Editor's Note: If you want to read it like it is, you need to follow Karl Denninger. He prepared a piece titled Goldman (and other banks') "Hedges" - What Karl points out is just how easy it was for Goldman Sachs to rip off the system or at least work within rules that filled their pockets with money they claimed . . . not to be material. Here is an excerpt from Karl's piece.
Because if that's how Goldman hedged they got paid twice and the taxpayer literally got robbed.
Someone in Congress needs to look into this now; there are already rumblings of investigation. Those rumblings need to get a lot louder and turn into subpoenas, not "polite inquiries."
If in fact Goldman (or anyone else) was "hedged" against a possible credit loss from their CDS with AIG and they were able to collect on that hedge (no matter what it was) those payments through AIG need to be clawed back immediately as nobody is entitled to be paid twice for the same risk and reap what amounts to a windfall profit by quite literally engineering a multi-billion dollar transfer of funds from the Taxpayer to the firm!
This is not small potatoes either - we're talking $100 billion+ in aggregate with these various banks on a worldwide basis.
We the people deserve answers on this right now and if persons in our government handed these banks $100 billion dollars of our tax money for what was a covered bet, allowing them to collect twice on a risk that had not yet been realized (when at most they were entitled to collect once via their private hedging activity) every single person involved in that scandal must be immediately removed from office, prosecuted if possible, and every nickel of those funds must be clawed back by whatever means are necessary.
Read the full article - Goldman (and other banks') "Hedges"
GoldmanSachs666 Message Board
Fraud*
According to the Collins English Dictionary 10th Edition fraud can be defined as: "deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage".[1] In the broadest sense, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation. Defrauding people or entities of money or valuables is a common purpose of fraud, but there have also been fraudulent "discoveries", e.g. in science, to gain prestige rather than immediate monetary gain
*As defined in Wikipedia
Monday, April 13, 2009
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23 COMMENTS:
Your talking down Goldman Sachs and, at the same time, shorting the stock.. Hmm, I wonder if you have an ulterior motive for having this blog.
Short sellers should be put in jail for what they do to companies.
I'm not a big fan of Goldman or any other bank for that matter. They're economic vampires. But short sellers are, in my view, the scum of the earth..
I just discovered your site today ; even from France we can consider your role to contest the power of a handful of big players such as Goldman Sachs is extremely sound for our democracies.
Preventing our societies from any oligarchy must be encouraged; big financial institutions are probably among the most developed ones.
salutations.
FG
PARIS
Mike
Are you going to be in on the conference call after GS reports first quart earnings?
If so, ask them how much of their record profits originated from AIG, or any other conduit of taxpayer money.
Also, looks like your blog is going viral after the lawsuit - ( LOL @ dumbf*ck lawyers)
Thanks, Mike.
Karl's TickerForum is aware of your plight and message.
Expect some more help to come your way.
Keep up the good work. You're not alone.
Keep exposing them!
Im gonna put up an article about Goldman Sachs trying to remove your website so you get more views.
Anon @ 5:54, do you understand short selling in the least? Are you perhaps confusing naked short selling with ordinary short selling?
anonymous short selles the scum of the earth ? LOOL
for you information short sellers exist since the markets exist - that is for more than 300 years now (stock markets) - and for that time there was ALWWAYS short sellers, and never we were in a position like this... so you now tell us the problem is short sellers? yeah sure...
I LOVE this site. It's exposing what I've felt all along; Goldman is too close to the Government, the bailout was NOT a bailout of AIG but a bailout of it's trading partners (specifically Goldman). Paulson totally gamed the systems for his former firm and it's partners.
Enough is Enough. Shut these guys down, take back the US Taxpayers $$.
To salvador,
Huh. So short sellers a hundred years ago (or even 50, for that matter) had the massive, market-shifting capitol behind it that these black box hedge funds have? Come on. That's like comparing a pea-shooter to an M-1 Tank.
If you think the balance of power hasn't shifted, then you're missing the larger point.
Short selling of TARP recipients was suspended for awhile; I didn't keep up with it. The point being that Fed/Treasury/SEC was keeping it controlled. Short selling is a problem ONLY if it is being done for criminal manipulation otherwise it is part of the game. Goldman sells short ONLY to manipulate. The problem isn't shortsellers. It is partly shortselling by Goldman to manipulate both the low side and the high side. But that is only one symptom of the very large problem we face.
There is more than enough probable cause to indict Goldman and its executives with fraud under several sections of Title 18 (the Federal Criminal Code). Congressional investigations are shams. They produce absolutely nothing and they make criminal prosecution difficult.
As a former foreign exchange dealer I often heard the expression that “trading is a zero sum game”. That is for each trader who has a gain there exist a trader with equal and offsetting loss. The net gain to the system is zero (i.e. energy can neither be created or destroyed). I always replied with the caveat that “as long as the Federal Reserve stays out of the picture” -- as the Fed can always print new money.
I am reminded of this fact in the continuing saga of the AIG case. As a risk manager I find it so unbelievable that risk manager would expose the firm to financial risk that would far exceed that capital capabilities of the firm. The size of the losses are just so staggering. With some of the smartest people around running these firms I now believe that this risk was deliberate and intentional.
Consider the risk managers of Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and other financial institutions firms whose bets are on the other side of AIG’s derivative transactions. How could the credit (not financial) officers of these firms allow such a massive counter –party exposure to AIG’s balance sheet? Clearly they know that AIG could not possibly fulfill the obligation if the bets went sour. While our political officials skew AIG for lack of financial controls, why are they not investigating the counter parties’ lack of credit controls? Both parties must be equally guilty and each has equal and offsetting risk.
It is often said that if an event occurs that is so improbable then something more sinister must be happening. These traders and not idiots;they are high educated and intelligent. I believe that the traders of AIG were in collusion with traders at Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and etc and that they knew that if they were all in too deep in this mortgage fiasco and they needed a solution. These firms essentially bet that if they can chose a fall guy, AIG, then they can be assured that the Federal Reserve would have to step in to prop up the market. The traders of the failing firms would be assured new jobs and bonuses at the surviving firms.
An Inconvenient Truth
While our political leaders have been busy this past decade passing laws that circumvent the United States constitution, supposedly in an effort to protect “WeThe People” and our way of life from terrorist attacks
These same leaders have through neglect of oversight of financial entities and outright fraud have caused more harm damage,suffering and heartache to our country that any 10 terrorist attacks could have.
Goldman hedges (shorts) AIG to guarantee they get taxpayer moolah (through AIG) to post obscene profits to hook more suckers on an offering to "give" back the tarp dough to expose the weak hands so they can snap them up with our money. Buncha crooks.
GoldmanSachs666 is a dis-info site put up by Goldman, to tell us all the obvious facts, that we already know, thereby distracting us from the real conspiracy of GS crashing the market in 08!
Here is how I see it.
1. GS shorts the ABX(subprime) in 07. Makes a Billion or 2. Sends a ripple in the markets.
2. GS men at the Exchanges raise margin requirements forcing massive liquidation in JULy 07, not to mention cornering the oil market.
3. GS men at the SEC raise margin in 08, lower regulation increasingly over entire tenure.
4. There man Hank Paulson took Lehman in the other room, executation style. That really got things rolling (downhill)
5. Then, GS influence at Mood'yS(warren buffet) slashed AIG rating forcing them to find Billlions overnigth,
6.Then Hank Pauslon shows up with his $700 Billion ransome note. After stock markets crash around the world for 10 days, congress gives the big five banks their money.
7. Jim Cramer, former partner of GS, after watching the market crash for 10 days, tells America to sell everything. If we see a rally this year, you know Cramer is in on it
8. Rubin was a trojan horse on Citi's Board, encouraging them to get long and heavy in realestate.
9. AIG and Citi were made fall guys from the beginning, "to big to fail" was the plot
10. It's possible that GS even inflitrated Freddie and Fannie. It's obvious IndyMAc was a front to push liars loans.
Its all tied to the dysfunctional Trade policy that was implemented in 1994-5 , that led to unsustainable trade deficits , all facilitated by the Too Big to fail banking Industry , that opened the door for the cash extraction by the Foreign national investors and Governments when the collapse was eminent , and caused the Federal Government to have to step in open the fed window while this was going on and try and fill the void , all this added to the less and less money to continue to fund the Private sector businesses that created the jobs and that then was the distributor of wealth throughout the system that some said needed to be taxed harder to create better equality , that today we have no equality because it all left the Shores of the USA when the going got tough , this is why too few a banks with too much control over the vast majority of the cash in the US economy is the wrong approach to realizing wealth distribution in times of economic distress .
Because of Gresham's Law of the 14th Century is why the financial system is devaluing towards the Lower valued currencies that trade in the same markets as the higher valued currencies , this is a phenomenon that should be debated and challenge the economic opinions of the Learning establishments that say Gresham's Law has no bases for the economic devaluation that's happening today by all the WTO trading partners trading in the same market place , with different valued currencies , without a tariff system that can balance the differences .
I would challenge this professors analogy of this process in relations to the way we designed and implemented the trade agreements in 1994-95 .
http://www.columbia.edu/~ram15/grash.html
And read how this analogy explaining the way the Free Trade Agreements were going to effect the western economies , and it did ;
February 16, 2000 Issue Brief #137
The High Cost of the China-WTO Deal
Administration's own analysis suggests spiraling deficits, job losses
by Robert E. Scott http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/issuebriefs_ib137
I do believe that there should be a World Concession on these matters and all world leaders should be so able to understand these issues and come to some terms on how to make the balance sheets whole again in the world , so we don't lose our way forward and miss opportunities to keep world peace the main priority !!
Alternative investment vehicles can act as counter balances to a paper currency market that has different valued currencies trading in the same market place , by creating investment in markets like precious metals markets that are equal valued in the world , this alternative will allow the international investor a way to revalue their over loaded paper investments when they become too over weighted by the effects of a Free Trade of durables that redirects the paper wealth to too few and that causes a stall in paper flows , like is the case today in these types of markets . The paper currencies markets and durables are in need of competition , and a equal valued worldwide market like precious metals markets can be that source of competition , that can return all markets too solvency , by the way this will re distribute the wealth by proxy instead of by to much Government intervention .
The use of this old world Currency standard , like Forbes refers too can build the value back into all world currencies , and get rid of the devaluation of one currency thats lower valued and because of this attracts work away from the other trade partners and by this simple Gresham's Law principle , devalues all currencies that trade in the same markets eventually . The fact that the Big Banks like Goldman , Citi , Chase , Wells Fargo etc, are vehicles for these trades of currencies that opened these windows through trade policy that then allowed the extraction from our economy in the USA and Europe when the threat of collapse became evident to the foreign investors is why we lost our financial guarantees and the US GOV had to step in and print money to fill this void , and that right there is proof enough to suggest that to Big a banking control over the financials of the US economy , with cash holdings is why these Banks need to be smaller , so the wealth is spread out over the local economies of the USA , to better hold the cash at the local level so runs by foreign nationals can't be as swift , and so fast that it creates a vacuumed on cash flows like we saw last fall .
Here is a way to counter the different values of currencies that trade in the same markets , so when the vacuum of money gets to one sided the way to alter this from a world market thats valued equally is to have a fluctuation of investments in and out of Precious Metals markets as the demand for Durable goods in the world fluctuates from needs and political postures that promote development and peace initiatives that would create fluctuations in equities markets , this fundamental function in how economics would react to supply-demand data and GEO political events would keep and sustain world currencies and economies with a stable store of wealth and balance in trade deficits .
Steve Forbes, 04.13.09, 06:00 AM EDT
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/09/mark-to-market-fasb-intelligent-investing-tax.html
""" Quote from Steve Forbes """
" Another needed action is to tie the dollar back to gold. All these new spending programs will be paid for with inflationary dollars, creating a new risk for down the road. Alexander Hamilton understood that tying the greenback to gold created economic progress and a lawful society. And it did so for almost 200 years. We need vision like that again, or any current rallies could prove short-lived. " !!
I agree that Goldman and JPM Chase are the corporate face and major players in this world- cartel banking structure that is "The Federal Reserve". The freedoms we have forfeited since 1913 by way of a monetary regime that is neither “Federal” nor holding any “reserves” is disgusting. Early on in this post 1913 shell game, even Henry Ford once quipped, “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” So, now that more people ARE understanding "it"…we lucky few must lead the charge...let's roll!
Two things I will proffer on "rocking the bestial power structure":
1) Buy gold and silver bullion to protect yourself and your family from the coming annihilation of the USD$, the world reserve currency to be replaced (in est. 1-3 years_ by some new world currency cocktail. Given the actual above ground world “supply” which is miniscule in comparison to a mountain or essentially “worthless paper”… this simple action will also help speed the demise devaluation of a “dead man walking” US currency.
2) Despite the temptation to do so…do not make trades based on ideology. For instance, TODAY…I would buy Goldman and JP Morgan Chase, not because I like them...but because on the short term, they are relatively cheap AND too big to fail as evidenced by the bail-out money they are socking away...and stealing! - However, AT THE RIGHT TIME IN THE FUTURE…I would short them with total impunity AFTER this huge short covering bear market rally runs its course.
We, the bloggers- the informed minority must educate through our actions- the enemies of the Fed are gold and silver- as well as the very existence of free markets.
It's 2009, and sadly, we no longer have “free markets”…but we can move the ball in that direction by further removing more “supply” of gold and silver off the primary market through steady and increasing private accumulation.
If the trend is up for Goldman and JPM Chase (and it now is) then you should intelligently make money on the long side of these self same "evil" companies- Then. when these "evil" companies top...You sell! Last, (if you are so lead,) plow a portion of your tangible “profits” back into education and causes that are working to expose the Federal Reserve's covert agenda!
And one last thing...who are "they"? Who does Ben Bernanke work for? Who is watching the “Watchman”? Simply WHO is the Watchman? The Illuminati? CFR heads? The Rothschild's Schiff's...others? What PROOF can be presented? I want NAMES! Seriously….who are THEY? If you know...please share with me and other readers here...because it past time that these “financial vampires” be dragged out into the light to answer for their deception and duplicity!
And one last thought…by some miracle…of the Federal Reserve cartel is upended and vanquished…pray tell, what new “system” replaces it? New greenbacks? Backed by what? And who exactly controls the new “what”? Would it be a bloodless velvet FINANCIAL revolution scenario? Who is thinking about what comes after what “might” {by some miracle of “democratic grassroots creative destruction”} come next? It would be a shame to win…only to be sucked into a vacuum of dysfunction because the new “alternative” was being developed by a Congressional committee?
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