Another episode of Benefits St.

[David Johnson]

This week's benefit scroungers are Goldman Sachs. It was Goldman Sachs along with UBS who advised the government on the sell-off of 60% of Royal Mail, including an appropriate share price.

In return for this "advice" Goldman Sachs and UBS received ?12 million. Apparently another ?4 million is due. Mind you ?12 mill. is a helluva lot of jsa and housing benefit, ain't it? Well, forumites I am sure you would agree that "quality" advice doesn't come cheap.

Err, not quite. Apparently they advised the government to sell Royal Mail shares at 330p a share which is what happened in October.

The following month, November, Goldman Sachs advised that a 12-month price target of 610p was realistic for customers buying Royal Mail shares which represents an 85% premium on the flotation price. If this proves correct the various hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds from overseas countries etc who bought the majority of the shares will have trousered about ?2 billion from OUR Royal Mail selloff. The current share price for Royal Mail is ?5.61.

In comparison, the bedroom tax will save about ?400 million tops. So which one of these is Goldman Sachs?

[img]http://i2.birminghammail.co.uk/incoming ... 470310.jpg[/img]

Err, none of them, Goldman Sachs' gaff is in Fleet Street. Those boys don't fuck about when it comes down to getting benefits.

[img]http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/arc ... 43240c.jpg[/img]

Tara a bit!

[Gentleman]

Lol...well said.

[Essex Lad]

What's the relevance of the ugly bloke and the two fat women?

[cockneygeezer2009]

"This week's benefit scroungers are Goldman Sachs."

Not so much benefit scroungers but GS certainly have 'benefited' courtesy of the taxpayer. The rich get richer and the poor get benefits and possibly a food bank to visit.

[Essex Lad]

I'm not for one second defending Goldman Sachs or any of their ilk but when will people realise that making the rich poor does not make the poor rich.

Labour's plan to soak the rich until the pips squeak does not work, never has, never will. In the 1970s under Labour the top rate of income tax was 98p in the pound. Guess what? It didn't make any difference to poor people. Nearly 40 years later, we still have poor people...

[cockneygeezer2009]

"making the rich poor does not make the poor rich."

In general terms you can't make the rich poor but you can have a society where the wealth is more evenly spread around.

[Essex Lad]

cockneygeezer2009 wrote:

> "making the rich poor does not make the poor rich."
>
> In general terms you can't make the rich poor but you can have
> a society where the wealth is more evenly spread around.
>
Except I don't think a society like that has ever existed.

[Robches]

David:

It is perfectly possible to be against welfare scroungers and corporate scroungers at the same time. There is no logical disconnect.

[max_tranmere]

That's pretty bad if what you say is correct.

[David Johnson]

I'm running a dating agency and I thought this was a good opportunity to plug it.