Pricking Goldman's bubble pricks
Monday, Jul. 6 2009 @ 8:24AM
This is the story of a vampire squid that won't die.
Matt Taibbi's recent "The Great American Bubble Machine" in Rolling Stone conjured up the best image of Goldman Sachs:
The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.
Goldman's best strategy would have been to ignore Taibbi's screed. But Stephen Foley pointed out in the Independent (U.K.) this weekend that Taibbi's screed has "Goldman's tentacles all a-twitching with fury." (Also see the Telegraph (U.K.)'s "Rolling Stone gathers no readers at Goldman Sachs.")
Maybe the reason that Goldman just couldn't ignore Taibbi's piece is that he wasn't just talking about Goldman's past; he's also got a sharp, intriguing take on Goldman's future plundering:
[I]nstead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits -- a booming trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.
