ARE THERE NO WORKHOUSES???

On the eve of Goldman Sachs bonus frenzy, the NYTimes ran a front pager in the biz section about Goldman now instituting some sort of percentage of your bonus to charity rule.  I'm personally thrilled that the average Goldman worker, who is slated for a mere 6-700.000$ in bonuses (don't forget that quite a few hundred already earn a million a year), that the company, to soften its image problem is seeking to look more ...well more something.

I was wondering what it is, exactly, that Goldman does. Seriously. Wadda they make? Do they make flanges? Rivets? TVs?  Nah.  Hmmmm.  These kids in the picture do something you can measure. But I'm sure GS doesn't look much at them or think of them or realize that someone, somewhere, has to make something of value or do work that leads to a product for this entire enterprise to function and so the GS folks can make a living.

Well they gotta make something don't they? (other than money)...but precisely where does that money come from because no one goes up them and buys ONE DAMN PIECE OF PRODUCT that I can see. They make NOTHING.  Ahhh so then these are all fees and trading profits?  Big fees for arranging deals type of thing right? Profits from a trading floor? Billions in profits from a trading floor that operates because of the good will (or just drinking buddies) at Treasury when Mr. Paulson wrote his three page business plan that incidentally wouldn't have gotten out of the mail room for the M@A department??? and GS gets 100 cents on the dollar for crap paper that they produced from AIG?

When I first moved to Long Island, in the effort to add a little to the family income, I took a private chef job with a GS exec and wife who lived nicely on weekends out here.  I would shop and cook for them, from Friday night until Sunday brunch.  It paid plenty and frankly they were very very nice people and they treated me very well.  Friday night dinners were just the two of them. Saturday breakfast and lunch, the same, but Saturday night dinners were big deal events with usually a dozen "client" friends.  I got to know a couple of them really well as they were big clients of the GS guy and they would steal into the kitchen just to talk, have a drink, nosh and get away from the others I think.
It was pleasant and financially rewarding but I have to tell you, I was a tax deduction and a biz expense.  That was my introduction to GS.  The people were great.  The way that it was done stinks now and stunk then.  It involved no personal expenditure.  I'm not discounting the absolute fact that these were good people but they knew the system, like GS does now, and it is always based on the labor of others.