Goldman Sachs, the global investment bank and financial services firm, announced Friday morning that it is running for president of the United States. The announcement was made at a farm near Waterloo, Iowa, by the musician Ted Nugent, who was hired to speak for the candidate. “We love oil and God and gasoline!" shouted Mr. Nugent, as he held aloft two semiautomatic machine guns and a sleeve of red-white-and-blue-painted grenades. "And we hate them people who don't look American and drive those weird tiny cars and use big words!" Mr. Nugent kept his remarks brief and did not mention the candidate, Goldman Sachs, by name. At the end of his speech, the outspoken musician fired off several rounds of live ammunition, screamed, "Let's go eat a live bear!" and then charged into the woods with the frenzied crowd following behind.
GOP consultant Mark McKinnon, who is not involved in the campaign but is familiar with its strategy, said the decision to hire Mr. Nugent to speak for Goldman Sachs was based on thousands of focus groups and polls that were conducted over the last several months. "The focus groups loved Ted because he's seen as a guy who doesn't read books and who likes to shoot things," said Mr. McKinnon. "And they felt he was their best proof that evolution, an unpopular concept among Tea Party voters, is total bullshit." According to Mr. McKinnon, Goldman Sachs paid for its $1 billion in market research with profits made by betting against the capacity of homeowners to pay back the subprime mortgages it sold to them between 2004 and 2008.
A source familiar with the campaign's thinking, who spoke on condition of strict anonymity, said the conglomerate will forgo donations altogether and instead finance the campaign with a portion of the $10 billion in taxpayer-funded bailout money the investment bank received in 2009. “The bailout funds will be converted into a new security they are calling ‘election default insurance arbitrage fixed income credit put straddles,’” said the source. “Goldman has already hedged those bets with mortgage-backed junk bond option default debit commodity exchange traded funds, which were sold to pension funds and small investors over the last several months.” The source said that Goldman has already made $25 billion with these investments.
Several public advocacy groups are already a considering a constitutional challenge to Goldman's candidacy, arguing that the financial behomoth has -- for all practical purposes -- already been president for the last eight years and is therefore constitutionally barred from a third term. According to Mike Allen, chief White House correspondent for Politico, the investment bank is prepared for the legal challenge. "Last week they deployed all 12,498 of their lobbyists to Capitol Hill and have secured the votes for a historic piece of legislation," said Mr. Allen. "The new law will allow Goldman Sachs -- and only Goldman Sachs -- to offer up to $100 million each to all nine Supreme Court justices." A spokesman for Speaker John Boehner refused to comment.
Goldman Sachs is only the second corporation in American history to run for president. The first was former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
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