggest Wall Street campaign contributor to raid the public treasury for billions of dollars while costing Main Street trillions of dollars in losses?
People should demand Congress rip the veil off of any misconduct that might have taken place between the Obama campaign and Goldman, the billion dollar beneficiary of the Obama Wall Street crackdown.
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