Wednesday, March 25, 2009

According to Newt Gingrich:

The Joke’s On Us: Goldman Sachs Never Needed a Bailout

The latest revelation is perhaps the worst yet.

Remember how the Paulson-Geithner-Bernanke bailout of AIG was initially sold to the American people? We were told that failing to prop up the firm with taxpayer dollars would let loose a cascading failure of the entire banking system.

It turns out that this was never exactly true.

That’s right. Goldman Sachs Chief Financial Officer David Viniar announced last week that his firm never needed the taxpayers’ help after all. Goldman Sachs, it turns out, wouldn’t have failed if AIG had been allowed to fail.

The reason Viniar made the announcement was to divert the public’s attention from allegations that Goldman profited handsomely from the bailout of AIG.

But in trying to tamp down one scandal, Viniar has revealed another: The ground on which Paulson, Geithner and Bernanke sold the $170 billion AIG bailout was -- at least partially -- a lie.

The Top Four Beneficiaries of the AIG Bailout? Goldman Sachs and Three Foreign Banks.

So if we didn’t avert a banking crisis with the AIG bailout, what exactly have the taxpayers gotten for their $170 billion? Well, nothing so far. But here’s the list of the top four beneficiaries of the AIG bailout:

1. Goldman Sachs: $12.9 billion
2. Société Générale (France) $11.9 billion
3. Deutsche Bank (Germany) $11.8 billion
4. Barclays (United Kingdom) $8.5 billion

This is the real scandal of the AIG bailout.

Add the other TARP funds Goldman Sachs received to the AIG pass-through money and you get an astounding total of $23 billion from the taxpayers.

All for a company that now says it never needed help to begin with.

No comments:

Post a Comment