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Lloyd Blankfein's vortex of greed sucks everything into its wake
With the “fiscal cliff” negotiations underway, Wall Street CEOs have decided now is the perfect time for some concern trolling. They are using the deficit issue as an excuse to push for cutting the social safety net while also reforming (i.e. lowering) the corporate tax rate. From their perspective the smaller the government, the less likely their taxes will be increased.
The latest example is Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein calling for Social Security and Medicare spending to be “contained.” From CBS:
[Scott] PELLEY: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid?
BLANKFEIN: You can look at history of these things, and Social Security wasn’t devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career. … So there will be things that, you know, the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised. But in general, entitlements have to be slowed down and contained.
Looking at where Wall Street is actually putting its money instead of its mouth tells a very different story. Long term Treasury rates are historically low. Investors are practically paying the United States government to keep their money safe. The actual market seems completely unconcerned about our deficit at this point.
Given that our economic growth rate is still extremely slow, our unemployment levels are high, poverty is increasing among many groups and our borrowing cost are so low this an idiotic time to focus on reducing the deficit and cutting benefits.
Photo by Fortune Live Media under Creative Commons license
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Someone needs to donate that woman a toothbrush. Gross.
Greed in a suit telling people who actually work how they won’t be having a ‘nice’ retirement.
I don’t seem to remember Lloyd saying that we couldn’t afford to make AIGs credit default swaps good.
Interruption of blog aplogies but Isreal agrees to cease fire:
Full Text: Israel-Hamas Peace Agreement
Agreement of Understanding For a Ceasefire in the Gaza Strip
1: (no title given for this section)
A. Israel should stop all hostilities in the Gaza Strip land, sea and air including incursions and targeting of individuals.
B. All Palestinian factions shall stop all hostilities from the Gaza Strip against Israel including rocket attacks and all attacks along the border.
C. Opening the crossings and facilitating the movements of people and transfer of goods and refraining from restricting residents’ free movements and targeting residents in border areas and procedures of implementation shall be dealt with after 24 hours from the start of the ceasefire.
D. Other matters as may be requested shall be addressed.
2: Implementation mechanisms:
A. Setting up the zero hour for the ceasefire understanding to enter into effect.
B. Egypt shall receive assurances from each party that the party commits to what was agreed upon.
C. Each party shall commit itself not to perform any acts that would breach this understanding. In case of any observations Egypt as the sponsor of this understanding shall be informed to follow up. (Reporting by Marwa Awad; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Mr. Blankmind doesn’t even know how many years most folks work – 18 to 67 – which is 51 years, not 25. And if they live another 30 in retirement – that’s 97, which is the average age of a NY scum-sucking vampire, not a human being.
I can see why Wall Street needed bailouts with math genius types like Mitt and Lloyd, or is that Twit and Toad. Funny how number crunching is no longer a requirement for financiers – just BS, like Balls-Sampson, the mighty ancient dicks of austerity.
I started working part time and paying into social security at 16. I am 57 and will probably not retire until I am at least 67. And then only because I work for the state and will actually get a pension. That is twice what Mr. Blankfein thinks the average worker puts in. I am not unusual. everyone I ever met works at least 50 years. My mother just retired last year at age 80. And not because she loved working so much. She could not live on Social Security. She needed the money to buy additional health insurance. She and my disabled brother live on Social Security, and are stuck supporting his son and two grandchildren on that because he lost his job. Fuck Mr. Blankfein. He is a moron who has no notion of what the real world is like.
Well at least Pelley caught it, didn’t he?
Well no. The subsequent exchange was:
PELLEY: Because we can’t afford them going forward?
BLANKFEIN: Because we can’t afford them.
Scott Cameron Pelley is an American television journalist who is currently anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News and a correspondent for the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes.
Bright guy, that Scott Cameron Pelley. Not.
Robespierre! Oh Robespierre! Where art thou!?
Yeah some of Loyd’s benefits have to be changed. I’m all for a fifty percent tax on these assholes to “fix” our deficit. I bet then they will say ” deficits are unimportant”.
What needs to be “contained” is Wall Street Financial Terrorists in maximum security prisons for the rest of their lives.
These Wall Street Financial Terrorists think they’ve gotten away with everything.
They are very wrong.
“Math is hard”
When the economy went from entrepreneurial to monopoly capitalism ,our masters went from expansion to extraction ,i.e.,capital accumulation to differential accumulation .From industry to business ,from making to taking . and hence from generating wealth to extraction of wealth via juice-loan leverage of debt -driven economics.As much as we hear about the costs of labor ,regulation and government ,the monopolist hides the real cost toward which hate is geared ,competition .Since the free-market fundamentalism behind which monopolists form a command economy aggrandizes competition ,this element is unremarked .
Debt is the oxygen of banksters ,and there is no historical exception to the maxim of debt harvests feudalism .If Blankein is viewed as anything other than a slave trader and a genocidist ,then money isn’t being followed . This mooch wouldn’t last a day without trillions in welfare alms .and unlike the populace ,he knows the private sector is a fiction that operates in a false dichotomy to protect privately- owned property .This man is the face of class warfare ,and if you are afraid of these financial terrorists ,then don’t pretend to be a victim as indentured servitude impoverishes us all ,via austerity ,policee-state liberticide ,and turning our taxes into privatized revenue streams .
This fuck-brain doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. I’m getting fed up with CBS, my traditional network news-feed, and their horseshit, softball, Village Idiot questions. Pelley and his dip-shit cohorts repeatedly fail to know basic facts or ask pointed questions.They relentlessly hype the Fiscal Speed-Bump, like it’s some looming chasm that is going eat everyone and everything. Reminds me of The Nothingness on the kids movie ‘The Never-ending Story’. Get a clue, for crying out loud, schmucks.
Cuts to SS and Medicare out the mouth of a man who leeches from the Fed and taxpayers. The fact that this crook says anything in public is too much for me to take….this SOB belongs in jail but since his buddy Obama is too chicken shit to do anything we have to hear from this bastard
Doesn’t Lloyd Blankfein need to be contained? Like in a prison cell?
As the CEO for Goldmine Sacks, it goes without saying.
Thanks, Jon. I was only half-listening to the news last night (I was in the kitchen making dinner) so I didn’t catch the identity of the rich bozo telling Scott Pelley to set us all out on ice floes.
The fiscal cliff is a Wall St. construct to ,as always ,whip the sheepies into a state of hysterical infantilism to negotiate before Bush’s tax-evasion welfare expires on the mooch-elites .The problem is not the masses being duped into a sense of urgency,but instead ,a missing 10% who have the intelligence to counter the ”rise above” ilk .
Jon,
You write, “Long term Treasury rates are historically low. Investors are practically paying the United States government to keep their money safe.” But shouldn’t you give the standard reply to this argument? I don’t want to be mean about it, but you really should know this. Namely that US bonds are the least ugly place to put one’s money. This point is more or less conventional wisdom.
Of course Blankfein remains delusional in more ways than one. When he says, “Social Security wasn’t devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career”, the natural reply is that the US wasn’t devised to be a plutocracy.
Sorry Eblair but the US was devised to be a plutocracy!