"You Were There," Goldman Sachs

It will probably be quite a few years before the American people learn the many details surrounding the creation and execution of the financial crisis of 2008.  Because there have been no meaningful criminal investigations and because no top executives have been prosecuted for their participation, we do not have much original evidence of the depths to which the banks and their executives plunged in their mad scramble to get indecent profits at the expense of the taxpayers and other ordinary citizens.

In the meantime, Robert Lenzner reminds us of some of the egregious bank behavior that brought us the GFC:

The 2008 Meltdown And Where The Blame Falls
By Robert Lenzner - Forbes

. . . .

Then, there’s the Bear Stearns chairman who did not leave his bridge tournament outside New York to attend to t he crisis of potential bankruptcy. Or the Goldman Sachs director who bought more shares of Goldman in the late fall of 2008 though he was also chairman of Goldman’s chief regulator– the New York Federal Reserve Board.

Or the former  Goldman partner who was acting as chairman of Wachovia, a failing bank,  and  demanded a premium in Goldman shares and the power to succeed Lloyd Blankfein as chairman– though Wachovia was on the verge of filing bankruptcy. Even though the Treasury Secretary had requested  Goldman chairman Blankfein to perform a public service by absorbing the broken bank, the antagonized Goldman chairman told the Wachovia executive to get thee to a nunnery. Some Masters of the Universe have such rotten hubris, such selfish, self-aggrandizing drives they act like primitive warriors from a more violent time.

So, where do we stand today?

The roles of  financial institutions  too big to fail is multiplying from 6 to 30. Take notice taxpayers of America.

The Dodd-Frank bill to regulate Wall Street is an unholy mess.

Read the entire article here