Goldman’s supporting role in the inspector general’s report once again highlights that company’s often cozy connections with the halls of government power. Those ties have earned the firm the nickname “Government Sachs,” from the fact that Henry Paulson, President George W. Bush’s last Treasury secretary, once ran Goldman, to the close ties between Goldman and AIG (AIG), and the bank’s receipt of $12.9 billion of AIG’s bailout money. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama received nearly $1 million in campaign contributions from Goldman employees, second only to University of California workers.
Why wouldn’t Goldman, or BlackRock or JPMorgan, want to scratch Millard’s back? He’d just landed them contracts worth tens of millions of dollars.
BusinessWeek scoops that congressional officials are asking for a full-fledged criminal investigation into the matter. This is getting fun.
Finally, a raspberry to the Journal for not seeing fit to put this story in the paper. That’s just really poor news judgment.
Back when the first Globe article came out, your eventual interpretation of the article was that the Globe never suggested the assets were shifted, only that the PBGC "decided to" shift those funds. Now the Globe is saying in this article that the shift had occurred.
As the PBGC acting director's testimony stated today, those assets were never shifted as the Globe was trying to claim. The new investment policy was never implemented because of the investigation into Millard's communications with the bidders.
#1 Posted by WorldlyPlayer, CJR on Wed 20 May 2009 at 09:19 PM
No, that's not what this article is saying, nor was it what the original article intended to say.
#2 Posted by Ryan Chittum, CJR on Wed 20 May 2009 at 10:37 PM