April 21, 2014
Two filmmakers traveled from Germany to Wall Street to award the “Public Eye Award” to Goldman Sachs for Irresponsible Behavior in Finance and Economics
We are here today to deliver the 2013 Public Eye Award to Goldman Sachs. This renowned dishonor, that was voted on the world over by people from disparate nations to single out the most irresponsible institution in economics and finance, was previously announced in Davos during the World Economic Forum. The time has come to deliver the award itself.
This award was primarily earned by Goldman Sachs through its work in Greece: a commitment that we and the rest of the world believes should stand as an archetypical example of the work of Goldman Sachs around the world. This is but one example of many we could have chosen, to be sure.
With the beginning of the new millennium Goldman Sachs helped Greece to hide a big part of its state debts, as a technical device, hidden from public view, that allowed Greece to get into the Euro. In 2009 this fraud threatened to become public, and as a response Goldman Sachs again helped to find another way to hide its Greek actions, through a letterbox company in London.
So far Goldman’s profit from these transactions was at least 600 million dollars, and Greece owes the bank the tidy sum of 400 million dollars per year until 2037, for a total of more than 10 billion dollars, entirely at the expense of the ordinary Greece people. This behavior was a major contributor to the events that have driven the Greek economy to the abyss it now faces.
Most of the Greek have lost their welfare, the Greek social security system has been destroyed, and hunger and poverty are terrifying and widespread. An entire country is being robbed and enslaved to debt for the sake of extra profits for one corporation.
We should also mention that, on the evening that this award was announced in Davos, the heads of Goldman Sachs gathered in a neighboring hotel to discuss their Greek fraud and robbing as having been perfectly legal.
And this is technically true. But it is also the center of the problem, namely because Goldman Sachs takes part in writing those laws. The company is the epitome of a money machine with an opaque and matchless network of allies in top positions. For example, the head of the Goldman Sachs department which invented the Greek robbery, Mario Draghi, is the current president of the European Central Bank. Also three consecutive EU-Commissioners are former Goldman Sachs top-level employees.
In the United States we see the same progression: Robert Rubin, the US Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton came from Goldman Sachs. Hank Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs CEO, was also the US Secretary of the Treasure during the largest bail-out of the banking system the United States has ever seen, where he oversaw the transference of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into the biggest banks on Wall Street while regular Americans were losing their jobs and home at the highest rates since 1930s.
Because of the above we hereby formally hand over to Goldman Sachs the award for irresponsible behavior in finance and economics.