Mike Morgan is a registered investment adviser and a scrappy
shoot-from-the-hip guy who doesn�t mince his words. Recently Morgan has come
under fire from investment giant Goldman Sachs for his hard-hitting web site �Facts
about Goldman Sachs.�
According to the U.K. Telegraph, �Goldman Sachs is
attempting to shut down a dissident blogger who is extremely critical of the
investment bank, its board members and its practices. The bank has instructed
Wall Street law firm Chadbourne & Parke to pursue blogger Mike Morgan,
warning him in a recent cease-and-desist letter that he may face legal action if
he does not close down his website.
�According to Chadbourne & Parke�s letter, dated April
8, the bank is rattled because the site �violates several of Goldman Sachs�
intellectual property rights� and also �implies a relationship� with the bank
itself.
�Unsurprisingly for a man who has conjoined the bank�s name
with the Number of the Beast -- although he jokingly points out that 666 was
also the S&P 500�s bear-market bottom -- Mr Morgan is unlikely to go down
without a fight. He claims he has followed all legal requirements to own and
operate the website -- and that the header of the site clearly states that the
content has not been approved by the bank.
�On a special section of his blog entitled �Goldman Sachs vs
Mike Morgan,� he predicts that the fight will probably end up in court.
��It�s just another example of how a bully like Goldman
Sachs tries to throw their weight around,� he writes.� (UK Telegraph)
Morgan agreed to answer a few questions about Goldman Sachs,
the TARP and the ongoing financial crisis.
Mike Whitney: Is Goldman Sachs trying to shut down your web
site?
Mike Morgan: Yes
MW: Why?
Morgan: The legal answer to that would be . . . you need to
ask them the question. I would think it is because we are exposing the truth . .
. and the truth hurts.
MW: Have you libeled them or published privileged
information?
Morgan: No.
MW: Could you tell us something about yourself so that
readers can trust your criticism of G-Sax?
Morgan: I am 53 years old and believe all of the answers for
how we should live are in the Bible . . . God gave David the choice of paying
the consequences at the hands of David�s enemies or at the hand of God. David
chose God�s consequences. Hank Paulson and the thousands of wicked men like him
deserve the wrath of the millions of lives they have destroyed. We must go
after the crooks and make them pay the consequences for their greed and the
total disregard for anyone other than themselves. We need to start with Hank
Paulson, who as CEO of Goldman Sachs, was more responsible than any 10 men
combined, for the violent Depression we are about to enter.
MW: Why was G-Sax given $10 billion out of the TARP funds
before federal regulators checked their books to see if they were solvent?
Morgan: Because King Henry (Henry Paulson) said so. As
former CEO of Goldman Sachs, the last thing he wanted to see was a collapse of
Goldman Sachs. And as Treasury secretary with a big stick, he could do whatever
he pleased . . . and he did.
MW: It was widely believed that most of the five biggest
investment banks were leveraged 30 to 1. If that�s the case, then G-Sax
probably would not have survived the downturn in the market without government
assistance. Do you agree with this analysis?
Morgan: I agree.
MW: After Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. defaulted, Merrill
Lynch quickly sold out to Bank of America.
Morgan: Merrill was being run by John Thain, the former
Goldman Sachs executive that helped Hank Paulson force out Jon Corzine who at
the time was c -- CEO with Paulson.
MW: That left Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as the next
likely candidates to be taken down by short sellers.
Morgan: Short seller are not the issue. If short sellers
drive down a stock below market value, then it becomes an opportunity for
anyone that thinks the stock is a buy to bury the shorts.
MW: This is when SEC chief Christopher Cox -- who had never
intervened in the market prior to this -- put emergency rules in place to stop
the short selling of financial institutions. What was Cox�s action all about?
Morgan: The SEC is toothless and I still don�t know why Cox
is not in jail. He not only looked the other way on the Madoff issue, but since
he left, the SEC has gone after more than a dozen scams. Are you going to tell
me everything was fine three months ago on Chrissy Cox�s watch? No, but I can
tell you there is much more to this story. . . . As for the SEC and short
sellers, that was King Henry. Period. Full Stop.
MW: Was this mainly an attempt by Washington elites to pull
G-Sax�s bacon out of the fire?
Morgan: Goldman Sachs and other companies affiliated with
Goldman Sachs. Kinda like the old MCI Friends and Family Program.
MW: Recently it was revealed that G-Sax had been paid more
than $12 billion for credit default swaps (CDS) it held with insurance giant AIG.
Financial institutions that buy these CDS know that they are accepting
additional risk because they are unregulated and outside government oversight.
That said, Treasury�s payoff to G-Sax on these CDS was equivalent to paying off
a gambler�s losses at the racetrack. Why was G-Sax compensated for their CDS;
why was it kept secret; and who authorized it?
Morgan: King Henry and his loyal lieutenant Neil Kashkari.
Most people don�t realize, Neil Kashkari was King Henry�s lieutenant at Goldman
Sachs. Neil is 35 years old with little experience other than being a very
private executive assistant to King Henry when he was CEO of Goldman. Let�s ask
ourselves . . . why exactly is Kashkari still on the job? Easy answer . . . because
our president and Chris Dodd were both bought with Goldman Sachs� money. These
two men have received more money from Wall Street than any politician in the
history of the United States. By the way, Obama was only around for two years,
while Dodd was there for more than a decade. Obama received more money from
Wall Street in two years than Dodd did in a decade.
MW: What is the nature of the relationship between G-Sax and
the political establishment in Washington?
Morgan: If I answered that question, I would need to
increase the thickness of my Kevlar body suit.
MW: Why is Treasury a revolving door for investment bankers
that are tied to Wall Street?
Morgan: Because the American public allows it. Benjamin
Franklin said . . . Well done is better than well said. Too many Americans
gripe and moan, but when it comes time to doing anything . . . they sit back on
the couch with a bag of chips and the TV. We think it is cute to use the TV to
amuse our toddlers. Do you think it is any different for 75 percent of the
American public?
MW: Are special interest groups dictating policy in the
Obama White House?
Morgan: I can�t count that high. But if you just look at
Wall Street and where the money came from, you will realize that Barack Hussein
Obama is nothing more than a puppet of Wall Street.
MW: In an article which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, a
former chief economist of the IMF, Simon Johnson, had this to say: �The crash
has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States . . . recovery
will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential
reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression we�re running out of time.�
Do you agree with Johnson that banks have a stranglehold on
the political process and that �we are running out of time�? If so, how do we
go about removing these people from office and replacing them with people who
will operate in the public�s interest?
Morgan: First, I think guys like Simon Johnson are the guys
that should be running the show. Simon along with William Black, Elizabeth
Warren and Ron Paul. There are more, but if we had that trio at the helm, we�d
be moving to a world of light, instead of a world of deep, violent darkness.
As to your question about how to remove these people from
office, I believe it will be very violent . . . and very well deserved. We are
two Biblical generations removed from the Great Depression of 1929. In 1969, we
had race riots. We lost a true leader when we lost Martin Luther King, and the
country paid the consequences. Here we are 40 years later . . . a Biblical
generation, as we enter what I believe will be a period of violence beginning
this summer. When you can�t feed your kids, and the folks at Goldman Sachs are
sitting around the pool sipping cocktails and munching on snacks . . . that�s
when those without go after those with.
The problem now is very simply . . . companies like Goldman
Sachs created a financial system that was double stacked. One, they skimmed
trillions of dollars out of our pension fund and other fiduciary money under
their management. Two, like drug dealers they provided very creative financing
to hundreds of millions of people around the world . . . which those folks can
no longer afford to pay back. But the boys and girls at Goldman Sachs have
already walked off with the money, leaving the people that bought the debt with
little more than a piece of paper . . . and those that owe the debt, with the
inability to ever pay it back.
MW: Will you fight Goldman in court?
Morgan: Yes. I�m prepared to fight them with several
attorneys and law professors that are anxious to take this one on. I hope they
do press the issue in court, but I kinda doubt it.
Mike
Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.