And, the hubris, corruption and utter stupidity of its CEO is leading the company right down the path of death. Keep paying out those bonuses. At some point in the future, Lloyd is going to realize he should have kept that cash as retained earnings to deal with his impending crisis.

It’s ironic that Goldman was supposedly telling clients to bet against California. I, for one, bet California wins the race between the two entities. California doesn’t need Wall Street to recover its economy. Everything California needs is within its borders. Including an ability to raise capital without Wall Street. And, you can bet when all of the states figure this out, they will remember the arrogance and corruption on Wall Street that cost the state’s people so dearly.

Wall Street can kiss its ass good bye.

The US gov’t was set up with checks and balances between the three main branches of gov’t. The Founding Fathers (esp. Thomas Jefferson) were aware of the dark side of private banks, and fiat currencies, and were strongly opposed to both. Article 1, section 8 of the US Constitution gives Congress power to “coin money, and regulate the value thereof.” No one else.

Following the Great Depression, aka GS Bubble 1, which soon followed the creation of the Fed, there were many good regulations imposed on Wall St. in order to help prevent GD-type events from re-occurring (or at least minimize their scope, and magnitude), and they largely functioned as planned.

We now find ourselves in the midst of Credit Recession II, which is the result of addition of the Fed, removal of the aforementioned regulations, and the Revolving Door policy/all-too-cozy relationships between our gov’t, and private industry (i.e.: Wall St./GS).

Basically the firewall between Wall St., and gov’t has been torn down, to the detriment of almost all Americans. Since we KNOW what the cause is, and the cure is simple, why can’t we muster enough political will to do it?

According to Taibbi, each time GS was repremanded for fraud, etc., the penalty was way too lenient – read slap on the wrist. It seems to me that when fraud/illegal activity is proved in a court of law, ALL profits should be forfeit – using same standards for illegal drug trafficking, for example. There are no teeth in the regulations, penalties are to weak. Lax regulation, and enforcement. It’s deja vu all over again.

We may be on our last bubble (Taibbi’s bubble #6) -I say this as now that taxpayer funds are in play in the current bubble (#5 – Rigging the Bailout), and so there’s really nothing left for GS to go after in the US. We’ve now been sucked dry. Kind of reminds me of “Star Trek – The Next Generation” and The Borg who went around the known universe absorbing civilizations at will in amoeba-like fashion. Look out world, you’re next. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

BTW, since this is a credit recession (vs. inventory), AND the bad debts have not been written down/defaulted – think toxic paper, level 3 assets, etc. – but have rather been simply transferred to the Fed’s (taxpayer’s) balance sheet, how do we expect to start growing again? Japan’s lost decade, here we come, I think.

And the the BS Obama administration is allowing it to happen.

What no one seems willing to admit is they are killing the NYSE.

Maybe that’s what they want. Everyone to move to offshore markets.

What computer programs are going to trade back and forth is a zero sum game? Oops the feds are providing liquidity.

This is some kind of sick. Kind of like watching lions chase christians around the coliseum.

This will INCREASE transparency, not decrease it. it’s a simple utilization of technology to improve accuracy.

“quickly loses 3 quarters of blood, the remaining two quarters will” – might be looking for “quarts”

Also, the paragraph starting with “One second: by using Goldman 360 a client voluntarily…” I don’t think was supposed to be in a quote block.