Goldman Sachs had its Christmas bonuses this year impacted by the credit crisis. Instead of the $16 BILION paid out last year, they are only, only, and I am sorry to report this, able to allocate $12.1 BILLION this year. What a blow.

If you want to read more, check out Nomi Prins’s book OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY (The New Press) . She has a chapter on Goldman. Many employess at the firm formerly headed by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson will have plenty of time to read. The New York Times recently reported:

Goldman, Sachs & Company is preparing a second round of layoffs, according to employees at the investment bank. A memo was circulated late Tuesday that called staff reductions “unfortunately inevitable,” a Goldman employee said. The memo did not indicate how many employees would be laid off. In October, Goldman, the privately held investment banking firm based in New York, said it was cutting 450 employees from its staff of 9,000, a reduction of 5 percent. Those layoffs mainly involved traders and support staff in the firm’s fixed-income securities department. It is unclear what areas of the firm would be affected by the second round of layoffs.

China paid $5 Billion today for a stake in Morgan Stanley.

YOUR ECONOMY AND MINE: HARVEST OF SHAME, PT 2

Slave labor that shames America

Migrant workers chained beaten and forced into debt, exposing the human cost of producing cheap food

By Leonard Doyle in Immokalee, Floride

Three Florida fruit-pickers, held captive and brutalised by their employer for more than a year, finally broke free of their bonds by punching their way through the ventilator hatch of the van in which they were imprisoned. Once outside, they dashed for freedom.

When they found sanctuary one recent Sunday morning, all bore the marks of heavy beatings to the head and body. One of the pickers had a nasty, untreated knife wound on his arm. Police would learn later that another man had his hands chained behind his back every night to prevent him escaping, leaving his wristsswollen.

The migrants were not only forced to work in sub-human conditions but mistreated and forced into debt. They were locked up at night and had to pay for sub-standard food….

PROOF: 2004 ELECTION WAS STOLEN

MARVIN KITMAN IN THE HUFF POST ON THE NY POST

When we read the Post today it’s like reading Pravda in the less democratic days of the Soviet Union. The Post is Rupert’s Pravda. He deserves a Pravda the same way Stalin deserved a Pravda.

True, it’s a little hard on Murdoch and News Corp’s targets. Page Six is still at war with Ron Burkle. The man who ranks 117th on the Forbes 400 Richest Americans of 2006 list, Burkle never gets a positive mention on Page Six. If there’s a way of associating Burkle’s name in a story about Adolph Hitler, they will figure it out: “Adolph Hitler, who Ron Burkle never met …”

Keep in mind that Alexander Hamilton founded the original New York Evening Post as a venue for his many essays about what needed fixing in the new country. He used at least five poison pen names –Publius, Phocion, Lucius Crassius, Camillus, Pacifius among the most famous– to spew Federalist wisdom and venom at his Jeffersonian rivals.

Heck, even Stalin got to write the occasional piece about his enemies for Pravda.

Studying Post coverage of news is like reading Pravda in the old days to see who stood where on the Kremlin balcony watching the May Day parade. It’s especially a joy to see its TV critic squirm when reviewing Fox Network shows. Occasionally, he might say something negative just to prove his objectivity, in case anybody does a Nexus search.

I love it. The Post is entertaining. It’s fun to see how bad a paper can be in the 226th year of our democracy.

No, the issue should be not so much whether you own a newspaper and a TV station, but whether you own more than one TV station in the same market.

“Monopoly is a terrible thing,” Rupert Murdoch once said, “till you have it.”

No wonder they call this the Bushevik era

WORLD FAMOUS WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK AT RISK: CALL TO ACTION
NEIGHBORS SAY: DON’T LET THEM DESTROY WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK
$16 million price tag = 32 trees to be chopped down

PLEASE PHONE NY CITY COUNCIL CHAIR CHRISTINE QUINN TODAY.

Tell her that you want her to stop funding immediately for chainsawing the trees in Washington Square Park and identify yourself and state your affiliation. If you are from outside of New York City, your call can be especially helpful. Tell her that you won’t visit NYC if they’re going to tear down the trees and privatize the public parks:

(212) 564-7757 and (212) 788-7210

ALSO CONTACT CITY COUNCIL MEMBER ALAN GERSON
212-788-7722 and 212-788-7259

HAPPY EID AND MORE

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