Goldman Sachs is Not Innocent!

Every time I see an article that states GS is innocent or that it didn't do anything wrong, I get really angry. If a bank is accused of committing "securities fraud" and agrees to pay $550 million in response to that accusation, then that company is not innocent. Goldman Sachs agreed that it made a "mistake." They do not acknowledge their contribution to the present recession and that is more than a mistake. By their actions they have put at risk other banks (ABN Amro, IKD Deutche) and another country's debt (Greece). They have increased the pain and misery of people who have lost their savings, their mortgages, their pensions and their hopes. GS is not innocent.

The following article tells how Goldman Sachs keeps its actions to itself, especially its revenue information from investors. GS is a bank unto itself and works in the murky shadows where even regulators have a difficult time getting at information and the truth.

Trading Eludes Dodd-Frank as Investors See
Black Box
By Bradley Keoun

It took a Congressional inquiry this year to force Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to disclose how much it made in the mortgage market -- and that was only for 2007.

Goldman Sachs hasn’t revealed mortgage-trading revenue since then, leaving investors to guess how much it contributes to the fixed-income, currency and commodities division, or FICC, which also trades junk bonds, yen, oil and uranium, sells weather derivatives and operates power plants. The division brought in $23.3 billion last year, or 52 percent of the New York-based firm’s total, and by itself would rank 90th by revenue in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, just ahead of McDonald’s Corp., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The Dodd-Frank Act, designed to prevent future financial crises, does little to improve investors’ ability to analyze results at the five biggest U.S. firms that trade securities, which together lost $38.6 billion as markets froze in the fourth quarter of 2008. Since taxpayers may have to bail out banks again, firms should be forced to disclose more, said Tanya Azarchs, former head of North American bank research at Standard & Poor’s.

“The health of the banking system impinges on all areas of the economy,” said Azarchs, now a consultant in Briarcliff Manor, New York. “So their disclosure has to be top-notch.”

Read the entire article here