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

Friday, April 30, 2010

Goldman Sachs isn't dead....yet.

Taibbi's latest on Goldman:

On the day the Securities and Exchange Commission filed suit against Goldman Sachs for securities fraud, shares in the company plunged 12.8 percent, closing at $160.70. The market, it seemed, was finally passing judgment on a decade of high-stakes Wall Street scammery that left America threatening Nigeria, Indonesia and Belarus on the list of the world's most corrupt economies.
A few days later, Goldman announced its first-quarter numbers. Profits were up 91 percent, to a staggering $3.4 billion.

Compensation and bonuses soared to $5.5 billion, up from $4.7 billion in the first quarter of 2009. Battered in the press, Goldman was raking up on the bottom line. So investors once again leapt into Goldman's arms, pushing the stock as high as $166.50, not far from where it was even before news of the SEC suit broke.

Goldman isn't dead – far from it. But this new SEC suit officially places it at the center of a raging national discussion about the hopelessly fucked state of American business ethics. As a halting, first-step attempt at financial regulatory reform makes its way toward a vote in the Senate, the government has finally thrown open the door and let a few of the rottener skeletons tumble out.

On the surface, the failure-to-disclose rap being leveled at Goldman feels like a niggling technicality, the Wall Street equivalent of a tax-evasion charge against Al Capone. The bank will try and – who knows – might even succeed in defending itself in a court of law against these charges. But in the court of public opinion it was doomed the instant the SEC decided to put this ghastly black comedy of a fraud case on the street for everyone to see. Just as Pittsburgh Steeler Ben Roethlisberger will never recover from the image of him (allegedly) waving his dick at a scared 20-year-old coed in the darkened hallway of a Georgia nightclub, Goldman may never bounce back from the SEC's brutal blow-by-blow account of how the bank conspired with a hedge-fund magnate to bend one gullible business partner after another over the edge of the subprime housing market.

....
Read the rest at Rolling Stone here

9 COMMENTS:

Anonymous said...

Looks like the GS guys didn't like the Clinton comment during the week. Now Gensler hits back. This should get good as they all run for cover.

Gensler Says Clinton Team Should Have Done More on Derivatives

April 30 (Bloomberg) -- Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler said President Bill Clinton’s administration “ought to have done more” in regulating the derivatives market “to protect the American public.”

“Looking back now, knowing what we know now -- and a lot has developed over the last 10 years -- I think we ought to have done more,” Gensler said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Conversations with Judy Woodruff,” airing this weekend. “Some of the basic assumptions about these marketplaces have proved out to be wrong.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=axhqXMM6cwqE&pos=7

Anonymous said...

Looks like Rubin has a little Hesh in him...man life really does imitate art. This thing of theirs is really turning to $hit.


Bob Rubin: “Do you want to go upstairs and…cuddle?”
Which former treasury secretary would you rather hear about sticking his tongue down a woman’s throat whilst placing his hands “everywhere sort of like an octopus”? Which former treasury secretary would you like to hear about coping with the stress of the financial crisis with a good spoon?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=axhqXMM6cwqE&pos=7

Anonymous said...

For a guy that has and had a lot at stake with paper assets, and benefited quite nicely from all the bailouts as well, I'm not really sure we should care "all that much" on his judgment of character with respect to Goldman's leadership. After reading this

Fraudonomics
The big dirty secret of why you should worry about a fraud crackdown more than Goldman Sachs—revealed for the first time by an anonymous private equity 'hypocrite' and 'liar.'
http://nypress.com/article-21163-fraudonomics.html

I'm not sure whether anyone has scruples...

Buffett Says He Backs Goldman’s Blankfein ‘100%’
May 1, 2010, 10:24 am

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/buffett-says-he-backs-goldmans-blankfein-100/



Everybody loves to be the house...quite an edge...who really would want to lose it?

May 1, 2010, 5:30 AM ET.Number of the Week: $132 Billion of Lost Synthetic Mortgage Bets

Whatever the outcome of the SEC’s fraud case, the bigger issue is whether this kind of gaming should remain legal. Credit derivatives can have social utility. It’s important, for example, for people like John Paulson to be able to make negative bets. That can help the market put the right price on credit, and help prevent bubbles from forming. Banks and investors need a way to hedge their risks.

But in the absence of rules, and without adequate punishment for breaking them, the game is easy to rig in favor of the house — and to the detriment of millions of people who have no idea what risks are being taken at their expense.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/05/01/number-of-the-week-132-billion-of-lost-synthetic-mortgage-bets/

Anonymous said...

More Hypocrisy From Lloyd Blankfein On Charlie Rose

And again Lloyd blatantly misrepresents the truth, by saying that doing away with prop trading would only cost the firm 10% of the firm's revenue (so why the massive fight against the Volcker rule?). Forget all this market maker, liquidity provider generic fallback bs and mumbo jumbo. How about some disclosure on just how you classify prop trading Lloyd? Because something tells us that at least 50% of your flow and correlation desk is purely Prop (and certainly serves to bolster prop profits instead of putting clients "first" as we have disclosed about 10 times in the past week alone), as the 901 pages in Goldman discovery make only all too obvious (we will post on that soon). Hey Lloyd, here's an idea - how about instituting P&L stop limits on all your OTC FICC prop trades just like RBS? Oh yes, we'll go there... and in much more detail. Soon.
Jesus, Lloyd, don't you understand that the public is not as dumb as you think it is? That even the regular Joe Sixpack can read the hypocrisy behind just that one statement? In that one sentence alone you blow your entire case to appease the public yet again - and you do it over, and over, and over. Stop treating Americans like idiots, and your world tour may actually not be an abysmal failure. Continue to insult people's intelligence, and you will flounder. But then deep down you are a trader at heart, to whom any admission of weakness is suicide, just ask any trader. Which is why this lawsuit could very well be your, your firm's, and Warren Buffet's, undoing.


http://tinyurl.com/2epg5yy

Anonymous said...

Oh what Pharaoh says must be the truth of the land..so let it be written:



http://tinyurl.com/29eh8sz

Anonymous said...

Even the Great Oracle speaks out of 2 sides of his mouth...



Here Come The Hypocrites! (Berkshire)



The provision, sought by Berkshire and pushed by Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson in the Senate Agriculture Committee, would largely exempt existing derivatives contracts from the proposed rules. Previously, the legislation could have allowed regulators to require that companies such as Nebraska-based Berkshire put aside large sums to cover potential losses. The change thus would aid Berkshire, which has a $63 billion derivatives portfolio, according to Barclays Capital.


http://tinyurl.com/2bzjs7b

Anonymous said...

April 30, 2010
BILL MOYERS:

Welcome to the Journal. Once upon a time, a whole lot of just plain Americans woke up to realize the economic system was working against them. They had believed in it; they worked hard to make it work for them. They knew its shortcomings but saw in it the way to a decent return for their labor and a better future for their families.

Then, one day, calamity struck: The system turned on them. And they discovered that they had been betrayed, bamboozled, by the people at the top.

But they didn't hang their heads and turn tail, like a dog whipped by its master. They organized and fought back — millions of them in a grass roots movement for democracy. What they did became known as the Populist Moment, an extraordinary time in our country's history.



http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04302010/watch.html

Anonymous said...

Bill Laggner is the Co-Founder of Bearing Asset Management along with his fund partner Kevin Duffy. In this interview Bill discusses the stock market, corruption inside our banking system and government, the king player in the derivatives world, latest charges against Goldman Sachs, Ponzi schemes gone bad, latest antics of the Federal Reserve and more.

http://tinyurl.com/258ep82

Anonymous said...

Goldman Sachs Shorts Goldman Stock, Offsets Losses
http://wp.me/pIP1s-4q

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