Florida Blogger in David-and-Goliath Battle with Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs, NYC, from Telegraph UK

On Saturday, April 11, The Daily Telegraph reported that investment giant Goldman Sachs has retained Chadbourne & Parke, a Wall Street law firm, to shut down the website of Mike Morgan, a Florida blogger and registered investment advisor.

Morgan, who just set up his blog in late March, is currently gathering volunteers to help him research the bank’s influence on the U.S. Government and the stock market. Morgan’s website is here. He has scheduled a conference call and “webinar” for tomorrow night, April 15 at 6PM for volunteers who want to help him research Goldman Sachs, their role the the financial meltdown, and their possible manipulation of the stock market through their dealings with AIG. He also wants to call attention to Goldman Sachs’ influence on the government through their large donations to politicians such as President Barack Obama and Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd. Morgan discloses that he did lose money from his investments with Goldman Sachs.

From the Telegraph:

According to Chadbourne & Parke’s letter, dated April 8, the bank is rattled because the site “violates several of Goldman Sachs’ intellectual property rights” and also “implies a relationship” with the bank itself.

Unsurprisingly for a man who has conjoined the bank’s name with the Number of the Beast – although he jokingly points out that 666 was also the S&P500’s bear-market bottom – Mr Morgan is unlikely to go down without a fight.

He claims he has followed all legal requirements to own and operate the website – and that the header of the site clearly states that the content has not been approved by the bank.

Morgan has tangled with another large corporation over internet issues.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Mr Morgan explained how he went through a similar battle with US homebuilder Lennar a few years ago after he set up a website to collect information on what he alleged was shoddy workmanship in its homes. The pair eventually settled out of court.

Morgan sought legal advice before setting up his new website, but he also has other domain names registered in case Goldman Sachs does manage to shut down the one he is currently using.

Today this story was also reported by ABC News.

ABC talked to William G. Pecau, a trademark attorney, who said that

As long as Morgan isn’t trying to make money off the site and he’s not claiming that the site is somehow affiliated with Goldman, “generally there’s not a lot you can do about it,” Pecau, a partner at the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson, said.

Another expert told ABC that Goldman Sachs risks calling more public attention to themselves and their role in the financial crisis:

Paul Levy of Public Citizen Litigation Group, a public interest law firm, says that fighting the sites can have an unintended effect — a company’s attempt to shut down a gripe site can generate news coverage that ultimately benefits the gripe site.

“My guess is that there’s more attention paid to the criticism of Goldman Sachs on the Web site than before,” Levy said.

Let’s hope Goldman Sachs keeps pushing this. Before long there will be busloads of protesters showing up in front of their executives’ homes.

Yesterday, according to Forbes, Goldman Sachs

reported profits of $3.39 a share, well ahead of the $1.64 consensus estimate, and said it is planning a $5.0 billion public offering of common stock. Proceeds from the sale will go toward repaying Goldman’s Troubled Asset Relief Program loans.

There is a lot of skepticism about this earnings report. As Dakinikat reported yesterday banks are apparently estimating the value of mortgages at ninety-one cents on the dollar, a ludicrous amount. Furthermore,

Goldman Sachs began fiscal 2009 on Jan. 1 instead of Dec. 1 of last year. So December fell into sort of a grey zone that wasn’t as profitable; the bank lost $1 billion, or $2.15 per share, in the month…

Dakinikat will have to confirm this, but to me that suggests the bank may be reporting on just two months earnings and dropping out the heavy losses they suffered in December of last year. Finally, there are legitimate questions as to Goldman Sachs profiting through the use of taxpayers money. Rememember Goldman Sachs got a double dip–a infusion of TARP funds, plus 12 billion funneled to them through the AIG bailout.

Even more outrageous, Goldman Sachs now plans to use this questionable earnings report to raise $5 billion through a common stock offering in order to pay back the TARP loan and avoid further government inquiries.

As Karl Denninger of The Market Ticker points out, Goldman Sachs and other investment banks that are now claiming profits have been using taxpayer money.

…these firms are in the markets trading with money that literally is not theirs. As regulated banks these firms are trading, effectively, with funds that you and I guarantee through our taxes, exercising the privilege of government-granted monopolies that has a legitimate foundation – the utility function of fractional reserve banking – and leveraging it into the public equity and credit markets.

That’s outrageous and it is what Glass-Steagall was intended to and did prevent, because this sort of nonsense leads directly to public losses (as we have now seen to the tune of many trillions of dollars.)

I speculate daily in the markets. I see nothing wrong with it. But I speculate with my money, not yours, and there is something VERY WRONG with people being able to speculate with YOUR MONEY that you have not intentionally and explicitly put at risk.

Denninger notes: that despite the fact that most Americans opposed the bailouts to begin with, the government has stolen $700 billion from us in the original TARP and added on

…some $8-12 trillion in additional “commitments and loans” for which he had no representation or voice, as those “commitments” were made by The Fed and affiliated agencies, which Congress has refused to exercise control over, despite having the clear Constitutional mandate to do so.

This is over $40,000 per man, woman and child in this country, and it was stolen from you quite literally at gunpoint for the explicit purpose of preventing the banksters responsible for this mess suffering the loss of their shirts, their homes, their yachts and their bonuses.

And he points out that this doesn’t take into account that we are poorer because of the Feds devaluation of the dollar as well as higher banking fees and credit card interest rates.

Let’s not ever forget that Goldman Sachs was the number one contributor to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and that current and former Goldman Sachs employees are hip deep in what the government has been doing.

The banks and politicians are literally robbing us of our futures and destroying our beloved country. I say more power to Mike Morgan in his fight with Goldman Sachs. What can we do about it? Well Mike Morgan and other bloggers who are investigating the big banks may have one answer.

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