EW YORK (CNNMoney) — Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has retained the services of prominent defense attorney Reid Weingarten.
Investors did not take the news well. Goldman shares plunged in the final minutes of trading, following a report published late Monday by Reuters. Shares dropped almost 5% to $106.51 — a fresh 52-week low. The stock lost another 1.5% in trading after the close.
Weingarten, an attorney at Steptoe & Johnson, is one of the nation's premier white-collar crime attorneys. He represented WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers and former Enron accountant Richard Cause, among others.
The memorandum “Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001” has been circulating for years on the Internet, studiously ignored by most. It was previously posted as a journal item on this website. Since then, the public has learned a great deal more about both gold and greed, and the memorandum is once again circulating.
This is by no means the complete story, and there are some leaps of imagination and speculation that must be deeply investigated or discounted. Central to appreciating the magnitude of the government cover-up is the FACT that MONTHS before 9/11 Dick Cheney set in motion the national counter-terrorism exercise that gave him complete control on “the day” of 9/11.
What is clear is that there is a great deal more investigation to be done, and that a truth and reconciliation commission should be created in time to put Dick Cheney and the others on the stand before they either die a natural death or are assassinated by foreign governments righteously angry over what has been done to them by American children playing with fire.
Here are a few extracts that today have a greater likelihood of being appreciated for their substance.
By David Greenberg, Washington Post Outlook, 29 July 2011
David Greenberg is a professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University. He is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for the 2010-11 academic year.
EXTRACTS
“Age of Greed” chronicles how Americans ended up with the highly unregulated financial system that produced the meltdown of 2008 and the fallout that lingers three years later. What’s most novel about the book, which relies heavily on other secondary accounts, is that unlike other recent treatments of the financial crisis, it traces the origins of the problem not to the Bush or Clinton or even Reagan years, but all the way to the late 1960s.
. . . . . .
The real scandal revealed by Madrick’s important book is not the well-known tales of dastards such as telecom analyst Jack Grubman or Internet stock promoter Frank Quattrone, but the more elusive — and more consequential — story of how the government came to abdicate this supreme responsibility.
Two recent attempts at revivals of the Knights Templar.
One: Norway. In this video posted by Anders (the Oslo bomber) before his attack. He makes a plea for a revival of the Knights Templar at the end of the video (the first part is an attack on liberalism/multiculturalism and islamic immigration). His bloody attack was an attempt to jump start a revival through what's called “a plausible promise.”
Two: Mexico. A splinter group from the Michoacan La Familia cartel (which is unravelling) has named themselves the Knights Templar. They have published a code of conduct, eschew drug use, etc. This group is active in the drug business, growing quickly (the simple rules of conduct required to join it are very viral), and killing every rival in their way (the Zetas, what's left of La Familia, and the Mexican government troops/police).
Why? The Knights Templar is an historical model that is a ready made formula for manufacturing fictive kinship. Fictive kinship is the “glue” or “cement” that holds together tribes. Manufacturing fictive kinship enables the formation of a tribe/gang/cult that is able to defend itself and its interests.
In the case of religiously grounded historical examples like this, it allows the group and its members to believe they are special. So special they can transcend the laws, customs, and morality of the outside world without remorse/pause. The result is a group that will often kill in a far more aggressive way than what is seen with groups that are glued together only through economic ties (al Qaeda used this approach).
Wall Street often tries to play down its influence in Washington. As Congress pushed through financial regulations that seemed to get watered down last year, Wall Street’s chief executives tried to suggest, somewhat surprisingly, that their highly paid lobbyists did not have much sway.
If there is still any question about how much power Wall Street actually has in Washington, here is some fresh evidence worth examining.
In a piece of legislation recently passed by the House and the Senate to revamp patent law, a tiny provision was inserted at the last minute called Section 18.
The provision, which my colleague Edward Wyatt detailed in an article ahead of the House’s vote on the bill last month, has only one purpose: to allow the banking industry to skirt paying for certain important patents involving “business methods.”
The provision even allows “retroactive reviews of approved business method patents, allowing the financial services industry to challenge patents that have already been found valid both at the U.S. Patent and Trade Office and in Federal Court,” according to Representative Aaron Schock, an Illinois Republican who tried to strike the provision.
Phi Beta Iota: In the absence of accountability, holistic analytics, and transparency, it is very easy for specific individuals to give up their integrity. The implications of this are breath-taking: Wall Street is showing it can legislate retrospective and ex post facto crime, not just future crime.
I pretty much lost it while watching David Gergen, a veteran of the Nixon White House, trying to make sense of sexting. The CNN analyst surely witnessed his share of villainy in that administration and the three others he served in, and he probably has no problem comprehending something like the illegal bombing of Cambodia or the near-elimination of welfare. But who sends pictures of his penis to strangers?
A lot of people, as it turns out. There is a culture gap in this country, between people who are happy to enjoy what’s left of their privacy and people who just don’t think about it. It’s not that No. 1 NBA draft pick Greg Oden wanted to expose his penis to fans—it just never occurred to him that anybody but his lady friend would get a peek. There are a number of professional athletes—and at least one politician—for whom the previous sentence would work.
Phi Beta Iota: The pornographic criminally insane behavior of the senior politicians is vastly more harmful and costly that a little weiner on Twitter. This is the core point. There is no “sense” in Washington, it is all theater of the absurd fronting for the on-going looting and depraved indifference of the few at the expense of the many.
Phi Beta Iota: Below is circulating among the Gold Warriors in Asia. We anticipate the nationalization not only of mines, but of land, followed by a rejection of most foreign debt, foreign seed, and foreign vaccines and medications. We continue to believe 2012 will be a year of awakening and bring a major correction to how power is exercised in the public interest. Public intelligence will play a huge rule, and will have a marketable value based on transparency, truth, and trust. We reassert our commitment to non-violent truth & reconciliation. There is money to be made in healing humanity and Earth, unleashing the power of the three billion brains now largely idle for lack of connectivity and back-office exploitation.
