Working Life

  If I was Lloyd Blankfein and you told me that I could pockets hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, play a key role in a scam that cost millions of people their jobs, sent the economy into one of the worst economic tailspins in a half century, escape any personal jail time for […]

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    Even investors are now starting to distance themselves from Goldman Sachs: After reports on Thursday evening that federal prosecutors had opened an investigation into trading at Goldman, raising the possibility of criminal charges against the Wall Street giant, the firm’s stock was downgraded on Friday by two analysts. Standard & Poor’s lowered its rating […]

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   And the next shoe to drop: Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into whether Goldman Sachs Group Inc. or its employees committed securities fraud in connection with its mortgage trading, people familiar with the probe say. The investigation from the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office, which is at a preliminary stage, stemmed from a […]

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   The Senate hearings made clear: Goldman Sachs—and other Wall Street firms—profited by gambling with the American peoples’ livelihoods. It was a classic “heads I win, tails you lose” scam. As Sen. Carl Levin memorably stated: “You knew it was a shitty deal, and that’s what your emails showed.”     But, what Levin and other […]

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   Over the weekend we learned this: In late 2007 as the mortgage crisis gained momentum and many banks were suffering losses, Goldman Sachs executives traded e-mail messages saying that they were making "some serious money" betting against the housing markets.   The e-mails, released Saturday morning by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, appear […]

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   This got lost in the shuffle last week but is worth highlighting: The legal drama surrounding the controversial takeover of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, one of the pivotal moments of the financial crisis, took a fresh turn on Thursday as the attorney general of New York leveled civil fraud charges against Kenneth […]

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   Merit is one of the enduring standards we are all taught from the moment we start school. If you get good grades, you advance. If you perform well, you advance. What, then, are we supposed to think about the young children or college-age students who read about this, courtesy of The Times Gretchen Morgenson […]

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   There are two examples today that make it crystal clear how our society is damaged by corporate power. The first comes in the increasingly depressing arena of health care reform: Behind the scenes, however, Mr. Obama and his advisers have been quite active, sometimes negotiating deals with a degree of cold-eyed political realism potentially […]

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   Today brings news of more greed wafting across the country, as well as a tiny step towards sweeping out the stalls soiled by corrupt politicians. The bad, though typical news, finds yet another payday for Wall Street banks and lawyers who will reap almost a billion dollars for cleaning up the mess of AIG: […]

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    I would have put a "BREAKING" on this title but, in some ways, this is not a new story–just another twist to the same-old political as usual. I’m all for the cap on executive compensation announced by the president. But, the culture of Washington is not changing–and it’s getting worse.   Today, the Center […]

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