Bob Chapman
Market Review
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Due to the fact that Goldman Sachs is currently the favorite of Washington they are raking in massive profits during a time when most banks and brokerage firms are struggling for survival.
Due to a very successful second quarter, Goldman has set aside $226,156 per employee in compensation – a 75% increase per employee. That means annualized compensation could be $1 million per employee for the year. We find this of great interest inasmuch as the recently converted bank received a $10 billion taxpayer bailout via Goldman’s connections in Washington. They also received a myriad of benefits from several other government schemes over the past two years. It is nice to know that in part American taxpayers made this possible while unemployment is running on a U6 basis at 20.5%, and Americans are losing their homes by the millions.
Pay surged 75% in the second quarter and compensation and benefits costs were $6.65 billion, up 37% from the equivalent quarter in 2008.
The immense profits of 33% were mainly due to trading profits of $2.7 billion. Goldman made up 24% of the Black Box program. Program trading made up 73% of all NYSE trading.
