GOLDMAN SUX? Giant Squid Strikes Again at
Occupy Wall Street's Credit Union Goldman Sachs Intensifies Threat on Credit Union By Greg Palast
What have I done? There's one angry squid out there.
Last week, The SHADOW, Democracy Now! and The Guardian ran our
story about Goldman Sachs yanking financial support from a community
credit union for honoring one of its largest customers. The customer:
Occupy Wall Street. [Click here for this story--Ed.]
Our report so enraged Goldman that, within days, it doubled down on
its attack on the little community bank.
Goldman had already demanded the return of its $5,000 payment to the Lower East Side
Peoples Federal Credit Union. Now, sources say, the trillion-dollar Wall Street mega-bank
sent the following message to the not-for-profit community bank: "You will never get a
dime from any bank ever again."
About those "dimes" Goldman is taking away: They come from you and me, the taxpayers
who put up billions into the Troubled Asset Recovery Plan (TARP), usually known as the
Bank Bail-Out Fund.
For Goldman to suck its $10 billion from the TARP trough, Goldman had to change from
investment bank to commercial bank. This change makes Goldman subject to the Community
Reinvestment Act (CRA) and requires it by law to pay back a notable portion in funds for low-
income communities, abandoned by the big banks.
In other words, Goldman is beating up Lower East Side Peoples (which operates in Harlem
and the Latino New York neighborhood known as Loisaida).
I would note that Goldman's nasty threat to cut off funding for Peoples, the credit union that
is officially chartered as the bank for low income New Yorkers, came with a complaint about
this reporter.
Goldman claims that Greg Palast called only one time to get Goldman's side of the story. (I
called many times, as did my associate, and we left the same repeated message: I want your
side of the story. Please call me and tell me if you're punishing the poor peoples' bank
because they are supporting the demands of Occupy Wall Street?)
There are tens of billions of dollars at stake in the Community Reinvestment funds due from
the big banks. As other banks are making noises of heeding Goldman's call to whip the
uppity little credit union, an answer from Goldman becomes urgent. So, Goldman, I'm still
waiting for an answer. You've got my numbers, so just pick up a tentacle and call.
[Greg Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance
Carnivores, which will be released on November 14 by Penguin USA. Chapter 12 of Vultures' Picnic, "The
Generalissimo of Globalization," includes the Palast team investigation of confidential documents of meetings
over years between Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and the CEOs of Goldman, Bank of America and JP Morgan.
The investigation takes the Palast crew from a dictator's shopping spree in Geneva to the Andes to Africa and
back to Palast's years within the circle of a troll-like character named Milton Friedman. For more information
about Palast's brand new book and his book-signing events in your city, go to http://www.VulturesPicnic.org]
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