The People vs. Goldman Sachs - Goldman execs should be in jail

mikea

mikea

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iWin
Another Matt Taibbi Goldman Roasting for Elizabeth:

To recap: Goldman, to get $1.2 billion in crap off its books, dumps a huge lot of deadly mortgages on its clients, lies about where that crap came from and claims it believes in the product even as it's betting $2 billion against it. When its victims try to run out of the burning house, Goldman stands in the doorway, blasts them all with gasoline before they can escape, and then has the balls to send a bill overcharging its victims for the pleasure of getting fried.
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It wouldn't be hard for federal or state prosecutors to use the Levin report to make a criminal case against Goldman. I ask Eliot Spitzer what he would do if he were still attorney general and he saw the Levin report. "Once the steam stopped coming out of my ears, I'd be dropping so many subpoenas," he says. "And I would parse every potential inconsistency between the testimony they gave to Congress and the facts as we now understand them."

I ask what inconsistencies jump out at him. "They keep claiming they were only marginally short, that it was more just servicing their clients," he says. "But it sure doesn't look like that." He pauses. "They were $13 billion short. That's big — 50 percent of their risk. It was so completely disproportionate."

Lloyd Blankfein went to Washington and testified under oath that Goldman Sachs didn't make a massive short bet and didn't bet against its clients. The Levin report proves that Goldman spent the whole summer of 2007 riding a "big short" and took a multibillion-dollar bet against its clients, a bet that incidentally made them enormous profits. Are we all missing something? Is there some different and higher standard of triple- and quadruple-lying that applies to bank CEOs but not to baseball players?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-people-vs-goldman-sachs-20110511
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With the old gang still in place in DC, I say that nothing happens. Maybe Goldman gets another check.
 
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You've seen a new gang somewhere that is even remotely interested in taking over DC and then shutting it down? Let me know who. I haven't found 'em yet. ;)
 
Wall Street owns the government outright. Don't believe me? They haven't even fixed the Wall Street-sponsored crap that created the crash in the first place. Heaven forbid something should get in the way of Wall Street execs trying to bilk the public.
 
Ummmmmm.......this is in Hangar Talk why, exactly???????
 
GoldmanSachs is in teh aviation bidness, baby.


Hawker Beechcraft Corporation was acquired by Hawker Beechcraft Inc., a new company formed by GS Capital Partners, an affiliate of Goldman Sachs, and Onex Partners for approximately $3.3 billion in cash, on March 26, 2007. The sale was first announced on December 21, 2006.

http://www.hawkerbeechcraft.com/investor_relations/faq/#acquired
 
denverpilot said:
You've seen a new gang somewhere that is even remotely interested in taking over DC and then shutting it down? Let me know who. I haven't found 'em yet. ;)
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I'd like to see the option "None of the above" on my next ballot.
 
Which GS exec held a gun on the public and made them buy the stuff? Same guys who made them buy Madoff's junk?

steingar said:
Wall Street owns the government outright. Don't believe me? They haven't even fixed the Wall Street-sponsored crap that created the crash in the first place. Heaven forbid something should get in the way of Wall Street execs trying to bilk the public.
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wabower said:
Which GS exec held a gun on the public and made them buy the stuff? Same guys who made them buy Madoff's junk?
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Part of me agrees with this, but the other parts says, if they misrepresented the risk, then all the invective towards them is somewhat warranted. After all, it's pretty hard to compare apples to apples when all the apples are rotten and all the vendors are telling you they 're fresh.
 
woodstock said:
It's all fun and games until someone mentions heads on pikes.
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How times have changed. When I was a kid, fun and games ended when someone lost an eye. Today's youths, I'll tell you what. ;)
 
wabower said:
Which GS exec held a gun on the public and made them buy the stuff? Same guys who made them buy Madoff's junk?
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Keith Lane said:
Part of me agrees with this, but the other parts says, if they misrepresented the risk, then all the invective towards them is somewhat warranted. After all, it's pretty hard to compare apples to apples when all the apples are rotten and all the vendors are telling you they 're fresh.
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Read the article. Goldman saw the bubble collapse coming and knew they had well over 60% of assets exposed, so they bundled up the junk Goldman owned into CDOs and told clients about the guaranteed 5% returns and sold and sold until the junk was gone. Then when they couldn't sell enough of those they made CDOs of CDOs had those rated as being as AAA safe as T-bills so the institutional investors could buy them. All they while Goldman were buying Credit Default Swaps from the sucker named AIG to cover the CDOs becoming worthless.

Think about how TARP = Toxic Asset Relief Program. The idea is/was that Uncle Sam would pay whatever (another story) to buy the junk you couldn't sell. Then the junk holders didn't want to sell because they had to value the junk as being worth the price of junk and that would remove too many dollars from the balance sheet. Mad enough yet?
 
all the above is layed out the the book I linked to ... the good old boy network and midnight meetings then determined who got bailed out and who didn't.
 
They took the public to the cleaners, but it was via funds managed by people the public trusted to be looking out for their interest and facilitated by ratings firms that were outright laying down on the job. A few years ago, people generally had more integrity than to do things like this, but no more.
 
The whole system that creates these "successful" people is based in "I've got mine, I don't care if you've got yours anymore." It creates these sociopaths. With little religious or other social norms pushing (any) type of morals, they're just cut loose on the unsuspecting folks who think normal people have those.

What's scary is that government gives us all tax incentives to invest in these giant ponzi schemes. (401K, etc.)

We might actually invest in local business and add our own sweat equity if it were not such a huge incentive to use these tax shelters. Handing big banks money keeps millions in lower tax brackets then the government bails out those same companies. Nice.

We truly do create our own hell. And the road definitely is paved with good intentions.
 
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