5
Guess who?
A large company and a billionaire investor are reportedly launching an initiative to help small businesses across the country. I'll give you one guess who I'm talking about...
Do the initials GS and WB ring a bell?
Bloomberg says Goldman Sachs and Warren Buffett are teaming up to help 10,000 small businesses. That help would include money and business counseling. From the article:
Goldman Sachs, the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, is trying to dispel criticism from lawmakers and pundits who portray the company as the greedy face of a financial industry whose excessive risk-taking fueled the credit crisis. Unlike competitors that make home loans and provide small business credit lines, more than 90 percent of Goldman Sachs's pretax earnings this year came from trading and principal investments.
Perhaps you put Buffett and GS into separate categories, but Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway, is the largest shareholder of Goldman Sachs.
Bloomberg says Goldman has put a bug in the president's ear that it will be coming to the rescue of small biz, which is supposedly one of Obama's top economic priorities.
You can't look a gift horse - er, vampire squid - in the mouth, can you?
Meh. Like the article says, they're only doing it because of the criticism that they got help and small businesses didin't and these super rich interests need small business voters to elect republicans and enable them to keep doing what they're doing in Congress.
I suppose Warren needs more businesses to buy, too.
Jonathan, my own opinion is that it's a little of both. I have no doubt there is something to it. I talked to Taibbi about it, and he assured me it was a well-researched piece. I believe him. I also think his editors wanted to sell magazines, and the article might've been hopped up a bit.
The rich need us. The rich need us because the rich have always needed slaves to buy their products and pay their rent. The rich claim they are smarter than us. We need to show the rich that we can stop their greedy machine at any time we choose. It will not come soon enough, but that day will come. The rich know this and will play the game they always have.....
Goldman and Buffet are businessmen and you can bet they've already calcualted their profits from this move.
They'll spend a few hundred million to help a few small businesses but they'll use that leverage then to keep or change regulations that will make them 10s of billions.
