Readings...

From a book excerpt by Andrew Ross Sorkin in Vanity Fair chronicling last years financial meltdown (the time is Sept 08). This bit once again shows how government regulation saved market behemoths like Goldman Sachs from failing (Goldman declared profits of 3.2 billion this morning...).

The 50th-floor office of Goldman’s fixed-income trading unit, in Lower Manhattan, was in near meltdown by lunchtime on Thursday. No trading was taking place, and the traders themselves were glued to their terminals, staring at the GS ticker as the market continued its swoon. Goldman’s stock dropped to $85.88, its lowest level in nearly six years. Jon Winkelried, Goldman’s other co-president, had been walking the floors, trying to calm everyone’s nerves. “We could raise $5 billion in an hour if we wanted to,” he told a group of traders, as if to suggest that nothing was amiss. But just then, at one p.m., the market—and Goldman’s stock—suddenly turned around, with Goldman rising to $87 a share, and then $89. Traders raced through their screens trying to determine what had been responsible for the lift and discovered that the Financial Services Authority in the U.K. had announced a 30-day ban on short-selling 29 financial stocks, including Goldman Sachs’s. The squawk boxes on Goldman’s trading floor soon crackled to attention. A young trader found a recording of “The Star-Spangled Banner” on the Internet and broadcast it over the speakers to commemorate the moment. About three dozen traders stood up from their desks, placed their hands over their hearts, and sang aloud, accompanied by rounds of high-fives and cheers

... Trying to determine what had been responsible for the lift and discovered that the Financial Services Authority in the U.K. had announced a 30-day ban on short-selling 29 financial stocks, including Goldman Sachs’s.