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"FacebookPinterest\n\nRecently, through strange circumstances, I have become an incredibly wealthy person.\n\nIt was not always so. Not long ago, I was an impoverished freelance magazine writer, contributing articles to this very magazine on the subject of snuff and hangover cures and sword canes. It sounds horrible, I know, but do not judge. Back then, it was the only way I could afford a sword cane.\n\nBut now, of course, I am an accidental famous minor television personality. Now I have dozens of custom-made sword canes, and even some that are not even canes\u2014just plain swords that I use as canes, because I am that incredibly wealthy. Plus tudos, decent dress shoes, that expensive cat food you never buy\u2014everything.\n\nMy life is completely different, and I have insight now to a whole new world of privilege, excess, and unaccountable influence over the government that is hidden from you, because you are poor.\n\nTake, for example, the case of the investment bank Goldman Sachs, which has been in the news lately for posting massive profits in the midst of a worldwide financial crisis that cost millions of Americans their homes and jobs and caused competing banks, such as Lehman Brothers, to spontaneously combust in eerie blue flame.\n\nNaturally, people have questions about this mysterious institution, and here are some of them, with answers provided by me.\n\nWhat is Goldman Sachs?\n\nGoldman Sachs is an investment bank founded in 1869 with the simple goal of providing short-term loans to local businesses and to secretly run the U.S. government.\n\nDo they secretly run the U.S. government?\n\nNo. Goldman Sachs abandoned that part of its charter after commissioning the Great Depression, when the Goldman board (also known as the Council of the Invisible Hand) determined that the day-to-day work of governance\u2014taxation, defense, figuring out how to keep impoverished children from dying in the streets, hobo fighting, etc. \u2014was boring.\n\nSince then, the Invisible Hand has been content to simply keep a few highly placed agents within the government to make sure it does not get in the way.\n\nWho are these agents?\n\nIt's not a secret: Robert Rubin, Clinton's secretary of the treasury, and Henry Paulson, George W. Bush's, were both heads of Goldman and both occasionally wore the powder blue robes and silvery face paint that is the sign of their office. Timothy Geithner, the current treasury secretary, is not a Goldman alum, but he is a prot\u00E9g\u00E9 of Rubin's (the two have been known to go clubbing together), and Geithner's chief of staff is a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist.\n\nIs it true that Goldman Sachs also secretly engineered the tech bubble of the '90s?\n\nI have heard the same rumors\u2014that Goldman Sachs rigged the IPO boom, that Kozmo.com was still delivering piles of cash and quarts of milk to the Goldman Sachs pyramid in Manhattan long after the Pets.com sock puppet had hanged itself. But that does not mean they caused it. Next you are going to tell me that you read they commissioned the Great Depression.\n\nI did read that. About four paragraphs ago.\n\nNext you'll be telling me that Goldman Sachs just made Cond\u00E9 Nast shut down Gourmet as a warning.\n\nWhat are you saying?\n\nI AM SAYING: Please stop telling me things. If you have conspiracy theories, just bring them by the GS pyramid between noon and four. They will write your family and tell them that you're fine.\n\nBut even if Goldman Sachs is as nefarious as some people make out, these booms also made a lot of people very rich, no? Not everyone lost his shirt.\n\nPerhaps, but the thing to remember is that what you consider to be wealth is not wealth. Even my incredible fortune is nothing compared with the billions amassed by Goldman Sachs.\n\nHow can I explain this to you? Let's say you are a standard millionaire. You have several houses and wear only fur. When you fly, you fly first-class and drink champagne and read the special luxury-lifestyle magazine they provide for you there. Maybe you consider buying a penthouse in one of the fancy golf and people-bossing-around resorts they advertise there, because you can easily afford it. You think: I am wealthy.\n\nBut you are a joke to Goldman Sachs. They are laughing at you. Seriously, right now they are laughing at you, watching you through the little cameras they have on every plane. And when they trick you into coming to one of their \"resorts,\" they will keep you there, imprisoned, to make you dance for their pleasure. And no one will stop them, because of the packs of wolves they keep who wear chain mail.\n\nSo even though you personally might have done well in the increasing massive-boom/massive-bust cycle that now dominates our economy, is that really the kind of society you want? The one where wolves wear chain mail?\n\nLiterally, they will make me dance?\n\nNo. But you may end up being a piece in one of Henry Paulson's famous human-backgammon matches. Watch out for those dice: They will crush you."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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