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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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 Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 8:04 pm Post subject: The American Government as a branch of Corporate America |
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You hear about this constantly but nobody gets upset and it is just accepted. How senior members of govt suddenly get farmed out to high level corporate positions or how high level corporate types are called up to the government big leagues.......
Just amazing how they are linked -- government and corporate America and it is really apparent that at present, there is not really a government in America but a branch of some tentacled corporate entity, running and undertaking fieldwork for corporate (mis)adventure and profit.
The resignation of Robert Zoellick, U.S. State Dept. #2 , is just another example. He wanted a higher position but no, that had to go to a Goldman Sachs fat cat who had already made enough money and wanted a differing kind of power (Henry Paulson). So it was agreed, Zoellick could work quietly at Goldman Sachs in return for his blessing and he in turn could make millions.........
What an old boys club!!!
Read about it below. Scary but this is really just something that happens everyday. One day may we have our own updated version of Martin Luther, tacking his own edict on the white house doors, insisting on seperation of corporation and state.......
DD
| Quote: |
, Reuters, The New York Times
Published: June 19, 2006
NEW YORK Goldman Sachs, the giant investment bank, has elected three of its own to top positions, setting in place a succession plan after its chairman and chief executive was picked to run the U.S. Treasury Department.
Goldman said Sunday that it had elected Gary Cohn and Jon Winkelried as presidents and co-chief operating officers. Cohn was co-head of the firm's global securities business and Winkelried was co-head of investment banking.
Goldman, the investment banking, trading and money-management firm, also elected as vice chairman John Weinberg, an investment banking co- head thought to be in line for the No. 2 spot.
The promotions were made during a Goldman board meeting in Beijing, said a spokesman, Lucas van Praag.
This month, Goldman said that it would name Lloyd Blankfein as its chairman and chief executive should Congress confirm the nomination of the current chief, Henry Paulson, as U.S. Treasury Secretary.
Blankfein, Goldman's president and chief operating officer, has been heir apparent since 2003, when he was made Paulson's deputy.
A statement from Goldman on Sunday made it clear that all of the appointments would occur only if Paulson were confirmed as Treasury Secretary.
Separately, on Monday, Robert Zoellick said that he would leave his post as the U.S. deputy secretary of state and return to the private sector to work with Goldman (Page 5). Zoellick previously worked for the investment bank as senior international adviser when Bill Clinton was U.S. president. A Goldman spokesman was not immediately available to comment on what Zoellick's job would be.
Winkelried, 46, and Cohn, 45, will serve as members of the board of directors. Winkelried, Cohn and Weinberg will report directly to Blankfein, the company said.
The appointments signal that Blankfein, who spent his 24-year career at Goldman in trading, wants a management team with wide-ranging skills at a time when declining stock prices and escalating interest rates raise concern that business will slow.
"With extensive experience at Goldman Sachs and in a wide range of businesses and geographies, Gary, Jon and John have played a critical role in successfully formulating and executing the firm's strategy," Blankfein said in a statement.
With Goldman riding high, Wall Street was watching the selection process closely, aware that balancing the interests of investment bankers and traders at the firm was a sensitive and critical issue in a post-Paulson era.
Cohn was promoted to partner in 1994, while running Goldman's metals business from London. He has also managed the fixed income, currency and commodities division's macro businesses and became co-head of the division in 2002. Cohn also headed the firm's equities division and later became co-head of global securities businesses.
Winkelried started out as an investment banker at Goldman . He became co-head of the investment banking division in 2005.
Weinberg, 48, is a veteran investment banker at Goldman and co-head of the investment banking division. He is the son of John Weinberg, a former chief of the firm.
The firm now faces the challenge of keeping its money machine ahead of its competitors, a tough task given its performance lately.
Goldman stock is up almost 13 percent this year. In afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange Monday, the shares stood at $143.77, down 21 cents. They hit a 52-week high of $168.55 on April 20. Goldman said last week that its quarterly earnings and revenue more than doubled.
Guy Moszkowski, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, and Glenn Schorr of UBS expected Goldman to name co-presidents, continuing a tradition of power-sharing at the top of the firm.
Henry Higdon, managing partner at Higdon Partners, an executive-search firm in New York that serves financial clients including Goldman, said, "It puts at least two people in the running to succeed Blankfein, and that's an advantage because the board can look at two people and how they're doing."
He added, "These firms are so complex that they shouldn't be run by one person."
Under Paulson, trading mushroomed to dominate Goldman. It accounted for 63 percent of revenue in the first half, up from 43 percent in 1999, the year he led Goldman's initial public offering. Investment banking, still a third of Goldman's business in 1999, now accounts for only 15 percent of revenue.
Goldman posted $2.31 billion in fiscal second-quarter net income, capping the most profitable six months for any firm in the history of the securities industry.
Winkelried has been on the management committee since 1999. He joined Goldman in 1982 after getting his MBA from the University of Chicago's business school.
At Goldman, Winkelried started in investment banking, moved to capital markets and became a partner in 1990.
In 2000, Winkelried was promoted to co-head of the fixed income, currency and commodities division worldwide with Blankfein.
Last year, Winkelried moved back to investment banking when he was named a co-head with Scott Kapnick and John Weinberg.
NEW YORK Goldman Sachs, the giant investment bank, has elected three of its own to top positions, setting in place a succession plan after its chairman and chief executive was picked to run the U.S. Treasury Department.
Goldman said Sunday that it had elected Gary Cohn and Jon Winkelried as presidents and co-chief operating officers. Cohn was co-head of the firm's global securities business and Winkelried was co-head of investment banking.
Goldman, the investment banking, trading and money-management firm, also elected as vice chairman John Weinberg, an investment banking co- head thought to be in line for the No. 2 spot.
The promotions were made during a Goldman board meeting in Beijing, said a spokesman, Lucas van Praag.
This month, Goldman said that it would name Lloyd Blankfein as its chairman and chief executive should Congress confirm the nomination of the current chief, Henry Paulson, as U.S. Treasury Secretary.
Blankfein, Goldman's president and chief operating officer, has been heir apparent since 2003, when he was made Paulson's deputy.
A statement from Goldman on Sunday made it clear that all of the appointments would occur only if Paulson were confirmed as Treasury Secretary.
Separately, on Monday, Robert Zoellick said that he would leave his post as the U.S. deputy secretary of state and return to the private sector to work with Goldman (Page 5). Zoellick previously worked for the investment bank as senior international adviser when Bill Clinton was U.S. president. A Goldman spokesman was not immediately available to comment on what Zoellick's job would be.
Winkelried, 46, and Cohn, 45, will serve as members of the board of directors. Winkelried, Cohn and Weinberg will report directly to Blankfein, the company said.
The appointments signal that Blankfein, who spent his 24-year career at Goldman in trading, wants a management team with wide-ranging skills at a time when declining stock prices and escalating interest rates raise concern that business will slow.
"With extensive experience at Goldman Sachs and in a wide range of businesses and geographies, Gary, Jon and John have played a critical role in successfully formulating and executing the firm's strategy," Blankfein said in a statement.
With Goldman riding high, Wall Street was watching the selection process closely, aware that balancing the interests of investment bankers and traders at the firm was a sensitive and critical issue in a post-Paulson era.
Cohn was promoted to partner in 1994, while running Goldman's metals business from London. He has also managed the fixed income, currency and commodities division's macro businesses and became co-head of the division in 2002. Cohn also headed the firm's equities division and later became co-head of global securities businesses.
Winkelried started out as an investment banker at Goldman . He became co-head of the investment banking division in 2005.
Weinberg, 48, is a veteran investment banker at Goldman and co-head of the investment banking division. He is the son of John Weinberg, a former chief of the firm.
The firm now faces the challenge of keeping its money machine ahead of its competitors, a tough task given its performance lately.
Goldman stock is up almost 13 percent this year. In afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange Monday, the shares stood at $143.77, down 21 cents. They hit a 52-week high of $168.55 on April 20. Goldman said last week that its quarterly earnings and revenue more than doubled.
Guy Moszkowski, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, and Glenn Schorr of UBS expected Goldman to name co-presidents, continuing a tradition of power-sharing at the top of the firm.
Henry Higdon, managing partner at Higdon Partners, an executive-search firm in New York that serves financial clients including Goldman, said, "It puts at least two people in the running to succeed Blankfein, and that's an advantage because the board can look at two people and how they're doing."
He added, "These firms are so complex that they shouldn't be run by one person."
Under Paulson, trading mushroomed to dominate Goldman. It accounted for 63 percent of revenue in the first half, up from 43 percent in 1999, the year he led Goldman's initial public offering. Investment banking, still a third of Goldman's business in 1999, now accounts for only 15 percent of revenue.
Goldman posted $2.31 billion in fiscal second-quarter net income, capping the most profitable six months for any firm in the history of the securities industry.
Winkelried has been on the management committee since 1999. He joined Goldman in 1982 after getting his MBA from the University of Chicago's business school.
At Goldman, Winkelried started in investment banking, moved to capital markets and became a partner in 1990.
In 2000, Winkelried was promoted to co-head of the fixed income, currency and commodities division worldwide with Blankfein.
Last year, Winkelried moved back to investment banking when he was named a co-head with Scott Kapnick and John Weinberg.
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 2:40 am Post subject: |
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Government incestuously sleeping with the corporate world is called "fascism".
That whole one minute they're a public servant, the next a member of the "private" sector ( farming out as you put it ), constant flip-flop, seamlessly transitioning back & forth, is an all-too common scam as well.
Simply pursuing what they see as their "enlightened" self-interest i suppose. |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 4:51 am Post subject: |
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AT&T Revises Privacy Policy, Says "Owns" Customer Data
NEW YORK (Reuters) - AT&T Inc. said on Wednesday it was revising its privacy policy, explaining to customers that it owns their phone records and can hand them over to law enforcers if necessary.
The changes take effect on Friday and come at a time when AT&T and other phone companies face lawsuits claiming they aided a U.S. government domestic spying program by giving the National Security Agency call records of millions of customers without their permission.
AT&T said the updated policy was aimed at helping customers understand its practices better and does not change how it treats customer information   
The new policy, unlike the old one, "spells out" the fact that AT&T owns its customers data. It says that customer information constitutes "business records that are owned by AT&T. As such, AT&T may disclose such records to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process."
The earlier policy had simply said that, aside from normal business operations such as billing and service provisioning, the company could share customer information to "respond to subpoenas, court orders or other legal process, to the extent required and/or permitted by law," as well as to "to establish or exercise" its legal rights.
Under the new policy, which was being mailed out to AT&T's more than 7 million Internet customers, the company also said that it would track viewing information for customers of a television service it is developing in order to help it make recommendations to customers based on their viewing habits.
It also said that before customers use its services they must agree to the policy, an element that was not in its previous guidelines.
Spokesman Michael Coe said the company, which was formed in November by the merger of AT&T Corp. and SBC Communications Inc., had been working on the new policy for the last six months.
"We are not changing how we treat customer information," said Coe. "We updated our policy to make the language clearer and easier for our customers to understand."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060622/tc_nm/telecoms_att_privacy_dc ... |
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WorldWide
Joined: 28 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 5:15 am Post subject: |
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It's called Corruption!!!
The american government is one of the most corrupt systems in the world. Money makes policy... that is corruption. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 1:34 am Post subject: |
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I have finally come to the conclusion (after the fog of war has burnt away), that the real "driving force" , the real reason behind the war in Iraq , is MONEY.
I know sounds simplistic but after all the facts are in, this is the only conclusion. An administration that works like the perfect capitalist machine, of self interest. Taking capitalism to the extreme, the administration has created ways to siphon off America's hard earned money/work and put it in their own bank accounts.
Vast amounts, billions, just gone up in smoke. Iraq was lost the moment American expenditure did not get to the Iraqi people and instead ended up in for the use of all sorts of connected and men of influence and others hangerons...
America I believe could be in for a shock once the books are opened up , post George Bush and they see the pantry empty. Another, Kenneth Lay but this time the President himself!
Please read this very true and stark read below. Especially the last 2 paragraphs. It wasn't the soldiers who lost Iraq -- it was the suits and opportunists and the corrupt people at the top. Haliburton was just small potatoes in this scam of billions! Why aren't the citizens of America storming the white house? Is it that acceptable?
And still no reliable electricity in Baghad. Why? The terrorists are knocking out the power stations? No, the billions (4) invested in the power grid have disappeared and just were never used. It was all a paper parade.
Rob a bank, go to jail. Rob the people, get elected.....
DD
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Frank Rich: A shadow government rife with corruption
Frank Rich The New York Times
Published: June 25, 2006
NEW YORK As the remains of two slaughtered American soldiers, Privates Thomas Tucker and Kristian Menchaca, were discovered near Yusufiya, Iraq, on Tuesday, a former White House official named David Safavian was convicted in Washington on four charges of lying and obstruction of justice. The three men had something in common: All had enlisted in government service in a time of war. The similarities end there. The difference between Safavian's kind of public service and that of the soldiers says everything about the disconnect between the government that has sabotaged this war and the brave men and women who have volunteered in good faith to fight it.
Privates Tucker and Menchaca made the ultimate sacrifice. Their bodies were so mutilated that they could be identified only by DNA. Safavian, by contrast, can be readily identified by smell. His idea of wartime sacrifice overseas was to chew over government business with the Jack Abramoff gang while on a golfing junket in Scotland. But what's most indicative of Safavian's public service is not his felonies in the Abramoff-Tom DeLay axis of scandal, but his legal activities before his arrest. In his DNA you get a snapshot of the governmental philosophy that has guided the war effort both in Iraq and at home (that would be the Department of Homeland Security) and doomed it to failure.
Safavian, a former lobbyist, had a hand in U.S. spending, first as chief of staff of the General Services Administration and then as the White House's chief procurement officer, overseeing a kitty of $300 billion (plus $62 billion designated for Katrina relief). He arrived to help enforce a Bush management initiative called "competitive sourcing." Simply put, this was a plan to outsource as much of government as possible by forcing U.S. agencies to compete with private contractors and their K Street lobbyists for huge and lucrative assignments. The initiative's objective, as the administration's chief executive officially put it, was to deliver "high-quality services to our citizens at the lowest cost."
The result was low-quality services at high cost: the creation of a shadow government of private companies rife with both incompetence and corruption. Last week Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, who commissioned the first comprehensive study of Bush administration contracting, revealed that the U.S. procurement spending supervised for a time by Safavian had increased by $175 billion from 2000 to 2005. (Halliburton contracts alone, unsurprisingly, went up more than 600 percent.) Nearly 40 cents of every dollar in U.S. discretionary spending now goes to private companies.
In this favor-driven world of fat contracts awarded to the well-connected, Safavian was only an aspiring consigliere. He was not powerful enough or in government long enough to do much beyond petty reconnaissance for Abramoff and his lobbying clients. But the Bush brand of competitive sourcing, with its get-rich-quick schemes and do- little jobs for administration pals, spread like a cancer throughout the executive branch. It explains why tens of thousands of displaced victims of Katrina are still living in trailer shantytowns all these months later. It explains why New York and Washington just lost 40 percent of their counterterrorism funds. It helps explain why U.S. troops are more likely to be slaughtered than greeted with flowers more than three years after the American invasion of Iraq.
The Department of Homeland Security, in keeping with the Bush administration's original opposition to it, isn't really a government agency at all so much as an empty shell, a networking boot camp for future private contractors dreaming of big paydays. Thanks to an investigation by The New York Times, we know that some two-thirds of the top department executives, including Tom Ridge and his principal deputies, have cashed in on their often brief service by becoming executives, consultants or lobbyists for companies that have received billions of dollars in government contracts. Even John Ashcroft, the first former attorney general in American history known to immediately register as a lobbyist, is selling his Homeland Security connections to interested bidders. "When you got it, flaunt it!" as they say in "The Producers."
To see the impact of such revolving- door cronyism, just look at the Homeland Security process that mandated those cutbacks for New York and Washington. The official in charge, the assistant secretary for grants and training, is Tracy Henke, an Ashcroft apparatchik from the Justice Department who was best known for trying to politicize the findings of its Bureau of Justice Statistics. Under Henke math, it follows that St. Louis, in her home state (and Ashcroft's), has seen its counterterrorism allotment rise by more than 30 percent while that for the cities actually attacked on 9/11 fell. And guess what: The private contractor hired by Homeland Security to consult on Henke's handiwork, Booz Allen Hamilton, now just happens to employ Greg Rothwell, who was the department's procurement chief until December. Booz Allen recently nailed a $250 million Homeland Security contract for technology consulting.
The continuing Katrina calamity is another fruit of outsourced government. As detailed in the current Washington Monthly, the die was cast long before the storm hit: The Bush cronies installed at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, first Joe Allbaugh and then Michael Brown, had privatized so many of the agency's programs that there was little government left to manage the disaster even if more competent managers than Brownie had been in charge.
But the most lethal impact of competitive sourcing, as measured in human cost, is playing out in Iraq. In the standard narrative of American failure in the war, the pivotal early error was Donald Rumsfeld's decision to ignore the advice of General Eric Shinseki and others, who warned that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure Iraq once America inherited it. But equally reckless, we can now see, was the administration's lax privatization of the country's reconstruction, often with pet companies and campaign contributors and without safeguards or accountability to guarantee results.
Washington's promises to rebuild Iraq were worth no more than its promises to rebuild New Orleans. The government that has stranded a multitude of Americans in flimsy "housing" on the Gulf of Mexico, where they remain prey for any new natural attacks the hurricane season will bring, is of a philosophical and operational piece with the government that has let down the Iraqi people. Even after we've thrown away $2 billion of a budgeted $4 billion on improving electricity, many Iraqis have only a few hours of power a day, less than they did under Saddam Hussein. At his Rose Garden press conference of June 14, the first American president with an MBA claimed that yet another new set of "benchmarks" would somehow bring progress even after all his previous benchmarks had failed to impede three years of reconstruction catastrophes.
Of the favored companies put in charge of America's supposed good works in Iraq, Halliburton is the most notorious. But it is hardly unique. As The Los Angeles Times reported in April, it is the Parsons Corp. that is responsible for the "wholesale failure in two of the most crucial areas of the Iraq reconstruction - health and safety - which were supposed to win Iraqi good will and reduce the threat to American soldiers."
Parsons finished only 20 of 150 planned Iraq health clinics, somehow spending $60 million of the budgeted $186 million for its own management and administration. It failed to build walls around seven of the 17 security forts it constructed to supposedly stop the flow of terrorists across the Iran border. Last week, The New York Times reported, the Army Corps of Engineers ordered Parsons to abandon construction on a hopeless $99.1 million prison that was two years behind schedule. By Waxman's calculation, $30 billion in U.S. taxpayers' money has been squandered on these and other Iraq boondoggles botched by a government adhering to the principle of competitive sourcing.
If America had honored its grand promises to the people it was liberating, Dick Cheney's prediction that we would be viewed as liberators might have had a chance of coming true. Greater loyalty from the civilian population would have helped reduce the threat to American soldiers, who are prey to insurgents in places like Yusufiya. But what we've wrought instead is a variation on Arthur Miller's post-World War II drama, "All My Sons." Working from a true story, Miller told the tragedy of a shoddy contractor whose defectively manufactured aircraft parts led directly to the deaths of a score of army pilots and implicitly to the death of his own son.
Back then such a scandal was a shocking anomaly. Franklin Roosevelt's administration, the very model of big government that the current administration vilifies, never would have trusted private contractors to run the show. Somehow that unwieldy, bloated government took less time to win World War II than George W. Bush's privatized government is taking to blow this one. |
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