Jon Stewart calls them 'These Fucking Guys' - apt for Goldman Sachs' geniuses and their recent shenanigans. I read the following bit in the Times this morning that summed up the situation perfectly...

From here: Adam Smith taught us that the point of a robust capital market is to direct capital to its best and highest use, where, combined with labor, it will produce the goods and services most valued by society. Asset bubbles are a problem, but at least mortgage-backed securities enabled people to live in their overvalued houses. The Goldman “Abacus” transaction involved “synthetic” collateralized debt obligations, derivatives whose value rose and fell with the value of real C.D.O.’s elsewhere. It produced no goods or services, financed no consumption — nothing at all. Money that could, and should, have been used to add value to society was not invested; it was squandered as surely as if the parties had wagered on a horse race. Legitimate hedging is one thing. Gambling with people’s savings, university endowments and municipal funds, on the other hand, should be a crime. 

FINALLY!!!!

Text of SEC's complaint against Goldman Sachs... Goldman Sachs charged with fraud by SEC...

About time someone took a closer look at "the great vampire squid"..

From here: According to the complaint, Goldman created Abacus 2007-AC1 in February 2007, at the request of John A. Paulson, a prominent hedge fund manager who earned an estimated $3.7 billion in 2007 by correctly wagering that the housing bubble would burst. Goldman let Mr. Paulson select mortgage bonds that he wanted to bet against — the ones he believed were most likely to lose value — and packaged those bonds into Abacus 2007-AC1, according to the S.E.C. complaint. Goldman then sold the Abacus deal to investors like foreign banks, pension funds, insurance companies and other hedge funds. But the deck was stacked against the Abacus investors, the complaint contends, because the investment was filled with bonds chosen by Mr. Paulson as likely to default. Goldman told investors in Abacus marketing materials reviewed by The Times that the bonds would be chosen by an independent manager.

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!!! from Matt Taibbi. Unless we break up these big banks we are falling headlong into another crisis. Greece is an example where Goldman Sachs is directly implicated in hiding that country's debt until the situation imploded. When are we going to stop this??? In the excerpt below, Matt talks about Goldman's scam also known as "Swoop and Squat"...

Sleight of hand and orphan month based accounting - Goldman Sachs style

Goldman Sachs keeps getting better at the 'hoodwink' game... Just about everyone heard about their wondrous profits declared yesterday. Now the rest of the story...

From here: Goldman Sachs reported a profit of $1.8 billion in the first quarter, and plans to sell $5 billion in stock and get out of the government’s clutches, if it can.

How did it do that? One way was to hide a lot of losses in not-so-plain sight.

Goldman’s 2008 fiscal year ended Nov. 30. This year the company is switching to a calendar year. The leaves December as an orphan month, one that will be largely ignored. In Goldman’s earnings statement, and in most of the news reports, the quarter ended March 31 is compared to the quarter last year that ended in February.

The orphan month featured — surprise — lots of write-offs. The pretax loss was $1.3 billion, and the after-tax loss was $780 million.

Would the firm have had a profit if it had stuck to its old calendar, and had to include December and exclude March?

Note: In spite of their profits, the fact that they are blogger bullies remain...