Is Goldman Sachs The Baddest of Them All?

- The Goldman Gang
   by Mark Faulk     It's the stuff that Hollywood movies are made of; a greedy heartless mega-conglomerate that controls our lives in some significant way, either our pharmaceutical industry, our military-industrial complex, or maybe even our government. It is always a shadowy and nefarious entity, one that that can only be exposed through seemingly chance meetings in seedy neighborhood bars, where unidentified people talk in hushed whispers.

    And so it is with this story. I'm not even sure why I'm writing about this. I don't have answers yet, only questions and the vague ramblings of paranoid industry insiders, who invariably introduce themselves and then admonish me to forget their names, to throw away their business cards.

    I've been in New York City now for the past four weeks, a world so far removed from Oklahoma that as I lie awake writing these words late at night, I'm not even certain that what I'm about to say is relevant in Middle America. With the disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street, the stock market and futures market seems about as meaningful to Oklahomans as igloos and Eskimos.

    But yet here we are, facing what will eventually be remembered as the worst economic meltdown in the history of our country. And the rubble on Wall Street is directly affecting even the most unaware worker in the smallest town in the Midwest.