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Goldman Sachs is making news again, though it’s doing its damndest to keep it quiet and to suppress any outbreak of political outrage from either the public or Washington.
Goldman keeps striving to give greed a bad name. It was a major player in designing the taxpayer bailout of Wall Street, getting $10 billion for itself and untold billions more in backdoor subsidies from the Federal Reserve. You might recall that the public rationale for this governmental rescue of private banks was that they would then have the capital to invest in job creating enterprises. However, they took the money and ran, leaving America’s workaday families mired in a jobless swamp with no relief in sight. Meanwhile, Goldman quickly returned to paying outlandish, multimillion-dollar bonuses to its top mucky-mucks.
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Now, to add insult and even more injury to the damage it has done to our economy, the banking giant has quietly informed about 1,000 of its U.S. employees that their jobs are being shifted to Singapore, where cheaper bank employees are available. This stiffing of America comes at a time when Goldman is piling up record profits, including $2.7 billion it raked in during just the first three months of this year. Perhaps the bank needs extra money to pay bigger executive bonuses.
Goldman has, however, made one new American hire as part of its U.S. job retrenchment plan. Former Republican Sen. Judd Gregg has joined the Good Ship Goldman as an “international advisor.” With 26 years in Congress, Gregg can help steer the bank through any political tempest stirred up by Goldman’s latest act of greed. Presumably, he’ll be able to rally his old GOP colleagues in the senate. After all, they voted unanimously last year to save a tax break that helps corporations shift American jobs overseas.
“After Taking A $10 Billion Bailout, Goldman Sachs Announces It Will Outsource 1,000 Jobs To Singapore,” www.thinkprogress.org, June 28, 2011.