This article came out originally nearly two years ago, although I never did get around to publishing it, for some reason.
Still, I think that it serves as a glaring example of the downright irresponsibility of major corporate players in this country, and in western society more generally.
Goldman Sachs, a name that nowadays draws similar cringes from people as the mention of Dick Cheney's name, admitted to defrauding people, even though it took them many, many years to do so (and long after the case against them was proven before the public eye).
The only real shocking thing in this story is that Goldman Sachs actually finally admitted to some measure of wrongdoing, which they traditionally refused to do in the past.
Otherwise, what could possibly be surprising about a story in which one of the biggest banks out there - and one as synonymous with wrongdoing as Goldman Sachs tends to be, specifically - would be guilty of something so clearly unethical and reprehensible like this? After all, this has been the de facto reality for a very long time now. The only thing that maybe has changed is that more and more people seem to be growing aware of this kind of stuff these days.
But if anyone who was old enough to remember the financial crisis of 2007-08 remains generally unaware of the wrongdoing and acts of bad faith quite regularly practiced by Goldman Sachs, and of course other big banking institutions, during those days, than it is a willful, and perhaps overly convenient, ignorance. There were a couple of guys that I know who worked for Goldman Sachs, and they still proudly announced their status as employees even years later, despite the fact that the company that they worked for was getting tons of money from basically outright cheating other people, much like the Bank of America recently announced that it was doing the same thing by charging people with too little in their accounts more, specifically because they do not have much money. Just another way of fleecing those with little income, and pushing them out of the scene as much as possible. In turn, we as consumers have to answer by refusing to do business with the likes of untrustworthy banking institutions, such as Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. We can no longer pretend to have some all too convenient ignorance of the undeniable facts that still strongly suggest that the people on top at those institution clearly favor the idea of getting personally rich at the expense of everyone underneath them, and giving them our business is basically tantamount to giving them the green light to continue their bad behavior.
This really needs to end. These practices are unacceptable, and actively responsible for greatly widening the economic gap in this country (and probably others, by now, as well).
So, I guess that it is time to wrap this up by trying to remind everyone out there, to the extent possible, not to do business with companies like this, who make such a point of making things worse for most of us than it already is. If you hsve not caught on yet, this is not be accident, but by design.
Goldman Sachs Finally Admits it Defrauded Investors During the Financial Crisis by Lucinda Shen, April 11, 2016;
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