Goldman Sachs and Company

The recent charges levied by the SEC on Goldman Sachs bring to light a grim reality about the financial crisis. The crisis itself sent the world economy into recession and came close to being worse. Thanks to the level of globalization that exists in the world economy, as Joseph Stiglitz clearly points out, we can export any recession all the way to the other side of the world. The problem with this last recession is that it could have been prevented with a little more oversight. Now the crisis has passed and they know who’s to blame because they’ve known all along. It’s amazing that considering the disparity of wealth distribution that has been growing in the last quarter century this situation with Goldman Sachs was allowed to happen and clearly exemplifies why this disparity has grown. This was a clear cut example of how power and the manipulation of information by a few were used to enrich themselves and impoverish a large number of investors with dire consequences across the whole of the economy. It’s hard to fathom what a billion dollars can do but its effects are obviously huge for better or for worse. In this case it was for the better of Goldman and for the worse of investors who trusted their new product. Now the repercussions of this specific instance are hard to pin down, but this was an ongoing practice that led to very bad times for people who for the most part did not know why and what was going on and had nothing to do with it. There is nothing wrong with wealth and making money; it is one of the cornerstones of our system. There are just a lot of good things that can come from using this power to increase the wealth and wellbeing of the many.