What Goldman Sachs Really Stands For

Periodically it is salutary to remember what Goldman Sachs really stands for by tracing how it contributed to the meltdown of the financial system.  Goldman employees sought to "demoralize" people, to cause them "maximum pain" and to deceive them.  They succeeded masterfully.

Just from this short reading, we get a good idea of what regulations are needed for TBTF Goldman Sachs.

Read about Goldman's past deeds below:

Goldman Traders Tried to Manipulate Derivatives Market in '07, Report Says
By Christine Harper and Joshua Gallu - Bloomberg (April 13, 2011)

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) mortgage traders tried to manipulate prices of derivatives linked to subprime home loans in May 2007 for their own benefit, according to a U.S. Senate report.

Company documents show traders led by Michael J. Swenson sought to encourage a “short squeeze” by putting artificially low prices on derivatives that would gain in value as mortgage securities fell, according to the report yesterday by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The idea, abandoned after market conditions worsened, was to drive holders of such credit-default swaps to sell and help Goldman Sachs traders buy at reduced prices, according to the report.

“We began to encourage this squeeze, with plans of getting very short again,” Deeb Salem, a trader in the structured product group, said in a 2007 self-evaluation excerpted in the report. Swenson, Salem’s supervisor, sent e-mails in May 2007 urging traders to offer prices that will “cause maximum pain” and “have people totally demoralized.” In interviews with the committee, Salem and Swenson denied attempting a short squeeze, the report said.

Salem “claimed that he had wrongly worded his self- evaluation,” the report said. “He said that reading his self- evaluation as a description of an intended short squeeze put too much emphasis on ‘words.’”

The subcommittee cited the episode as an example of how Goldman Sachs traders placed the firm’s interests ahead of its clients’ as the value of mortgage-linked investments tumbled in 2007. The subcommittee, led by Senator Carl M. Levin, a Michigan Democrat and Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, has called on regulators to craft strict bans on proprietary trading and conflicts of interest to keep the problems from recurring.

‘Poor Quality Investments’

“Conflicts of interests related to proprietary investments led Goldman to conceal its adverse financial interests from potential investors, sell investors poor quality investments, and place its financial interests before those of its clients,” according to the subcommittee.

Goldman Sachs traders abandoned the short-squeeze attempt after discovering on June 7, 2007, that two Bear Stearns Cos. hedge funds that specialized in subprime-mortgage investments were collapsing. Salem e-mailed Swenson and another colleague to suggest trying to buy short positions, known as “protection,” on collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, from hedge fund Magnetar Capital LLC, according to the subcommittee’s report. 

Read the article here