My Late Night Visits from the Ghosts of Financial Outrages Past, Present, and Future
With my younger daughter away at Coachella (which I'm told has something to do with music), I was looking forward to a quiet night in, curled up in bed with my laptop and a few dozen pieces on the financial crisis I'd either bookmarked during the week or cut out from newspapers and magazines (yes, I still read them). But instead of reading a few and nodding off to sleep, I ended up staying up most of the night, getting more and more outraged with each article I read. In the end, I probably wound up getting less sleep than my music-festival-rocking daughter.
Reading the business section these days is not for the faint of heart -- or those hoping to drift off to sleep. Instead, you end up like Scrooge, visited by the ghosts of outrages past, present, and future.
As a public service (I toss and turn all night, so you don't have to) -- and also to make sure you haven't succumbed to outrage fatigue -- I've decided to distill some of the more infuriating lowlights from the last week. Warning: If you are reading this after 10 p.m., you might want to hold off until morning.
Outrage #1:
Goldman Sachs became profitable again -- by pioneering a new round of accounting tricks. In its report on the first quarter of 2009, Goldman claimed a profit of $1.8 billion. How did the banking giant do it? By magically making December disappear. In September, as the financial crisis worsened and pressure from the Fed mounted, Goldman switched from being an investment bank to a traditional bank holding company. As part of that, it had to change its fiscal year -- it used to end in November, now it ends at the close of the calendar year. That meant Goldman's latest report didn't include December -- a month in which the bank lost more than $1 billion. As reported by Floyd Norris, this billion-dollar tidbit was not mentioned in the text of the company's press release about its "profitable" first quarter -- it was buried deep inside the tables that accompanied the release.
1 opmerking:
Volgens CRS, de Congressional Research Service, kostten alle grote Amerikaanse oorlogen (inclusief de Amerikaanse Revolutie, de oorlog van 1812, de Amerikaanse Burgeroorlog, de Spaans-Amerikaanse oorlog, Eerste Wereldoorlog, Tweede Wereldoorlog, Korea, Vietnam, Irak, Afghanistan, Invasie van Panama, de Kosovo Oorlog, vele kleinere conflicten, en ook inclusief de Marshall 'Hulp', de New Deal en alle maanreizen) in totaal $7.5 biljoen (met inflatiecorrectie).
De Amerikaanse bailout kost 8.5 biljoen dollar.
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