Word: goldmans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Read "Goldman's Profits: Gambling with Taxpayer Money...
...July 14, Goldman Sachs posted second-quarter profits of $3.44 billion, more than the company made in all of 2008 and about on par with the precrisis gilded age, while announcing that it had set aside $11.4 billion this year to compensate workers, or $386,489 per employee. The huge profits were hailed on Wall Street as another sign that the crisis might be ending. On July 15, the Dow Jones industrial average jumped 3.1%, and other banking giants are expected to issue their own similarly glowing reports. On July 16, JPMorgan announced that it had earned $2.7 billion...
...recent winnings despite the public rhetoric of the Administration, the contrast with the nation's still growing unemployment rate couldn't be starker. "It's just got to feel wrong to a lot of people," says Douglas Elliott, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, speaking of the Goldman compensation announcement. "It seems to me a political mistake...
...popping Goldman profits also create a policy problem for lawmakers, including the President, as they try to reform the financial system to ensure that history does not repeat itself. At issue is not just the safeguards that traders are using to ensure that another crisis of confidence doesn't occur, but whether traders on Wall Street are taking advantage of the public backstop against systemic failure to create personal profits. "We want financial systems to be healthy," says Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary. But, he adds, "the President continues to have concerns that compensation will be based...
Though both Goldman and JPMorgan have paid back their infusion of Treasury dollars, the recent crisis has made clear to investors that the firms are considered by U.S. policymakers to be "too big to fail." The crisis has also created a premium for those firms willing to take on more risk in trades. According to company data, Goldman - which converted to a commercial bank at the height of the crisis in order to gain easier access to cheaper government credit - has significantly reduced its leverage ratio, which measures how much money it borrows, from 27.9 at the beginning...