Blankfein: Trust me. I'm doing God's work here.

This Tuesday Goldman Sachs executives will go before the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. A string of indicting emails have been revealed by the S.E.C. and the Subcommittee charging that Goldman fraudulently intended to mislead investors on risks (bets) related to mortgage-backed securities. The S.E.C. is charging that Goldman created and marketed securities that were deliberately designed to fail. Moreover, Goldman was so clever that they knew how to profit off those failures as the American people lost their homes. Economist Paul Krugman likens it to looting, pure and simple.

Last November, Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, claimed that Goldman Sachs was “doing God’s work”. A month before that Goldman Sachs executive Brian Griffiths said that Jesus would understand Goldman’s work: “The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is a recognition of self-interest. . . . We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all.”

Essentially, much of Wall Street practice has become a game in which a few people are opulently paid to mislead and exploit consumers and investors. What’s more, its a game that rewards so well that those profiting will say anything to stay in the boon. What’s next, a testimony about a visit from Gabriel?

What we can hope for the most is a road to Damascus experience. If Saul could become Paul, maybe Goldman in a miraculous act of contrition can fall to its knees and beg for forgiveness.  Probably like you, I’m not overly-convinced a conversion experience is coming, but maybe Tuesday will be another chance to shine some more light on these egregious practices–maybe not blinding, but light nonetheless.

NY Times: Goldman Cited ‘Serious’ Profit on Mortgages

And I think that blaming it for the financial collapse is a horrific example of “blame-the-victim” scapegoating.

Yes, African-Americans and Latinos held more sub-prime mortgages than did whites and yes, African-Americans and Latinos are broadly represented in Prosperity churches. This is correlation, not causation. The holders of those toxic mortgages are not the people who originated the loans. They are not the people who profited from risky lending. We often hear the term “predatory lending” in these situations. The predators were the banks; the people in Prosperity churches were the prey. Quoting Rosin’s article about Pastor Garay’s congregation:

One other thing makes Garay’s church a compelling case study. From 2001 to 2007, while he was building his church, Garay was also a loan officer at two different mortgage companies. He was hired explicitly to reach out to the city’s growing Latino community, and Latinos, as it happened, were disproportionately likely to take out the sort of risky loans that later led to so many foreclosures. To many of his parishioners, Garay was not just a spiritual adviser, but a financial one as well.

In pointing this passage out, what I want to make clear is that it is dishonest to just blame a particular church or theology without looking at the relationship between that church/theology and capital markets. Rosin does a fine job of pointing out troubling aspects of Prosperity Gospel thinking but she leaves off any implications for or indictment of the markets in which Prosperity preachers operate. It borders on racism to lay blame for the sub-prime collapse at the feet of African-American and Latino borrowers while not mentioning the White bank executives who invented sub-prime mortgages in the first place.

None of the foregoing should be understood, however, as a defense of Prosperity Gospel’s claims about Christianity. I want only to point out that–theologically and sociologically speaking–Rosin has not sufficiently examined the issues before her. As to Prosperity preaching itself, I think it does enough damage on its own:

Once, I asked Garay how you would know for certain if God had told you to buy a house, and he answered like a roulette dealer. “Ten Christians will say that God told them to buy a house. In nine of the cases, it will go bad. The 10th one is the real Christian.” And the other nine? “For them, there’s always another house.”

Pastor Garay has argued his way right into logical fallacy: the self-sealing argument. This is merely one example of many given in the article. Others include poor exegesis, proof-texting, torturous re-imaginings of the social messages of the Gospels, love of this-worldly status… I could go on, but that’s another article entirely.

“Praise God! It’s a miracle,” two women decide as they fall to their knees in prayer.

The next day The Catholic League president Bill Donohue immediately demanded an apology from David, and the media had something to talk about other than Abdullah Abdullah dropping out of the Afghan run-off. For the media it was comic relief. For many Christians it was a call to arms against those who defile the “sacred.” (Check the comments on Fox’s coverage if you need verification—almost 1400 comments when I posted this.)

Is it offensive? Of course it is. A picture of Jesus on a sitcom may not be sacred, but it, in the Christian’s mind, still points to the sacred in some way. However, I gotta say we miss what’s going on here if we focus on the outcome of David’s heavy flow: a urine tear on a picture of Jesus. That’s not what’s important. David’s stunt was not so much about the urine on the picture of Jesus as it was a satire on religious zealotry. The kind of religious zealotry that continually proclaims one’s own martyrdom with no recognition of how “true belief” denies others’ freedom. Because, you know, if you’re preoccupied with your own perceived harm, when can you see how you have harmed others?

What’s more important here: Defending a water coloring of Jesus on a television show—a show, mind you, that has made its name off being offensive? Or, I don’t know, maybe calling to question some things that really matter? I hear there are a lot of hungry people in the city. Maybe we can be upset about that together.

Or, maybe we can get upset each time the first amendment doesn’t go our way. That sounds productive…

Watch the clip:
youtube.com

Media/Commentary from All Sides:
mediamatters.org
usatoday
firstthings.com
Bill O’Reilly (Video)