My September 2008 piece in Lew Rockwell, the Paulson Putsch, had a very interesting history I’ve often thought about.

Unlike my other pieces, it wasn’t linked…and kind of “faded.” It ended up on a website called “assassinated press.” Why the difference? Because it went to Counterpunch, a left wing site. It got reprinted a lot. A week later, Gretchen Morgenson, broke her story about Blankfein (Goldman CEO) sitting in on the AIG bail-out proceedings with Geithner and Paulson (if I have that right). Now, Morgenson, as far as I know, has never written on Goldman (correction: I should say, on the corruption of Goldman) before. I’m pretty certain she got the lead from my piece, as my piece was the only one then to make the connection.

What’s interesting is that only a week or so earlier I’d written a piece on the AIG-Goldman link that got traction.

The week after, it hit me that the bail-out proposal was the culmination of Goldman’s history of criminality, which I’d already researched in 2006 for another book. I hastily put together what was relevant, and sent Lew Rockwell the piece, “The Paulson Putsch,” which is basically Taibbi’s whole recent Goldman thesis in Rolling Stone and elsewhere in a nutshell. I figured people would follow up on it.

But, as I said, unlike the AIG-Goldman piece (Lipstick on an AIG), this one simply got ignored. Too conspiratorial? I don’t know. No more than Taibbi’s – which is kosher enough now for Amy Goodman, bless her heart, to think about.

Anyway, among the many appreciative readers (including Carl Sagan’s son and some well-placed businessmen) who wrote to me, there were a couple of southerners who said they would fax it to everyone they knew in public office. And indeed they did. The next day, A couple of days later on Saturday, I kid you not, Newt Gingrich, who until then had been very deferential toward Treasury Sec. Paulson on TV shows, comes out and calls Paulson “unamerican”. Then, a day or two later, he reverses course and says he’s a patriot. I wish I’d been able to tape the show and I wonder if someone has the show on file somewhere. It was very bizarre and apart from my own glee at having what I thought was a bit of impact on the debate (even if completely unacknowledged), I’ve gone back over and over and tried to figure out what that reversal meant. I’m recalling it entirely from memory now.

Here’s the Paulson Putsch (Sept. 2008):

It covers Goldman’s prior history, naked short selling, the SEC, Rubin, Goldman’s derivative packaging, and and is Taibbi’s recent pieces in a nutshell. Now here’s Amy Goodman’s interview of Taibbi over his Goldman conspiracy piece.

And here’s his Rolling Stone piece, The Great American Bubble Machine.

I’m also fairly certain that MT’s naked short-selling interest is recent. I note that it followed blog posts of mine on Deep Capture. – that may (or may not) be coincidental.

Mind you, I’m glad Taibbi at least knows a story when he sees one. Popularizing the story is important, no doubt of it. He deserves credit for having that much clarity and courage.

But it’s as important to note what parts of the story he misses out: those are 9-11, the Federal Reserve, interest rate manipulation, gold. And since this is the smoke and mirrors that is the US media, that is precisely the heart of the story.

Beating the drum about Goldman Sachs (and why not JP Morgan?) a year after strikes me a lot like a story of the dollar collapse showing up on the cover of Time. It means the horse has already bolted. And someone is looking hard in an empty stable.