cohn, gary gs

<div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium; letter-spacing: normal;"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium; letter-spacing: normal;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">sparked by 11 21 kyle BS parasite --> maker/taker --> job creator double god term?</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">god literally made something from nothing // entrepreneur ayn rand hero&nbsp; iron man musk</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>aha the bizMAN</b>&nbsp;is rationale and clear-eyed vs hysterical alarmists; relies on numbers and reason; a biz is inefficient, and our ceo/prez will balance out budget/checkbook, eliminate waste fraud and abuse so the taxcuts will pay for themselves by magic, provide only minimal important service like billion$ jet fighters and cut those lazy POC from food stanps so they can be independent/ producers not takers.</font></div><div>
</div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ayn rand agenda 21 BS biggest damage?</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ayn /maggie say no society--> djt no community of nations:</font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">tisch maine timeline:</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2017 (June)</font></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump announces that the United States will<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;withdraw from the Paris Climate</span></font></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Agreement</font></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><b>Stephen Bannon and the anti-globalist,</b>&nbsp;</span>climate denying contingent of White House advisors</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">trump the personal entreaties of Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Pope Francis<b>, Ivanka Trump, Rex</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Tillerson,</b>&nbsp;European Union heads of state and many others. Oblivious to the fact that the</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">emissions standards under the Agreement are voluntary, subject to revision, and entail no</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">penalties for noncompliance, the P</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">resident calls the deal “draconian,” imposing unfair standards</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">on American companies and employees. “At what point does America get demeaned? At what</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">point do they start laughing at us as a country?” Trump says. “We don’t want other leaders and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">other countries laughing at us anymore. And they won’t be.”</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The New York Times observes that</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Mr. Trump’s decision to abandon the agreement for environmental action signed by 195 nations</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">is a remarkable rebuke to heads of state, climate activists, corporate executives and members of</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the president’s own staff, who all failed to change his mind with an intense, last-minute lobbying</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">blitz. The Paris agreement was intended to bind the world community into battling rising</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">temperatures in concert, and the departure of the Earth’s second-largest polluter is a major</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">blow,”* and its editorial board calls the withdrawal “disgraceful.”<b>&nbsp;Wall Street Journal</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">headlines declare: “U.S. Climate Pivot Puts a Reluctant China in Driver’s Seat: Trump’s</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">withdrawal from Paris accord gives China a new opening to exert sway on a big global issue” </font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some find a May 30 op/ed in the Wall Street Journal by presidential advisor<b>s H. R. McMaster</b></font></span></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">and </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">Gary Cohn</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> as illuminating on the withdrawal decision in: “The president embarked on his</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">first foreign trip with a cleareyed outlook that the</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">&nbsp;world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena</b></font></div><div><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage.”</font></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Writes&nbsp;<b>David Brooks in The New York Times: “That sentence is the epitome of the Trump project.</b></font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It asserts that selfishness is the sole driver of human affairs</span>.</b>”&nbsp;</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Al Gore’s statement on the&nbsp;</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">withdrawal declares that “Removing the United States from the Paris Agreement is a reckless and</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">indefensible action. It undermines America’s standing in the world and threatens to damage</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">humanity’s ability to solve the climate crisis in time. But make no mistake: if President Trump</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">won’t lead, the American people will. Civic leaders, mayors, governors, CEOs, investors and the</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">majority of the business community will take up this challenge. We are in the middle of a clean</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">energy revolution that no single person or group can stop. President Trump’s decision is</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">profoundly in conflict with what the majority of Americans want from our president; but no</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">matter what he does, we will ensure that our inevitable transition to a clean energy economy</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">continues.”&nbsp;</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers states that “We may have our</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">first post-rational president,” and that “It is possible that last week will be remembered as a</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">hinge in history — a moment when the United States and the world started moving on a</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">path away from the peace, prosperity and stability that have defined the past 75</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">years.”</span>&nbsp;<b>The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication reports that US voters favor</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">staying in the Paris Agreement by a margin of 5 to 1, and that half of Trump voters support staying</font></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>in, with fewer than 3 in 10 saying we should not stay in</b>.* The formal process of</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">withdrawal will likely take four years, and not be final until after the 2020 presidential election.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[see 2015 (December)]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael Shear, “Trump Will Withdraw U.S. From Paris Climate Agreement,” New York Times, June 1, 2017,</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/climate/trump-paris-climate-agreement.html</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Editorial Board, “Our Disgraceful Exit From the Paris Accord,” New York Times, June 1, 2017,</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/trump-paris-climate-change-agreement.html</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brian Spegele and Te-Ping Chen, “U.S. Climate Pivot Puts a Reluctant China in Driver’s Seat,” Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2017,</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-climate-pivot-puts-a-reluctant-china-in-drivers-seat-1496380249</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David Brooks, “Donald Trump Poisons the World,” New York Times, June 2, 2017,</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/opinion/donald-trump-poisons-the-world.html</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Climate Reality Project, “Statement by Former Vice President Al Gore on Today’s Decision by the Trump Administration</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">to Withdraw from the Paris Agreement,” June 1, 2017, https://www.climaterealityproject.org/press/statement-al-gore-us-commitmentparis-agreement</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lawrence Summers, “After 75 years of progress, was last week a hinge in history?” Washington Post, June 4, 2017,</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/after-75-years-of-progress-was-last-week-a-hinge-in-history/2017/06/04/2085b91e-47cf11e7-bcde-624ad94170ab_story.html?utm_term=.7ccf9ee984ec</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jennifer Marlon, Eric Fine, and Anthony Keiserowtiz, “Majorities of Americans in Every State Support Participation in the</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paris Agreement,” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, May 8, 2017,</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/paris_agreement_by_state/</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div></div></div></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" /><p class="canvas-atom canvas-text Mb(1.0em) Mb(0)--sm Mt(0.8em)--sm" type="text" content="(Bloomberg) -- Gary Cohn, the former head of President Donald Trump’s National Economic Council who left after losing a battle over steel tariffs, said he tried to sell Trump on solar jobs -- and seemingly failed as the administration eventually imposed tariffs on the industry." data-reactid="22" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" normal="normal" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Gary Cohn, the former head of President Donald Trump’s National Economic Council who left after losing a battle over steel tariffs, said he tried to sell Trump on solar jobs -- and seemingly failed as the administration eventually imposed tariffs on the industry.</font></font></font></font></p><p class="canvas-atom canvas-text Mb(1.0em) Mb(0)--sm Mt(0.8em)--sm" type="text" content="Cohn said in an interview with the Freakonomics podcast that he “vividly” remembers having a conversation with the president comparing the less than 50,000 coal-mining jobs with more than 350,000 solar-panel installers, according to a transcript released late Wednesday." data-reactid="23" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" normal="normal" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><b>Cohn said in an interview with the Freakonomics podcast that he “vividly” remembers having a conversation with the president comparing the less than 50,000 coal-mining jobs with more than 350,000 solar-panel installers, according to a transcript released late Wednesday.</b></p><p class="canvas-atom canvas-text Mb(1.0em) Mb(0)--sm Mt(0.8em)--sm" type="text" content="“And by the way, 10 years ago, we had no solar-panels installers,” Cohn said on the podcast. “It’s an industry that’s going to continue to grow. And we have to recognize where this country is going, not where this country has been.”" data-reactid="24" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" normal="normal" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">“And by the way, 10 years ago, we had no solar-panels installers,” Cohn said on the podcast. “It’s an industry that’s going to continue to grow. And we have to recognize where this country is going, not where this country has been.”</p><p class="canvas-atom canvas-text Mb(1.0em) Mb(0)--sm Mt(0.8em)--sm" type="text" content="Trump ended up slapping tariffs on solar equipment imported into the U.S. The president understood, Cohn said, that “in West Virginia, and southern Ohio and Pennsylvania, you better go talk about coal.”" data-reactid="25" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" normal="normal" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Trump ended up slapping tariffs on solar equipment imported into the U.S. The president understood, Cohn said, that “in West Virginia, and southern Ohio and Pennsylvania, you better go talk about coal.”</p><p class="canvas-atom canvas-text Mb(1.0em) Mb(0)--sm Mt(0.8em)--sm" type="text" content="To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Eckhouse in New York at beckhouse@bloomberg.net" data-reactid="26" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" normal="normal" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Eckhouse in New York at beckhouse@bloomberg.net</p></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">bailled 3/18 on tariffs, free mkteer?</font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/mick-mulvaney-bids-gary-cohn-farewell-anti-semitic-dog-whistle">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/mick-mulvaney-bids-gary-cohn-farewell-anti-semitic-dog-whistle</a></font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;">months&nbsp;</font><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">after watching Donald Trump praise some of the white nationalists in Charlottesville as "very good people,"</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/gary-cohn-resigning-trumps-economic-adviser-losing-fight-tariffs-report/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Gary Cohn resigned as chief economic adviser Tuesday</a></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>, deciding the president's newly declared tariffs on steel and aluminum were his red line. </b>That evening, Director of the Office of Budget and Management Mick Mulvaney thanked Cohn for his service as only a member of the Trump administration could: with an anti-Semitic dog whistle.</span></font></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;" /><div id="TeadsNative" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div alt="" class="media-image" height="195" width="480" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[img]</font></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the term "globalism" has gained new currency since Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/us/politics/globalism-right-trump.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">it has been a far-right conspiracy theory</a>&nbsp;for the better part of a century, echoing the tropes of a fraudulent text titled&nbsp;<em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Protocols of the Elders of Zion</a></em>. Published in Russia in 1903 and disseminated across Europe and the United States,&nbsp;<em>Protocols&nbsp;</em>outlined a fabricated plot of Jewish global hegemony that has served as the basis for modern anti-Semitism.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those decrying "globalists" similarly maintain that a shadowy cabal controls the news media, the banks and the federal government. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center's Ryan Lenz,&nbsp;“Globalism is a principal driver of the fears that animate the radical right in the United States. It is the enemy, ultimately.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That a far-right ideologue and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/02/18/the-trump-administration-is-not-even-masking-its-contempt-for-the-poor-anymore_partner/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">moral cretin</a>&nbsp;like Mulvaney subscribes to this worldview is unremarkable. What is remarkable, and what makes his statement so foreboding, is that he has no compunction about sharing it.</font></p><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4">bonnn paris</font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><h3 style="font-family: sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.333;"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Denial in the White House</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></h3><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: normal; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump's top advisers—none of whom are at the Bonn talks—now include Secretary of State&nbsp;<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13032018/mike-pompeo-koch-brothers-secretary-state-climate-change-rex-tillerson-exxon" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">Mike Pompeo</a>, who has said that America should not "bow down to radical environmentalists"; chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow, who praised Trump's retreat from Paris as ending "the war on fossil fuels"; and national security adviser John Bolton, who views the accord as a threat to U.S. sovereignty. Trump's entire cabinet is overwhelmingly hostile to the climate treaty, but these three newcomers hold special sway.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: normal; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Until recently, hope ran high among other delegations that Trump's previous top economic and foreign advisers would persuade the president to keep the U.S. commitment to Paris.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: normal; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, well-acquainted with the history of climate negotiations as former chief executive of Exxon, had told Congress he believed that the U.S. should keep "a seat at the table." Former economic adviser <b>Gary Cohn had given a warm hearing to former Secretary of State James Baker and allies who came to the White House early on to make the conservative case for a carbon tax</b>—earning him the derogatory nickname "Carbon Tax Cohn" among his opponents on Trump's staff. And although Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the previous national security adviser, muted his views on the Paris Agreement, many close observers, including President Obama's climate envoy Todd Stern, said they had expected him to be an advocate for the U.S. to stay in the agreement, a high priority for military allies in NATO and for possible adversaries like China.</font></p></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.icij.org/article/us-president-donald-trumps-influencers/">https://www.icij.org/article/us-president-donald-trumps-influencers/</a></font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4">paradise offshore banks</font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/cohn-to-convene-climate-breakfast-2484763181.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/cohn-to-convene-climate-breakfast-2484763181.html</a></font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><p style="letter-spacing: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" face="Times New Roman" size="4">White House chief economic advisor Gary Cohn will host a discussion on&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">climate change</a>&nbsp;ahead of the United Nations General Assembly meeting, according to reports.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><p style="letter-spacing: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The breakfast meeting, scheduled the day before the UNGA kickoff in New York on Tuesday, will convene environment ministers and senior climate officials from the world's largest economies.A White House official said the meeting was intended to "help the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Trump administration</a>&nbsp;find a way to fulfill the president's pledge to reduce emissions without harming the American economy," according to the New York Times. News of the meeting comes a day after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders indicated Trump&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-paris-agreement-un-2470157149.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">had not changed his mind on climate change</a>&nbsp;in the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.</p><p style="letter-spacing: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">...</p></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">AN 817</font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><p style="letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On August 15, this “infrastructure of fascism” came into clear focus in a bizarre and tragic way.&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87ilzMZmRa4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">Donald Trump marched into a conference room in Trump Tower on 5th&nbsp;Avenue in Manhattan to hold a hastily arranged press briefing on the first formal unveiling of his “Infrastructure” plan</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. He had key members of his economic team in tow—most notably, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Gary Cohn, head of Trump’s National Economic Council—both former Goldman Sachs bankers—and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, former Bank of America and Citicorp banker. This announcement of Trump’s “infrastructure plan,” which took only a few minutes, presented even less of a true infrastructure plan than he had floated during the election campaign.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;This was simply yet&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/climate/flooding-infrastructure-climate-change-trump-obama.html?_r=0" style="text-decoration-line: none;">another de-regulation plan</a>&nbsp;dressed up as a plan for infrastructure investment. Effectively, this “executive order” served-up a wish list that would have been compiled by any real estate mogul who doesn’t want any government agency or public group to come between him, his building, and his bottom line. In the name of building more useful infrastructure and generating more jobs, Trump’s executive order is designed to let developers skirt&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-infrastructure-idUSKCN1AV1ZI" style="text-decoration-line: none;">environmental regulations</a>, and most likely, labor, health, and safety regulations as well. The Executive Order will make it a lot easier to build more Trump towers in flood plains, but do little or nothing for the country’s true infrastructure needs.</span></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><p style="letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But this roll-out of a fake infrastructure plan was not the most interesting or surprising thing about this event. It was the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gary-cohn-upset-disgusted-trump-charlottesville-press-conference-2017-8" style="text-decoration-line: none;">press conference Trump held afterwards</a>.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c3IQUnyGps" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Using his<b>Jewish and Asian-American economic team as a photo-op backdrop</b></a>&nbsp;and the creation of infrastructure and jobs as his bait, Trump took the occasion to assure his neo-fascist, white supremacist and nationalist base that, yes, he was still their man. The reporters at hand, having little interest in infrastructure, wanted to hear a clear statement from Trump decrying the violent and deadly acts committed over the weekend by Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va. But instead Trump used his infrastructure plan and his promise of “millions of jobs” to rally his base supporters, all the while demonizing the counter-protestors (calling them violent members of “the alt-left” who were “at least” as responsible for the violence and mayhem as those on the right).</font></p><p style="letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This event, then, tied, in a sinister but clear way, Trump’s infrastructure plan with the racist, anti-Semitic, and neo-fascist members of Trump’s base movement and linked them, in turn, to the bankers and policy makers like Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin who have so much to gain from the tax subsidies and privatization that are the essence of these plans.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Gary Cohn was reportedly “furious” about what Trump said and did. But&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gary-cohn-upset-disgusted-trump-charlottesville-press-conference-2017-8" style="text-decoration-line: none;">according to reporters</a>, Cohn, like so many Republicans in Congress, will most likely remain quiet, and soldier on, presumably in the hope of getting a big payoff down the road. (Cohn reportedly wants to succeed Janet Yellen as Chair of the Federal Reserve; and his friends have millions to gain from the privatization schemes.)</span></font></p></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">NTBCW michael</font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite the constant barrage of racist, sexist, and xenophobic

remarks from Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign, even his detractors

managed to hear--through all that hate speech--his promise to "drain the

swamp." Trump tied the noose of Goldman Sachs around Ted Cruz's neck

during the primary and never let anybody forget about Hillary Clinton's

paid speeches to big banks during the general election. He demonized

Wall Street and elitist politicians on the campaign trail and touted his

support to repair America's crumbling infrastructure, but as so many of

us expected, Donald Trump turned out to be a giant corporate&nbsp;conman.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since becoming President, he has nominated&nbsp;<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/02/17/trumps-billionaire-cabinet-actually-closet-full-fascists" target="_blank" title="">the most corporate cabinet in US history</a>&nbsp;since

the Gilded Age. It includes multiple former Wall Street executives, who

personally profited by launching missiles built by a company in which

Trump has&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-stock-portfolio-2015-7" target="_blank" title="">investments</a>,

and is now pushing an infrastructure plan which will allow private

companies to take over government assets for private profit, paid for by

American taxpayer. Oh yeah, and overseeing these efforts is none other

than Gary Cohn, former president of Goldman Sachs and Trump's choice to

head the National Economic Council. It must be noted that Cohn received

a&nbsp;<a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/26/investing/gary-cohn-goldman-sachs-exit-trump/" target="_blank" title="">$285 million payout</a>&nbsp;when leaving the firm to join the Trump Administration. Drain the swamp? Right.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump's infrastructure plan, despite being a major theme throughout his campaign, was released quietly as this brief&nbsp;<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/omb/budget/fy2018/fact_sheets/2018%20Budget%20Fact%20Sheet_Infrastructure%20Initiative.pdf" target="_blank" title="">six page document</a>.

It explains the desired goals of&nbsp;corporatizing&nbsp;airports, road

construction, and other types of projects which the administration

claims would streamline infrastructure projects and encourage spending

by giving tax credits to private investors looking to build new projects

or takeover existing ones. The plan even includes a section titled

"Align Infrastructure Investment with Entities Best Suited to Provide

Sustained and Efficient Investment," which is a lot of pseudo-academic

mumbo-jumbo meaning they plan to slash the budgets of many government

agencies and sell it off to the private sector, so their friends who run

these giant corporations can make a profit.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Gary Cohn is one of those people who not only has a personal

financial interest in Trump's plan but he also has a lot of friends with

similar interests. </b>In fact, Trump's plan is eerily similar to a

strategy that Goldman Sachs sought and lobbied for as early as 2008

according to&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/trump-administration-conflicts-interest-how-gary-cohn-could-sell-us-infrastructure" target="_blank" title="">federal records reviewed</a>&nbsp;by the&nbsp;<em>International Business Times</em>.

Goldman has been pushing for a federal infrastructure package and has

been developing specific financial tools to fit potential legislation so

they can swoop in early and secure tax credits and start profiting from

increased tolls and fees associated with some projects. Cohn has even&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/trump-administration-conflicts-interest-how-gary-cohn-could-sell-us-infrastructure" target="_blank" title="">said</a>,

"the bigger the thing you privatize, the more money we'll give you," as

if his friends needed any more signals to start licking their chops.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If there was any doubt before whether Trump supporters have been

taken in by a&nbsp;conman, there can be no more. Maybe it would be different

if Gary Cohn was the only official with ties to Goldman Sachs in the

administration. He is one of four major officials including the chief

strategist for the White House, treasury secretary, and SEC chairman who

all have tremendous power over economic policy, and who all stand to

gain from this plan-by-association with a financial institution that has

wreaked utter havoc on the American economy and middle class.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump did a literal 180 from candidate Trump by hiring a

plethora of former Goldman Sachs employees and then releasing an

infrastructure plan from which they will directly profit. It is

completely impossible to avoid the reality that America has been seduced

by a corporate&nbsp;conman&nbsp;and is stuck with nothing more than an apparently

bumbling and cruel oligarch-in-chief.</font></p><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald Trump speaks as Chief Executive Officer of Intel Brian Krzanich, left, shakes hands with Gary Cohn, center, head of the National Economic Council, and Reed Cordish, assistant for intragovernmental and technology initiatives, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, February 8.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">REUTERS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohn’s two deputies are Kenneth Juster (who was a partner and managing director at Warburg Pincus) and Jeremy Katz (a former managing director at GCM Grosvenor). Those firms are key members of a private equity industry with significant legislative interests in Congress.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In recent years, Republicans have pushed bills that would help the industry with bankruptcy policy and with reducing federal regulatory scrutiny of its business practices. They have also blocked proposals to end a tax provision that allows private equity executives to avoid paying standard income taxes on their earnings, and instead pay comparatively lower capital gains taxes on those payouts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Cohn hired DJ Gribbin</b> to oversee the president’s infrastructure policy. Trump has said that policy will be “financed through both public and private capital,” a form of financing that has helped private financial firms make big money from public projects. One such firm: Macquarie Capital, where, according to the White House press release, Gribbin worked leading “advisory teams structuring public-private partnership transactions for governmental clients.”</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Gribbin also previously worked for Koch Industries</b>—making him one of three National Economic Council members with links to organizations tied to conservative financiers Charles and David Koch. The other two are Brian Blase and George David Banks.</span> Blase will oversee health policy after working at the Mercatus Center, which has Charles Koch on its board and which has received funding from the Kochs, according to the left-leaning Center for Media and Democracy. That watchdog organization has reported that another Koch-funded group gave money to the American Council for Capital Formation, where Banks worked before being named to the White House post overseeing energy and environmental policy. &nbsp;The Intercept reported that Banks has also lobbied for energy corporations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other appointees have similar ties to the industries looking to shape the policies they will oversee:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">To advise Trump on telecommunications policy, Cohn hired Grace Koh, who served as the policy council at Cox Enterprises—the telecommunications giant based in Atlanta</span>.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To advise Trump on retirement policy, Cohn hired Shahira Knight, who was previously a vice president at Fidelity Investments, which manages retirees’ savings. The Department of Labor has proposed a rule to force financial companies like Fidelity to prioritize their clients best interests when advising them. Fidelity officials have called that rule “unworkable” and asserted that it has “fundamental flaws.” A recent Trump directive could end up killing the rule.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">To advise Trump on energy and environmental policy, Cohn hired Michael Catanzaro, a partner at the lobbying firm CGCN Group. Federal records show that in last year alone, Catanzaro lobbied for fossil fuel companies Devon Energy and Noble Energy; pipeline company Encana; and trade associations American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and America’s Natural Gas Alliance.</font></div></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-people-vs-goldman-sachs-20110511" class="module-related-article-title tracked-offpage" data-track-action="Tap Related" data-track-category="Article Page" data-track-label="/politics/news/the-people-vs-goldman-sachs-20110511" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;">The People vs. Goldman Sachs: Why Top Execs Should Stand Trial</a></font><p class="module-related-article-dek" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.28571; margin: 0px; padding-top: 0.2em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-vampire-squid-occupies-trumps-white-house-w456225</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">B<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ack on February 19th, during a primary-season speech in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Donald Trump</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/19/politics/donald-trump-ted-cruz-goldman-sachs/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">directed a two-pronged rhetorical offensive</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">against opponents in both parties. He started with Ted Cruz.</span></font></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"I know the guys at Goldman Sachs. They have total, total control over [Cruz]," Trump said. "Just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton."</span></span><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Cruz's campaign, Trump pointed out, had taken loans from the infamous investment bank Goldman Sachs. And he'd failed to properly disclose one of these loans.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump demonized the bank enough that it almost seemed like genuine animosity existed between candidate and squid. When Goldman&nbsp;<a href="http://fortune.com/2016/09/06/goldman-elite-trump-pence/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">announced in September</a>&nbsp;that it was banning employees from donating to Trump's campaign, it seemed official.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">In October, Trump was even more specific in pointing the finger at Goldman. Referencing speeches Clinton gave to Goldman,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/us/politics/trump-comments-linked-to-antisemitism.html?r=0" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">Trump said that</a>&nbsp;"Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump's tales sounded like classic Rothschild/Bilderberg conspiracy lore. They would have been absurd, were it not for the fact that so much of the innuendo around Goldman Sachs often turns out to be true.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 153);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The bank has an extraordinary history of placing its executives in high-ranking governmental and quasi-governmental positions,</b>&nbsp;from treasury secretaries to senators to the heads of the World and European Central Banks. Goldman has been implicated in the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/goldman-sachs-agrees-pay-more-5-billion-connection-its-sale-residential-mortgage-backed" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">trafficking of toxic mortgages</a>, a sprawling&nbsp;<a href="http://nypost.com/2016/02/20/fbi-gathers-clues-in-massive-goldman-sachs-money-scandal/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">state corruption case</a>&nbsp;in Malaysia, the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-commodities-banks-goldman-hearing-idUSKCN0J40AA20141121" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">manipulation of world commodity prices</a>&nbsp;and a heinous episode involving Greece in which the bank helped to mask the country's ballooning debt while simultaneously&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/business/global/25swaps.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">working with JPMorgan Chase</a>&nbsp;to create an index for betting against Greece's economy.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nonetheless, Trump's insinuations about a Goldman-Hillary secret conspiracy were so pointed that CEO Lloyd Blankfein was forced to respond.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"If there's some secret international cabal, I've been left out of the party again,"&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/lloyd-blankfein-goldman-sachs-ceo-responds-to-donald-trump-2016-10" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">he quipped</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In his final pitch to voters in the days before the election, Trump used the image of Blankfein in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vST61W4bGm8" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">a TV ad</a>&nbsp;to argue that insiders had ruined the lives of ordinary Americans to enrich themselves.</b>&nbsp;Here is the narration you heard when Blankfein's face came on screen:</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It's a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><aside class="inset-image inset-full" style="box-sizing: border-box; width: 660px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><figure style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0.8em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="caption" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.16667;">Trump at an August campaign rally in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.</span>&nbsp;<span class="credit" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.16667;">Joe Raedle/Getty img]</span></font></figcaption></figure></aside><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>One surprise election result and a mountain of jubilant #draintheswamp hashtags later, Donald Trump has filled his White House with, you guessed it, Goldman veterans</b>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">His chief strategist, the unabashed white-supremacist loon Steve Bannon, is a former Goldman banker, as is adviser Anthony Scaramucci. Steve Mnuchin marks the fourth Goldman-pedigreed treasury secretary in the last four presidencies, after Bob Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Hank Paulson.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the real shocker is the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/12/trump-to-appoint-goldman-sachs-president-gary-cohn-as-top-economic-adviser/?utm_term=.ff0f7a166364" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">recent appointment</a>&nbsp;of Goldman Chief Operating Officer Gary Cohn to the post of director of the National Economic Council. Bannon and Mnuchin were former, past Goldmanites. Cohn, meanwhile, is undoubtedly at least the number-two figure at the world's most despised bank, if not the outright co-head with Blankfein. He has been at the center of many of its most infamous episodes, including&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/global/14debt.html?pagewanted=all&r=0" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">the Greek affair</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So much for draining the swamp.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new party line, emanating both from Washington and from Alt-Right yahoos on the Internet, is that people like Gary Cohn are no longer the swindling scum-lords Trump said they were a few months ago, but simply smart businessmen.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/12/trump-to-appoint-goldman-sachs-president-gary-cohn-as-top-economic-adviser/?utm_term=.9bf2139085cf" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">As Trump put it</a>, "Gary Cohn is going to put his talents as a highly successful businessman to work for the American people."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This mantra is often used to explain Goldman's legend. Its advocates say they may be cold-blooded, but they're just dern good at what they do.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The bank has worked very hard to nurture exactly that image, particularly when there are darker explanations for the bank's success that they would rather leave unexplored. A great example involves Cohn, Trump's new "top economic adviser."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Way back in November of 2007, a tidal wave was beginning to devour Wall Street. The subprime mortgage market was collapsing, and the bulk of America's investment banks were foundering.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, within a year, three of the country's storied top five investment banks – Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers – would be wiped out by the crisis, thanks mainly to their overinvestment in subprime.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One bank stood out as an exception: Goldman Sachs.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The legend on the street was that Goldman was somehow not only going to survive the crash, but prosper and make big profits. How did Goldman do so well during a financial hurricane?&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The New York Times</i>&nbsp;had an answer: its leaders were smart – and humble!</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Goldman's secret sauce, say executives, analysts and historians,"&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/business/19goldman.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">the paper wrote</a>, "is high-octane business acumen, tempered with paranoia and institutionally encouraged — though not always observed — humility."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Where did writers Jenny Anderson and Landon Thomas Jr. get the idea that Goldman's smarts saved them during the mortgage crisis? From Goldman, of course.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We know this because of an investigation conducted into the bank's a-little-too-miraculous performance that year&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/media/senate-investigations-subcommittee-releases-levin-coburn-report-on-the-financial-crisis" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Chaired by Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, the PSI scrupulously detailed the efforts by Goldman to get out from under the mortgage crash by dumping its disastrous mortgage investments on its own clients as it simultaneously bet against them.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">This maneuver, colloquially described since as the "Big Short" episode, was perhaps the most lurid example of Wall Street iniquity during the crash years. And Trump's new economic adviser, Cohn, played a central role.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><aside class="inset-image inset-full" style="box-sizing: border-box; width: 660px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><figure style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0.8em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="caption" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.16667;">Michigan Senator Carl Levin.</span>&nbsp;<span class="credit" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.16667;">Mark Wilson/Getty</span></font></figcaption></figure></aside><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the run-up to the "Big Short" story – in the years leading up to 2007 – Goldman had joined other banks in helping cause the financial crisis. They'd done so by creating masses of toxic mortgage instruments and selling them to unsuspecting investors, who were (often falsely) told the loans met underwriting standards. Goldman, like&nbsp;<a href="http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/19/investing/jpmorgan-mortgage-settlement/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">JPMorgan Chase</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/bank-america-pay-1665-billion-historic-justice-department-settlement-financial-fraud-leading" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">Bank of America</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/citigroup-and-u-s-reach-7-billion-mortgage-settlement/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">Citigroup</a>, would later&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/goldman-sachs-agrees-pay-more-5-billion-connection-its-sale-residential-mortgage-backed" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">pay billions</a>&nbsp;to settle claims by its infuriated customers, which included state and federal housing authorities.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the tail end of 2006, Goldman execs saw that a) the subprime mortgage market was in serious trouble, and b) the bank itself was dangerously overinvested in it. So they made a frenzied, often deceptive effort to induce their clients to eat what should naturally have been their own losses.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On December 14th, 2006, mortgage chief Daniel Sparks proposed: "Distribute as much as possible on bonds created from new loan securitizations and clean previous positions."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Translation: Let's create new mortgage-backed products to dump on others, and use them to "clean" our toxic portfolio.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In one mortgage-based deal called Hudson 1 securities, Goldman helped sell its toxic holdings by saying the bank's interests were "aligned" with those of potential clients, because it would own a tiny, $6 million slice of the deal.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The bank left out the fact that it had a $2&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">billion</i>&nbsp;bet against the same deal.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the same deal, Goldman told clients that the mortgage products in Hudson had been "sourced from the Street," i.e., that this stuff did not come from Goldman's own inventory. When Senate investigators later pressed Goldman executives on this question, they hilariously claimed this wasn't a lie, because Goldman&nbsp;<a href="http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Financial_Crisis/FinancialCrisisReport.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">was part of "the Street."</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"They were like, 'We are the Street,'" one investigator told me, laughing.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Through deals like this, Goldman within months went from having a $6 billion bet on mortgages to having a $10 billion bet against them – a "big short."</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">All of these moves were made with the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Financial_Crisis/FinancialCrisisReport.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">assent of the Firmwide Risk Committee</a>, which included Goldman CFO David Viniar, Blankfein and Cohn.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They would go on to fleece other clients. In the summer, an Australian hedge fund called Basis Capital was induced to buy $100 million of a mortgage-based Goldman deal called "Timberwolf." They told the Aussies to expect a return of "over 60 percent."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, in private, Goldman execs were saying&nbsp;<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-goldmansachs-lawsuit-idUSTRE79R4JE20111028" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">things like</a>, "Boy, that timberwof [sic] was one shitty deal."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The sales rep who got Basis to buy was so elated that the subject line of his email read "Utopia." He told other execs he'd found the ultimate sucker. "I found white elephant, flying pig and unicorn all at once," he crowed.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Basis Capital later claimed it&nbsp;<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-goldmansachs-lawsuit-idUSTRE79R4JE20111028" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">lost $56 million</a>&nbsp;in six weeks. It&nbsp;<a href="http://www.forbes.com/2007/08/30/basis-alpha-bankruptcy-markets-equity-cx_vk_0830markets03.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">filed for bankruptcy</a>&nbsp;within months of the Timberwolf deal.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Getting back to the&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Times</i>&nbsp;story about how Goldman's smarts and humility saved them during the crash: One of the documents the Senate investigators discovered was an email from Goldman press flack Lucas van Praag to a group of senior Goldman executives that included Blankfein, Cohn and Viniar.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Van Praag wanted to warn the leadership that there was a&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Times</i>&nbsp;piece coming that would examine why Goldman managed to prosper at a time when everyone else was being wiped out. Van Praag did not, of course, tell&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Times</i>&nbsp;that Goldman had survived by making sure that its clientele bought up what Blankfein called the "cats and dogs" of its toxic inventory.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What van Praag instead said was more Trumpian: that Goldman just had a winning culture.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We spent a lot of time on culture as a differentiator," van Praag told his bosses, when describing his interactions with apparently gullible reporter Jenny Anderson. "She was receptive."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response to van Praag's email, Blankfein wrote, "Of course we didn't dodge the mortgage mess. We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is the same Lloyd Blankfein who testified years later in the Senate: "We were not consistently or significantly net-short the market in residential mortgage-related products in 2007 and 2008."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">He added, "We didn't have a massive short against the housing market, and we certainly did not bet against our clients."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Sen. Levin heard Blankfein say he didn't have a "massive short" during 2007, he was furious. "Heck, yes, I was offended," he told&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Rolling Stone</i>. "Goldman's CEO claimed the firm 'didn't have a massive short,' when the opposite was true."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We know the "opposite was true" because of the extensive email record these arrogant yutzes left behind. One of the smoking guns involved Cohn. On July 25, 2007, Viniar sent Cohn an email pointing out the huge losses and writedowns that other banks were experiencing.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Tells you what might be happening to people who don't have the big short," Viniar told Cohn.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><aside class="inset-image inset-full" style="box-sizing: border-box; width: 660px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><figure style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0.8em;" /></figure><figure style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">img doc]</font></figure></aside><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the heat of the meltdown, there was some gallows humor between Cohn and Blankfein. At one point the two men seemed to be trying to figure out where they were with their mortgage strategy, and what to do going forward. "We are marking both sides," Cohn says. "There is a net short."<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Bet all the dads at camp are talking about the same stuff," Blankfein joked.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Goldman's higher-ups ended up having a great year. While the whole financial world was collapsing due in large part to behaviors like that of his own bank, Blankfein made $68.5 million, a record for a Wall Street executive. Cohn&nbsp;<a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/01/goldman-sachs-200101" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">made $67.5 million</a>. The two were the McGwire and Sosa of the profiting-off-others'-misery era. The bank, meanwhile, would lay off&nbsp;<a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com//2008/11/06/goldman-sachs-laid-off-thousands-this-week-report-says/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">3,200 lower-level employees</a>&nbsp;within a year.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Goldman probably should have gone out of business in 2007-2008. Two little-discussed acts of government welfare in September of 2008 helped save the company.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">First, there was the infamous&nbsp;<a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/goldman-morgan-to-become-bank-holding-companies/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">emergency granting of Commercial Bank Holding Company status</a>&nbsp;to Goldman. Have you ever seen a Goldman branch or a Goldman ATM? Probably not, because it isn't a commercial bank. But on September 21st, 2008, the government gave it permission to call itself one.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This move, so desperately needed that it was executed on a Sunday night, allowed Goldman access to mountains of life-saving cash from the Federal Reserve.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The other key move was a decision by the SEC to&nbsp;<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=5844171" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">ban short-selling of financial stocks</a>. This nakedly anticapitalist maneuver allowed Goldman to fend off attacks by speculators who correctly sensed the company was in deep trouble.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Apart from the SEC order,&nbsp;<b>major shareholders like pension funds in New York and California also agreed to stop lending shares of Goldman and Morgan Stanley to short-sellers, essentially protecting these two banks in particular from the forces of the market</b>. Notably, they were the two top-five investment banks that survived 2008.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Blankfein was initially opposed – "I'm for markets," he reportedly said – but as things worsened, he agreed with Morgan Stanley chief John Mack that they needed their government Daddy to save them.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"You're right. We have to do something about this," he said. He later&nbsp;<a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/01/goldman-sachs-200101" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">called the decision</a>&nbsp;"tricky."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet even with the SEC ban on short-selling, Goldman's stock price continued to plunge, from $207.78 in February 2008 to $47.41 in November. Cohn claims not to have been worried. "It wasn't scary at all,"&nbsp;<a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/01/goldman-sachs-200101" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">he said</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Vanity Fair</i>&nbsp;found a colleague who scoffed at Cohn's assessment. "Complete and utter nonsense," the person said. For all their brains and humility, these geniuses needed the government to halt the free market on their behalf to survive.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Goldman deserves its villainous reputation. The bank symbolizes all the worst aspects of the modern "financialized" economy. The crash era was the ultimate example.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Banks like Goldman mostly didn't create anything of value during this time. Mostly what they did was engineer new ways to create credit that led to millions of people buying homes they couldn't afford, creating the mother of all financial bubbles.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When it all went bust, as it necessarily had to, they scrambled by hook or crook to dump the damage on other people. Clients ate their losses and they ran weeping to the taxpayer for rescue –&nbsp;<b>Goldman got $12.9 billion alone just from the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-aig-goldmansachs-sb-idUSTRE52H0B520090318" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">AIG bailout</a>, which of course was engineered by former Goldman chief Hank Paulson. In the middle of all of this, people like Blankfein and Cohn paid themselves record amounts of compensation. They are scum, and it's absolutely fitting that so many of them will end up serving the Trump administration.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0.9em 0px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump made a lot of political hay out of the iniquity of people like Cohn during his campaign. But his recent appointments are absolute proof that his "populist" message was a crock all along – not that we couldn't have guessed anyway.</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div>