In its opening lines, Matt Taibbi, the author, described Goldman Sachs as "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."
The description reminded me of the Alien creature in the film "Alien". In the 1979 sci-fi classic, an extra-terrestrial creature attaches itself onto the face of one crew member of the space craft. The parasitic "facehugger" is keeping its host alive by supplying him with oxygen while attempting to reproduce. Its spider-like legs grip firmly onto the host head and its long tail is wrapped tightly around his neck.
Upon further reflection, however, I think a even better analogy for GS and other industrial players from the film is "The Company" rather than the facehugger. Here is why: As the story develops, it is reveal that the commercial space craft chartered for space mining by The Company (the name of the Company was not reveal until later installment of the Alien series) has a hidden mission unknown to the crew- to return the Alien to Earth for further commercial (read profitable) development at all costs (read crews' lives are expendable).
Though the mission is not successful at the end of the film, the first in a series of four (not counting the unrelated spin-off such as Alien vs. Predator), the Aliens become a greater threat to humanity.
If financial institutions are The Company, then naturally CDOs, MBSs, CDSs etc must be the Aliens that they were breeding for achieving greater profitability. In their eyes, these creatures were perfect organisms that can be used to hedge away risks while delivering better returns and at the same time cut away excess costs. Eventually, not unfamiliar to audience who has seen it in many films from Frankenstein to Alien to Spiderman, tragedies follow as human-beings get carried away and consumed by our greed and own creations.
I believe the story of the 2008 financial tsunami has by no mean ended but merely turning over a chapter. Why so much conviction?
A few days ago, it was reported that Ridley Scott, the director of Alien, is in talk to direct alien 5, 30 years after he made the original.
