“I had grossly underestimated the level of extraordinarily unethical and even fraudulent behavior that had occurred on such a large scale,” Ferguson tells All Things Considered host Melissa Block, in a conversation airing Friday.
via Inside Job Director Charles Ferguson, Taking Wall Street Firmly To Task : Monkey See : NPR.
Hey-o!
The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged investment banking titan Goldman Sachs with civil fraud over a pre-packaged mortgage instrument they say was designed to fail.
Apparently, Goldman Sachs would be in trouble if it were a Vegas casino.
The issue deals with things called front-running and derivatives trading against its own investors. For the rest of us, “derivatives” is a general term used on Wall Street to describe any kind of securities trading that is done off the market and is consequently unregulated.
Oh, and these are always the types of deals that cause market crashes.
The Securities Act of 1934 specifically defines a class of “qualified” investors who are supposed to have enough assets and enough savvy to make their own mistakes, God bless ‘em. Yet in Vegas, where there is a sucker born every minute and capitalism is at least as popular as it is in New York, section 465.070 of the Nevada Gaming Law makes it a felony “to place, increase or decrease a bet or to determine the course of play after acquiring knowledge, not available to all players, of the outcome of the game or any event that affects the outcome of the game or which is the subject of the bet or to aid anyone in acquiring such knowledge for the purpose of placing, increasing or decreasing a bet or determining the course of play contingent upon that event or outcome. ”
God bless MATT TAIBBI. He got it right again!
This is the most important issue in America right now and the only magazine to deal with it right is Rolling Stone?
Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren’t just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy – they’re re-creating the conditions for another crash.
I have to admit, I do have a soft spot for Jann Wenner.
Incidentally, America’s ruling class should be hopping mad they’re getting fleeced by this corrupt executive compensation system. The bankers run their businesses into the ground because their bonuses are based on year-on-year performance.
That is to say, the easiest way for me to double profits from one year to the next is to crash the company first. Then I can do a mediocre job and look like a rockstar.
I found this on Reddit and had to put it up here.
Works with any administration.
Mr. Blankfien on a cruise last year
Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein has turned!
Speaking at the Handelsblatt banking conference yesterday, the CEO said that bankers and traders had behaved irresponsibly and that public backlash against their salaries was justified.
Of course, he’s not offering to give back the $26 million Central Park penthouse he bought last year. I mean, what are you? Some kind of Marxist?
Nevertheless, the Harvard Law School graduate commented: “The industry let the growth and complexity in new instruments outstrip their economic and social utility as well as the operational capacity to manage them.”
He continued by saying, my-god-is-that-the-indoor-pool? House party up in this beeeyotch! Holler!
Pool Party!
No doubt, Mr. Blankfein has done his job and made the rich even richer. He’s been well-paid for his service, so we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that, although he can’t afford to hide behind a PR firm (yet), we must remember that he is a small fish and this is merely his introduction to the ruling class.
Kyle Hayes
My friend Kyle has a blog. Kyle is The Master.
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