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Posted by Elle on December 24, 2009, 12:00 pm
>From a comment today on a NY Times article about Goldman Sachs'
manipulating the mortgage backed securities market:
---
Speaking as someone who worked in the IT and risk area for credit
derivatives at one of the largest financial institutions -- it was
fraud on a massive scale.
Nobody really believed the risk management numbers for CDO's were
anything more than so many angels dancing on the head of a pin. I'm
talking about the quants/mathematicians, the traders and most of all
the high level executives at the top of the fixed income food chain.
What they did believe was that bonuses were paid out on an annual
basis for performance that was measured largely by sales. Not the
eventual value of the trades, which ended up being worthless.
These bankers should be dressed in orange pajamas and sent down to
Guantanamo. They are the real terrorists. Not the fake movie style
terrorists and bank robbers that the government wants us to believe in
-- who wear masks and carry guns.
No, these are the real bank robbers who work inside the institution
and would need tractor trailers to carry out all the money. Real bank
robbers wear suits and have the money transferred directly to their
own bank accounts.
What a joke that Goldman pretends to be innocent, and claims to have
"paid off their TARP money," while their biggest creditors --
including AIG -- were given huge amounts of taxpayer dollars to pay
off trades they had with Goldman.
The Goldman bonuses are our tax dollars at work. Plain and simple.
I was a witness to history. I saw it happen. The mathematical models
were so complex even the mathematicians made jokes about them.
Well, the joke is on all Americans.
--NYC Father
Manhattan
December 24th, 2009
9:07 am
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Posted by Augustine on December 24, 2009, 12:30 pm
Maybe next time we should just let them go under, as we should've.
Now it's too late to complain about the spilled milk after giving them
an allowance without any responsibility, just a vague sense of thanks
for their campaign contributions.
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Posted by Elle on December 24, 2009, 12:51 pm
> Maybe next time we should just let them go under, as we should've.
> Now it's too late to complain about the spilled milk after giving them
> an allowance without any responsibility, just a vague sense of thanks
> for their campaign contributions.
Maybe. Yet I wonder if it is really fair to judge the bailout of these
banks and investment houses as misguided. I do not know what would
have happened to the economy if we had let the many banks and
investment firms go under. Did the bailouts rescue the little guys and
gals? Maybe. I guess time will tell more.
What Goldman Sachs was doing though stinks to me.
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Posted by dapperdobbs on December 24, 2009, 3:14 pm
> Maybe next time we should just let them go under, as we should've.
> Now it's too late to complain about the spilled milk after giving them
> an allowance without any responsibility, just a vague sense of thanks
> for their campaign contributions.
I don't think we should wait until 'next time.' I've written letters
to Congressmen. That we should let these jerks walk, but also cover
their bonus packages is just criminal negligence on our part. We're
not talking enough about literally hundreds of millions of dollars to
CEO's who either a) never understood what they were doing, or b) knew
it was destined to collapse, and c) in either case lied about it to
shareholders. We're also not talking enough about a Congress that
contaged "The Rapure of the Risk" and facilitated what amounts to
completely fraudulent reporting to the SEC. Goldman Sachs is still
around simply because it is "slicker" than the rest.
The destruction to the financial system in the 'banking crisis' had to
be repaired - most have grown accustomed to some form of civilization,
capitalism, and free markets. So the need to repair is not in
question. How it was done, has some unanswered specifics attached. The
aftermath is still with us: Zero interest rates have severely crimped
many retirees who relied on interest income, and the market crash
turned portfolios down in a big way.
The widespread volume of arrogance and stupidity of MBA's and PhD's is
truly staggering. It is a contagion in corporate America, IMO, and
extends to markets that used to be available to all, and now are not:
municipal issues, IPO's, small successful companies; all of these are
being bought up in markets "cornered" by large institutions and
corporations, often just to 'flip' IPO's and loot corporations of
cash.
Ultimately - and also very, very practically - the long-term solution
is the assumption of individual responsibility. Whether you call it a
code of honor, or a test of faith, or common sense and decency, one
must maintain one's own level of ethics, and not get sucked down into
the whirling cesspool.
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Posted by Bill on December 24, 2009, 3:40 pm
In our rush to castigate the bankers let's not lose site of the most
culpable players of all, namely the rating agencies. The bankers could
not have gotten started without those bogus AAA ratings. Virtually no
one has bothered to criticize the rating agencies let alone suggest
meaningful changes to the system. For the number one bad guys it is
business as usual, therefore, you can be certain that something similar
will happen again in the future.
--
.Bill.
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