Great Vampire Squid

Let's never forget Matt Taibi's marvelous characterization of Goldman Sachs:

The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

I've been watching The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, and I've learned the following:

So far, Trump has appointed or nominated the following fat cats who have connections to Goldman Sachs: Special advisor Steve Bannon; multimillionaire Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin (second-generation Goldman Sachs -- his father was a partner); plus not-yet-named-to-anything billionaire member of his transition team, Anthony Scaramucci. Trump met today with Gary Cohn, president of Goldman Sachs; Cohn is said to be in the running himself for a top position in the administration. For some reason, Goldman stock has done extremely well recently. On election day, the share price was $182; today it's $220, an 8-year high.

Other billionaires nominated, appointed, or on Trump's transition team -- so far -- include Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos; Rothschild investment banker Wilbur Ross; his son-in-law, Jared Kushner; hedge-fund manager Rebekah Mercer; and PayPal founder Peter Thiel.



Rachel said: "It's turning into quite a full employment program for the nation's billionaires." She played a video clip of Trump on the stump:

My contract with the American voter begins with a plan to end government corruption and to take back our country, and to take it back swiftly, from the special interests who [sic] I know so well.

Yes, he knows them well, all right. And far from taking anything back from them, he's gathering them around him. And now he has named another billionaire, Todd Ricketts, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs and the son of one of his top donors during the campaign, to serve as deputy secretary of commerce. (The Ricetts family strongly supported Scott Walker; when his campaign cratered, they briefly considered going "Never Trump," prompting a hostile tweet from The Donald:

I hear the Rickets [sic] family, who own the Chicago Cubs, are secretly spending $'s against me. They better be careful, they have a lot to hide!

The Ricketts family then decided to support Trump, and apparently all is now forgiven with this appointment.

Onward and upward, as we move into The New Gilded Age!