Blankfein – “doing God’s work” or doing gods work?

I wrote about Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein’s statement, “doing God’s work” in my previous post “ Bonuses at Big 3 banks total nearly $30 billion in 2009 – Americans as a whole did not fare as well” in the context of how important he was to the world, but it occurred to me in a brief moment of clarity that he probably meant he was doing gods work, similar to the Greek gods presented below:

Eris

We can look at Eris, the goddess of strife and discord, as being more appropriate to what Blankfein was trying to get across. After all, it was the big banksters with their no holds barred competition and rivalry that created the financial crisis. If Morgan Stanley came up with a money making but risky product then Lehman had to create a more risky product that produced larger profits. AIG was offering insurance against these financial packages they didn’t have the capacity to pay off pay off. Soon the financial products being offered were merely bets that would be paid off by the taxpayer. And as with Eris, the financial masters of destruction delight in the human bloodshed (financial) that they have caused. If they didn’t delight in this financial bloodshed, they wouldn’t be robbing the taxpayer to increase their bonus pool.

As goddess of war, Enyo is responsible for orchestrating the destruction of cities: Goldman Sachs and the rest of the big banksters destroyed cities with their mortgage products that were designed to be bundled and sold to the next in line fool that would grab them. Cities like Detroit, Stockton, CA, Las Vegas, NV and Miami, FL have seen their housing markets severly damaged by liar loans, no money down mortgages, “investor” greed, bought appraisals, and other too good to be true real estate scams created and encouraged by the Wall Street banksters.

Hermes

Then there’s Hermes; the most mentioned off the Greek gods who exhibits both positive and negative traits. “As an adroit speaker, he was especially employed as messenger, when eloquence was required to attain the desired object.” There is no doubt that Blankfein and his gang of banksters can convince others with their babble. They were able to increase their leverage from the normal 12 to 1 to 30, 40 or 50 to 1! These financial gangsters were able to talk regulators and Congress into removing most regulatory hurdles that limited financial gambling.

Hermes, “Being endowed with this shrewdness and sagacity, he was regarded as the author of a variety of inventions, and, besides the lyre and syrinx, he is said to have invented the alphabet, numbers,…” You can see that the Blankfein gang is shrewd, since they were able to invent CDOs, CDSs and all shapes and size derivatives that continue to wreak havoc.

And finally, “Hermes is also the god of gain and riches, especially of sudden and unexpected riches, such as are acquired by commerce.” The sudden and unexpected riches derived from deregulation, lax enforcement of remaining regulation and the purchasing of congress through large campaign donations allowed Blankfein and his band of thieves to attain those riches under any circumstances, since the taxpayer had their backs.

The goddess Hybris could be another god that Blankfein was referring to. Hybris, or hubris, was certainly practiced by the banksters from the day they were finally able to overturn Glass-Steagall and run roughshod through lax banking regulations. No longer were the banksters held back by legislation that limited their financial arrogance and reckless behavior. These people not only thought they were superior to market fundamentals, but to elected representatives and government regulators, as well as the Fed and Treasury. They had every right to feel superior, since they had elected representatives and government regulators in their hip pocket to manage as they saw fit. But hubris inevitably leads to tragedy – financial tragedy in this case.

So now I know what Blankfein was referring to when he said that he is just “doing gods work”; the gods of destruction, arrogance, greed, hubris, strife and discord.

Ted Rall