{"id":36115,"date":"2016-07-21T19:52:07","date_gmt":"2016-07-21T19:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.drrathbooks.com\/?p=36115"},"modified":"2016-08-24T20:01:18","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T20:01:18","slug":"goldman-sachs-hires-former-brussels-eu-commissioner-jose-manuel-barroso-a-deal-hatched-at-bilderberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drrathbooks.com\/goldman-sachs-hires-former-brussels-eu-commissioner-jose-manuel-barroso-a-deal-hatched-at-bilderberg\/","title":{"rendered":"Goldman Sachs Hires Former Brussels EU Commissioner Jos\u00e9 Manuel Barroso: A Deal Hatched At Bilderberg?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Bilderberg Chairman Henri de Castries (left) meeting with Jos\u00e9 Manuel Barroso (right).<\/em>
\nImages: Derbrauni<\/a> (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a>], via Wikimedia Commons \/ MEDEF<\/a> (originally posted to Flickr as Henri De Castries) [CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>], via Wikimedia Commons \/ By European People’s Party<\/a> (Angela Merkel) [CC BY 2.0<\/a>], via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Multinational investment bank Goldman Sachs\u00a0recently <\/strong>announced<\/strong><\/a> it had hired Jos\u00e9 Manuel Barroso, the former president of the Brussels EU Commission, as an advisor and nonexecutive chairman of its Goldman Sachs International arm. With Goldman Sachs accused by many people of helping set off the 2008 global financial crisis and then profiting from it by <\/strong>defrauding investors<\/strong><\/a>, Barroso\u2019s mercenary acceptance of the appointment predictably attracted widespread outrage. Interestingly, however, despite the extensive media reporting, little attention has been paid to the fact that the road to Barroso\u2019s new job may have begun at a meeting of the clandestine <\/strong>Bilderberg Group<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The story starts in mid-2015 when, in a little publicized development, Barroso became a member of Bilderberg\u2019s Steering Committee<\/a>. For the uninitiated, the invitation-only annual conferences of the secretive Bilderberg organization essentially serve as an off-the-record breeding ground for interactions between the political elite and senior executives from industry, finance, academia, and the media. So non-transparent and unaccountable are these meetings that no minutes are taken, no report written, and no policy statements issued. Over the years Barroso has attended several Bilderberg meetings, including while he was holding the post of president of the Brussels EU Commission.<\/p>\n

The announcement that Barroso had been elevated to Bilderberg\u2019s Steering Committee was made in a typically low-key fashion during the Group\u2019s 11-14 June 2015 meeting<\/a> in Telfs-Buchen, Austria. Midway through the weekend\u2019s discussions, the Bilderberg website was quietly changed to include his name on the list of Steering Committee members.<\/p>\n

\n

The headquarters of Goldman Sachs in New York.<\/p>\n

Images: Quantumquark<\/a> (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a>], via Wikimedia Commons \/ Weatherman1126<\/a> [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

After that meeting, as British newspaper the Guardian reported<\/a> at the time, \u201cBarroso seemed jubilant\u201d. Sporting a wide grin at the airport, he \u201cbeamed and waved at the cameras\u201d and \u201clooked like the cat that got the cream\u201d. But was Barroso solely celebrating his elevation to the Bilderberg Steering Committee, or was there more to it than this?<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>Robert Zoellick, Chairman of the Board of International Advisors of the Goldman Sachs Group<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Here is where the plot thickens. In a vivid illustration of how the Bilderberg Group actively facilitates the famed \u201crevolving door\u201d between politics and industry, it turns out that Robert Zoellick, Chairman of the Board of International Advisors of the Goldman Sachs Group, is also a regular Bilderberg attendee and member of its Steering Committee. Given the timing of Barroso\u2019s move from politics to finance, this is significant for several reasons.<\/p>\n

First, according to a report<\/a> on the CNBC website, talks between Goldman Sachs and Barroso \u201chad been going on for about a year\u201d before the former Brussels EU commissioner was hired earlier this month. But with Barroso having only left the Commission at the end of October 2014, this means that his talks with Goldman Sachs representatives began at a time when he was still subject to the mandatory 18-month \u2018cooling off\u2019 period during which he was unable to engage in lobbying \u2013 or any other activities that could represent a conflict of interest \u2013 until the end of April 2016. Clearly, therefore, at the very least, engaging in yearlong \u201ctalks\u201d with Goldman Sachs is somewhat stretching the definition of \u2018cooling off\u2019.<\/p>\n

Moreover, if the talks had indeed been going on for about a year by the time Barroso was hired, this means they apparently began at around the very same time he was attending the aforesaid June 2015 Bilderberg Group meeting and becoming a member of its Steering Committee.<\/p>\n

So who else did the\u00a0list of participants<\/a>\u00a0for that key 2015 meeting include, from which Barroso emerged grinning and looking like the cat that had got the cream? Revealingly, not only Robert Zoellick but also Peter Sutherland, the then Goldman Sachs International Chairman. But both quite coincidentally, of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bilderberg Chairman Henri de Castries (left) meeting with Jos\u00e9 Manuel Barroso (right). Images: Derbrauni (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons \/ MEDEF (originally posted to Flickr as Henri De Castries) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons \/ By European People’s Party (Angela Merkel) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons Multinational investment bank Goldman…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[188],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drrathbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36115"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drrathbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drrathbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drrathbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drrathbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.drrathbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drrathbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drrathbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drrathbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}