Maureen Dowd: throw today's (Jewish) bankers out of the temple
P. Schmeckelstein
Jesus would throw today's bankers out of the temple
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The Great Vampire Squid has gotten religion.
In an interview with The Sunday Times of London, the cocky chief of Goldman
Sachs said he understands that a lot of people are "mad and bent out of
shape" at blood-sucking banks.
"I know I could slit my wrists and people would cheer," CEO Lloyd Blankfein
told reporter John Arlidge.
But the little people who are boiling simply don't understand. And Rolling
Stone's Matt Taibbi, who unforgettably labeled Goldman "a great vampire
squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood
funnel into anything that smells like money," doesn't understand.
Banks, Mr. Blankfein explained, are really serving the greater good.
"We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital," he said.
"Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have
jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It's a virtuous cycle. We have
a social purpose."
When Mr. Arlidge asked whether it's possible to make too much money, whether
Goldman will ignore the people howling at the moon with rage and go on
raking it in, getting richer than God, Mr. Blankfein grinned impishly and
said he was "doing God's work."
Whether he knows it, he's referring back to The Protestant Ethic and The
Spirit of Capitalism -- except, of course, the Calvinists would have been
outraged by the banks' vicious -- not virtuous -- cycle of greed and
concupiscence.
Mr. Blankfein's trickle-down catechism isn't working. Now we have two
economies. We have recovering banks while we have 10-plus percent
unemployment and 17.5 percent underemployment. The gross thing about the
Wall Street of the last decade is how much its success was not shared with
society.
Goldmine Sachs, as it's known, is out for Goldmine Sachs.
As many Americans continue to struggle, Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan
Chase, banks that took government bailout money after throwing the entire
world into crisis, have said they will dish out $30 billion in bonuses -- up
60 percent from last year.
The saying used to be, whatever happens, the lawyers win. Now, it's whatever
happens, the bankers win.
Under pressure from regulators, who were trying to ensure that long-term
performance was rewarded, the banks agreed to award more in stock, deferring
cash payments.
But as The New York Times reported this week, the Goldman executives who got
stock options instead of bonuses last year, at market lows, got a
windfall -- so it had nothing to do with bank employees' performance.
"The company gave its general counsel, for example, 104,868 stock options
and 14,117 shares in December, when the bank's stock was around $78," Louise
Story wrote for the Times. "Now the bank's shares have more than doubled in
value, making that stock and option award worth nearly $12 million."
As one former Goldman banker told Mr. Arlidge, the culture there is
"completely money-obsessed. ... There's always room -- need -- for more. If
you are not getting a bigger house or a bigger boat, you're falling behind.
It's an addiction."
It's an addiction that Washington has done little to quell. President Barack
Obama has not been strong on the issue, and Timothy Geithner coddles the
wanton bankers whenever they freak out that they might not be able to put in
their new pools next summer.
The bankers try to dismiss calls for regulation as populist ravings, but the
insane inequity of it cannot be dismissed.
No sooner had Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd announced his
plan to overhaul financial regulation Tuesday than compensation experts
declared it toothless. The banks and their lobbyists wheedled concession
after concession out of Washington and knocked down proposed inhibition
after inhibition. Now the banks are laughing all the way to the bank.
"Saturday Night Live" was tougher on Goldman Sachs than the government,
giving the firm flak about commandeering 200 doses of the swine flu
vaccine -- the same amount as Lenox Hill Hospital got -- while so many
at-risk Americans wait.
"Can you not read how mad people are at you?" demanded Amy Poehler. "When
most people saw the headline 'Goldman Sachs Gets Swine Flu Vaccine' they
were superhappy until they saw the word 'vaccine.' "
Seth Meyers chimed in: "Also, Centers for Disease Control, you sent the
vaccine to Wall Street before schools and hospitals? Really!?! Were you
worried the swine flu might spread to the Hamptons and St. Barts? These are
the least contagious people in the world. They don't even touch their own
car-door handles."
And as far as doing God's work, I think the bankers who took government
money and then gave out obscene bonuses are the same self-interested sorts
Jesus threw out of the temple.
Maureen Dowd is a syndicated columnist for The New York Times.
Read more: http://postgazette.com/pg/09316/1012785-109.stm#ixzz0WrmKd0Ka
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Rabbi Pinky Schmeckelstein
Upon receiving Smicha, Rabbi Schmeckelstein taught high school and
rabbinical students the intricacies of Talmudic exegesis, Jewish philosophy,
and family purity. After twenty years, Rabbi Schmeckelstein took a
Sabbatical to "find himself," during which he studied law, Indian
spiritualism, pastry cooking, sports medicine, and metallurgy. He
subsequently established his own rabbinical institute, Yeshivas Chipass
Emmess ("Search for the Truth") with the goal of combining the beauty of
Torah and Jewish culture with the harsh realities of a cynical, cruel world.
Rabbi Schmeckelstein is often happily married and has countless children and
grandchildren. His hobbies include berating his frigid wife, obsessing about
Niddah, bad-mouthing the Triangle K, collecting miniature shtenders, and day
trading.