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Sunday, January 1, 2017

Filling the swamp with squid


Matt Taibbi labeled Goldman Sachs “the Vampire Squid” because of its financial power and its ability to manipulate and control whatever it wants.

In this article, he points out that Trump ridiculed his opponents for their connections to Goldman Sachs, but is now turning the nation’s economy over to…veterans of Goldman Sachs. The Vampire Squid is now a key player in Trump’s swamp.

“In his final pitch to voters in the days before the election, Trump used the image of [Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd] Blankfein in a TV ad to argue that insiders had ruined the lives of ordinary Americans to enrich themselves. Here is the narration you heard when Blankfein’s face came on screen:

“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.”

“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.



Image may contain: 1 person, meme and text“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.

“But the real shocker is the recent appointment 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 the Greek affair.

“So much for draining the swamp.

“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.”