‘Retired’ Goldman Sachs Executive to Head Trading for Merrill Lynch
April 28th, 2008What we have here isn’t some, “unseen hand of the market.” It’s more like a bunch of tentacles.
Henry Paulson is the United States Treasury Secretary. He’s also a former CEO of Goldman Sachs.
Joshua Bolten is the current White House Chief of Staff. He served as Goldman’s executive director for legal and government affairs in between 1994 and 1999. His father worked for CIA.
Stephen Friedman served as chairman of President George W. Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board since December 2005. Friedman had worked for Goldman Sachs for 30 years. He is a current member of the Goldman Sachs Board of Directors.
Robert Rubin, U.S. Treasury Secretary during both Clinton terms, previously worked for Goldman Sachs from 1966 to 1992. From 1990 to 1992, Rubin served as Co-Chairman and Co-Senior Partner along with Stephen Friedman (see above). Rubin is now Director and Chairman of the Executive Committee of Citigroup, the largest company in the world (assetts in excess of $2 trillion). He also happens to be co-chairman of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations.
John Thain, the current CEO of Merrill Lynch, previously served as President, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer of Goldman Sachs.
Thomas Montag, recently hired by Thain to serve as the head of trading for Merrill Lynch, retired from Goldman Sachs after 22 years. His last position was head of sales and trading in the Americas.
Which other Goldman Sachs alumni should we be aware of?
Via: Bloomberg:
Merrill Lynch & Co. Chief Executive Officer John Thain, assembling his own management team after the departure of more than 20 executives, hired former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. colleague Thomas Montag to head trading worldwide.
Montag, 51, who retired last year as Goldman’s head of sales and trading in the Americas, will report directly to Thain, New York-based Merrill said today in a statement. He will start Aug. 4, company spokeswoman Jessica Oppenheim said.
Merrill’s management ranks have thinned since Thain, 52, took over as CEO on Dec. 1, as executives promoted under former CEO Stan O’Neal stepped down or were forced out. Two weeks ago, Thain said that “filling out the senior management team” was his top strategic priority in the U.S.
Montag, who worked at New York-based Goldman for 22 years, takes over Merrill’s trading business after more than $30 billion of writedowns on subprime mortgages and bonds saddled the 84-year-old firm with record losses and led to O’Neal’s ouster.
Thain, who worked at Goldman for 25 years, overlapped with Montag until 2004, when Thain left to become CEO of the New York Stock Exchange. Thain had confirmed as far back as January that he was trying to recruit Montag.
As I noted to my brother as I sent him a link to this post, your little “who’s who” at the top is yet another great punchline to the joke, “ours is a government of, by, and for the People”.
I think we should give this clan of shiesters a name. Can’t be Bildenberg, Council of Foreign Relations, Condi’s children, etc.
I think it should be “Big Bro’s Ho’s.”
This title would pretty well cover the efforts of the Plunge Protection Team, the Gold Price Suppression Team, the suppression of Truth in the US Economy Scheme (I just made that up – that would cover the US Federal Reserve), the truth in lending scheme (har har har), i could go on but must go to sleep.
I’m sure the Big Bro Ho’s are counting on people like me to just going to sleep. Not worrying about policies being formulated at the top of the monetary food chain.
Ya, well, that’s why I call them Ho’s. They expect stupid is as stupid does.
I don’t have the answer but this cannot stand.
Enough of this bullshit.
Banking and investments are a relatively simple equation:
assets= liabilies+equity
You can fink and frank any side of the equation by hook or crook, but it all boils down to that one basic equation.
The Big Bro Ho’s can dance and sing all they want to around that perfected equation, and they will still be held accountable.
The Big Bro Ho’s are also hoping that you’ll are totally sleep deprived like me, and don’t know your debits from your credits on a balance sheet.
The US is bankrupt. I don’t care how many more “generals” (like Petreuas) that you put on teams to build confidence otherwise.
Just more propoganda crapola to “soothe” the massses, although 9 out of 10 folk don’t have a clue.
I’m not putting the clueless down.
Its going to crash for the poor and middle class with or without their knowledge or awareness.
The Big Bro Ho’s might escape with what? Their asses attached to their behinds?
If I were a member of the big bro ho I would have left the planet already on a trip to Mars.
These people are nuts to think they can escape the guillotine.
Let them eat cake was something dreamed up a few centuries ago. These Big Bro Ho’s ought to brush up on their history.
Another thing I just thought of.
IF things are moving against the time tested model of assets=liabilities+equity, the big bro ho’s are devising a new equation of accounting.
I don’t know what the equation of accounting was under communism, but certainly, accounting on the books appears to be moving towards facist, corporatist accounting.
What’s the new equation?
Assets = liabilities+ equity + ghost entity assets+ whatever we dream of next?
Hah.
Wonder how all the Arthur Anderson people who got creamed by Enron feel about this new “accounting” model?
Stay the eff away from stocks. Christ have mercy on those holding paper equities.
HOld onto your balls (no deferral to chix) in gold and silver and land.
I wonder if you are getting tired of writing about this stuff. Sure it was interesting when you were seeing things that were not obvious to the normal people. It is kind of fun (in a masochistic way) to be ridiculed by people who are clueless about what is happening under their noses. But now that everything (well almost everything) you have been talking about is happening right now in headlines in mainstream media what is the fun of it now. I have been sending messages of alarm to my brother for years and was slapped around for being alarmist and possibly slightly nutty. Now that he is totally on board and is nervous and concerned about what is happening I don’t do that anymore. Frankly I am concerned that I am going to scare him too much. He is probably not going to be able to do anything about it anyway. He is up to his eyeballs in debt just like everyone else. So what is so fun in kicking the man when he is down. Why do we warn people who can’t do anything about it? Or they can but they won’t.
“If you are going to tell people the truth you better make them laugh or they will kill you.”
George Bernard Shaw
Alumni member David M. Leuschen needs to be remembered for his work in divesting Montana of their energy self sufficiency. More on David and all the king’s men can be viewed here;
http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson.php?id=308&name=Goldman-&-Sachs