Goldman and Sachs execs should be in jail and Geithner should be

[INdemo]

right there beside them.This went on for about 4 years as Banks sold securities and then bet against them......


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/business/24trading.html

[ipaint]

1. When you have an administration that gets in bed with dogs...

But Goldman and other firms eventually used the C.D.O.’s to place unusually large negative bets that were not mainly for hedging purposes, and investors and industry experts say that put the firms at odds with their own clients’ interests.

“The simultaneous selling of securities to customers and shorting them because they believed they were going to default is the most cynical use of credit information that I have ever seen,” said Sylvain R. Raynes, an expert in structured finance at R & R Consulting in New York. “When you buy protection against an event that you have a hand in causing, you are buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and then committing arson.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/business/24trading.html?_r=1

[Bozita]

2. That was frontpage above the fold in Thursday's print edition

I don't think Christmas Eve has high readership numbers.

[RB TexLa]

3. There is nothing criminal or even wrong about buying CDS or shorting something you sell

the assumption that there is something criminal about that is ridiculous.

[Cleita]

4. You can do things that are criminal and still be legal.

The industry has practically no regulation these days to stop them from doing criminal acts. After all Hitler killed six million Jews and many more legally because laws were passed making it easy for him to do so. This isn't murder but the m/o is the same.

[Smashcut]

5. You don't think there's something even *unethical* about selling customers securities you created

expecting (intending) for them to fail without letting said customers in on it?

I hope I never buy anything from you!

[FreakinDJ]

6. Betting against the securities you sold when you have all

the actual credit ratings of the mortgages sounds like insider trading minimum to me

Did you read the whole article

[INdemo]

14. yes I did ..They actually created these high risk securities and sold them as

lower risk investments and then bought or bought them short knowing they would drop..double dipping..Illegal as hell and no one is being charged???

[EFerrari]

8. Betting against your own bad product sure is criminal.

Good grief.

[lib2DaBone]

7. Here you have proof of blatant criminal enterprise....

..to the tune of Billions of $$$... yet no RICO, NO Grand Jury, No Subpoenas...NADA..


Yet, let someone steal a pack of cigarettes or a 6-pack of beer from 7-11... we're tallkin 3 to 5 years.

WTF?

[laughingliberal]

9. Yes, the moral of this being if you plan to steal, steal a lot. nt

[glitch]

11. But first make a lot of powerful friends. nt

[AllentownJake]

10. There is so much fraud going on right now it is sickening

and Obama's justice department is nowhere to be found.

[glitch]

12. Nowhere to be found? or writing briefs further undermining centuries old civil rights? nt

[Turbineguy]

13. Goldman Sachs is a business.

The Bush Administration rewarded people who purchased Hummers and GM built them and sold them. They also promulgated many other destructive policies. GS did business in this environment as did many others.

[amborin]

15. list of Banksters w/ administration positions:

The latest round of Wall Street muckety-mucks now in charge of regulation.

— By Andy Kroll


Here's a short list of Obama officials who got their start in the private sector—many, like Paulson, at "Government Sachs."


Neal Wolin
Deputy secretary of the treasury (Tim Geithner's No. 2)
Exec at one of the largest insurance and investment firms

Mark Patterson
Treasury secretary's chief of staff
Goldman Sachs lobbyist

Gene Sperling
Counselor to the treasury secretary
Made nearly $900,000 advising Goldman Sachs

Larry Summers
Obama's chief economic adviser
Made $5 million as managing director of a hedge fund

Rahm Emanuel
White House chief of staff
Made $16 million as a partner at a Chicago investment bank

Herbert Allison
Assistant secretary of the treasury (oversees TARP)
Longtime exec at Merrill Lynch; headed Fannie Mae

Kim Wallace
Assistant secretary of the treasury for legislative affairs
Managing director at Barclays Capital and Lehman Brothers

Karthik Ramanathan
Acting assistant treasury secretary for financial markets
Foreign exchange dealer at Goldman Sachs

Matthew Kabaker
Deputy assistant secretary of the treasury
Made $5.8 million at the Blackstone Group in 2008-2009

Lewis Alexander
Counselor to the treasury secretary
Chief economist at Citigroup; paid $2.4 million in 2008-2009

Adam Storch
Managing executive of the SEC's Division of Enforcement
VP of Goldman Sachs' Business Intelligence Group

Lee Sachs
Counselor to the treasury secretary
Made more than $3 million at a New York hedge fund

Gary Gensler
Chairman of Commodity Futures Trading Commission
18 years at Goldman Sachs, where he made partner

Michael Froman
Deputy assistant to Obama, deputy nat'l security adviser
Managing director of a Citigroup investment arm

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/henhouse-meet-f ...

[amborin]

16. & why the banksters couldn't make it to DC:

"it was the middle of the holiday season and a Sunday night two weeks before Christmas is a time when there are lots of holiday parties. It is important for bank presidents to be in attendance to show that even though 12 months ago they were being bailed out by, among others, the people at the parties as well as lots of other people their cheerful demeanors prove that they are not the least bit nervous about the economy or the state of their banks. Another reason they may have waited until Monday to travel to see the President (if they were not partying) was to give them additional time to work for the benefit of customers, employees and shareholders.

Lloyd Blankfein, president of Goldman Sachs (who missed the meeting), was very likely spending the evening doing rough calculations as to how to divide up $16 billion in bonuses among his thousands of employees. That is a complicated calculation. He may also have been working on the speech he would give to his employees to explain why some of them would get bonuses in stock instead of cash.

Citigroup's Vikram Pandit missed the meeting because Citigroup had a $17 billion stock offering on the same day as the meeting with the President took place. Mr. Pandit spent the day convincing investors they should buy some of the stock that was being offered. Thanks to those efforts Citigroup received $425 million in fees from the offering. In Mr. Pandit's place Citigroup's chairman, Richard Parsons was to attend, but having better things to do on Sunday night than spend the night in the capitol he waited until Monday morning to travel and because of weather had to miss the meeting. He may have spent some time Sunday night working on helping those struggling to pay their mortgages who were hoping to qualify under the "Making Home Affordable Program." In November 2008 Citigroup said its intention was to reach out to 500,000 borrowers who needed help to avoid foreclosure. It said its program might result in $20 billion of mortgage refinancings. As of November 2009 it had fallen a bit shy of its goal. Of all mortgagees who were eligible for modification it had only entered into trial modifications Public 111009 FINAL.PDF with 100,126 homeowners instead of 500,000 homeowners and had only made permanent modifications with 271 borrowers out of the 231,000 who were estimated to be eligible.

John Mack of Morgan Stanley was probably also spending Sunday night trying to figure out how to help those threatened with foreclosure who were in distress. Morgan Stanley's subsidiary, Saxon Mortgage Services, Inc. had an estimated 80,000 eligible loans and had 35,565 trial modifications going on but as of the end of November had only made 42 of the loan modifications permanent. The rest were still awaiting approval. Of course he might have been toasting the fact that although those numbers are not impressive, when its permanent loans modifications are added to its trial modifications it turns out that 44% of its loans have been modified or are in the trial stage and that, percentage wise, places Public 111009 FINAL.PDF it at the top of all the Servicers in the program.

The "Making Home Affordable Program" has been in place for slightly over a year. The Treasury Department estimates there are 3,299,780 people eligible to participate in the program. As of the end of November only 31,382 have received permanent modifications. The three presidents who missed the meeting are probably keenly ware of the failure of their institutions to do more for those in trouble. They may even feel a bit of guilt about it. Not enough, however, to have made sure they'd get to the meeting with the President on time. And not enough to cause them to forego their large bonuses. "

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/26-6

[Vidar]

17. I agree.