Goldman’s Dueling Goals

Here's more from that lengthy and excellent article from GRETCHEN MORGENSON and LOUISE STORY at the NY Times. Just about everything you would want to know about them is included. All the signs are pointing to another market crash soon. Don't say you weren't warned.

Clients Worried About Goldman’s Dueling Goals

As the housing crisis mounted in early 2007, Goldman Sachs was busy selling risky, mortgage-related securities issued by its longtime client, Washington Mutual, a major bank based in Seattle. Although Goldman had decided months earlier that the mortgage market was headed for a fall, it continued to sell the WaMu securities to investors. While Goldman put its imprimatur on that offering, traders in the same Goldman unit were not so sanguine about WaMu’s prospects: they were betting that the value of WaMu’s stock and other securities would decline.

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Goldman’s access to client information can also give its traders an advantage that many of the firm’s competitors lack. And because betting against a company’s shares or its debt can create an atmosphere of doubt about a company’s financial standing, Goldman because of its size and its position in the market can help make the success of some of its wagers faits accomplis. Lucas van Praag, a Goldman spokesman, declined to say how much the firm earned on its bets against WaMu’s stock. He said his firm lost money on its bets against the other WaMu securities. In an e-mail reply to questions for this article, he said there was nothing improper about Goldman’s wagers against any of its clients. "Shorting stock or buying credit protection in order to manage exposures are typical tools to help a firm reduce its risk."

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During the early stages of the mortgage crisis, Goldman seems to have unnerved WaMu’s former chief executive, Kerry K. Killinger, according to an e-mail message that Congressional investigators released. In that message, Mr. Killinger noted that he had avoided retaining Goldman’s investment bankers in the fall of 2007 because he was concerned about how the firm would use knowledge it gleaned from that relationship. He pointed out that Goldman was "shorting mortgages big time" even while it had been advising Countrywide, a major mortgage lender. "I don’t trust Goldy on this," he wrote. "They are smart, but this is swimming with the sharks."

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CONFLICT OF PRINCIPLES
As Trading Arm Grows, a Clash of Purpose

When new hires begin working at Goldman, they are told to follow 14 principles that outline the firm’s best practices. "Our clients’ interests always come first" is principle No. 1. The 14th principle is: "Integrity and honesty are at the heart of our business." But some former insiders, who requested anonymity because of concerns about retribution from the firm, say Goldman has a 15th, unwritten principle that employees openly discuss. It urges Goldman workers to embrace conflicts and argues that they are evidence of a healthy tension between the firm and its customers. If you are not embracing conflicts, the argument holds, you are not being aggressive enough in generating business.

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CREATIVE DESTRUCTION
Fostering a Market Then Abandoning It

Even now, two years after a dispute with Goldman, C. Talbot Heppenstall Jr. gets miffed talking about the firm. As treasurer at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, a leading nonprofit health care institution, Mr. Heppenstall had once been pleased with Goldman’s work on the enterprise’s behalf. Beginning in 2002, Goldman had advised officials at U.P.M.C. to raise funds by issuing auction-rate securities. Auction-rate securities are stock or debt instruments with interest rates that reset regularly (usually weekly) in auctions overseen by the brokerage firms that sell them. Municipalities, student loan companies, mutual funds, hospitals and museums all used the securities to raise operating funds.

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Stay the course, Goldman advised U.P.M.C. in a letter, a copy of which Mr. Heppenstall read to a reporter.

On Feb. 12, less than a month after that letter, Goldman withdrew from the market — the first Wall Street firm to do so, according to a Federal Reserve report. Other firms quickly followed suit. With the market in disarray, the interest rates that U.P.M.C. and other issuers had to pay investors skyrocketed.

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MUNI MANAGEMENT
Brokering State Debt and Advising Against It

A state assemblyman in New Jersey named Gary S. Schaer also has had unsettling encounters with Goldman. Mr. Schaer, who heads the New Jersey Assembly’s Financial Institutions and Insurance Committee, said he became wary in 2008 when he learned that Goldman, one of the state’s main investment bankers, was encouraging speculators to bet against New Jersey’s debt in the derivatives market.

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Over the years, it has played the role of adviser and fund-raiser for a diverse range of countries, while occasionally drawing criticism for simultaneously betting against the ability of some countries, like Russia, to repay their debts.

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Read the whole thing here