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Goldman Sachs May Report Strong Profit - NYTimes.com
Most of Wall Street, and America, is still waiting for an economic recovery. Then there is Goldman Sachs.

Up and down Wall Street, analysts and traders are buzzing that Goldman, which only recently paid back its government bailout money, will report blowout profits from trading on Tuesday.

Analysts predict the bank earned a profit of more than $2 billion in the March-June period, because of its trading prowess across world markets. If they are right, the bank's rivals will once again be left to wonder exactly how Goldman, long the envy of Wall Street, could have rebounded so drastically only months after the nation's financial industry was shaken to its foundations.

The obsessive speculation has already begun, along with banter about how Goldman's rapid return to minting money will be perceived by lawmakers and taxpayers who aided Goldman with a multibillion-dollar cushion last fall.

by Fran (fran at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jul 13th, 2009 at 02:05:05 PM EST
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More Families Are Becoming Homeless, Study Finds - washingtonpost.com
Louis Gill doesn't like to turn anyone away. The director of the Bakersfield Homeless Center in California has taken to laying out cots and mattresses between the shelter's 174 registered beds to cope with the rush of homeless families brought to his doors by the financial crisis.

"Last year, we saw a 34 percent increase in homeless families and a 24 percent increase in homeless children," he said. "Why do we go beyond capacity? Because in a just society, a child should not have to sleep outside or in a car."

Gill is a frontline witness to the change in the makeup of the country's homeless. The stereotype of a homeless person as a single man no longer applies. A resident of the Bakersfield center is far more likely to be a young mother with a "good, solid job and a mortgage that she just couldn't pay."

"They're like folks you know and that you've worked with," Gill said. "Maybe the work's not there right now. Maybe they got behind on their payments. But the idea of a typical homeless person has changed. We're seeing individuals come in that have never had to access the safety net before."

by Fran (fran at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jul 13th, 2009 at 02:05:23 PM EST
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Goldman Sachs May Report Strong Profit - NYTimes.com
More Families Are Becoming Homeless, Study Finds - washingtonpost.com

Coincidence?  I think not.

Now where are we going and what's with the handbasket?

by budr on Mon Jul 13th, 2009 at 05:24:46 PM EST
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Of course you can make money if you're screwing the market.

keep to the Fen Causeway
by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Mon Jul 13th, 2009 at 05:26:07 PM EST
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Of course you can make money if you're screwing you are the market.

Fixed.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Mon Jul 13th, 2009 at 07:38:45 PM EST
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Actually, it's okay is you make money because you're the market. It's not okay if it's becuase you're screwing with it.

The peak-to-trough part of the business cycle is an outlier. Carnot would have died laughing.
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jul 14th, 2009 at 04:07:10 AM EST
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Many of us have suggested a "Tobin tax" on financial transactions as a way to raise money and to discourage rapid trading.  It is beginning to look like this is what the government has given Goldman, in part through its Supplementary Liquidity Provider status and in part through studiously looking the other way concerning how Goldman has combined this with their market monitoring and proprietary trading programs.  This has allowed GS to make >$100 million a day in trading profits.  That is >$2 billion a month, just from their proprietary trading, "market making" and "Supplementary Liquidity Provision" services.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Mon Jul 13th, 2009 at 08:39:38 PM EST
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