[QUOTE=Voyager;14870871 A system where a bank creates products to sell with one hand and supposedly give best advice to clients on the other hand is just asking to be abused.[/QUOTE]
A bank that does a huge prop trading business and gives financial advice to customers is also perverse. It is hard to understand how the bank wouldn’t be in a position to hoodwink clients to hold the bag for trades that it knows were bad.
Some analysts have traced this sea change to when the big banks became publicly traded instead of being partnerships. Goldman was once owned by a number of families, all of which planned on keeping it around for their progeny. Once they no longer had that familial stake in the business, it just became a mass of faceless stockholders, the duty became to the next quarter, not the next generation. This has been true of pretty much all the big banks that went from partnerships to publicly traded. Someone working at Goldman used to be trying to build a legacy, now they’re just working for quick money. Here’s an example
Enjoy,
Steven
Yeah. JP Morgan Chase is getting sued for something along these lines. Here’s the NY Times article.
Mining: the liposuction of geology.
It seems to me, that when a company like GS can manipulate markets in its own interests, that there is a serious conflict of interest.
Add in to this, a government (with people like Geithner) who are prepared to provide free money to banks like GS, then we have a problem.
The investment banking/finance industry seems to have to keep coming up with new prodcts-which means we have the increasingly complicated derivatives. If GS simltaneously sells these to “clients”, while manipulating the value of them, then what prevents GS from cheating?
Suppose a bank like GS decides to launch a new series of derivative-like investments. It then manipulates things sch that massive losses ensue-it knows that it can come to the Fed and demand “give us money or we’ll take down the NYSM with us”-then we have a problem.
So basically, we got banks that are “too big to fail” and they are being run as con games by crooks, devastating the world’s financial markets, and guys like Geithner in government see that not only do they not get caught, but don’t even suffer any financial losses when their schemes collapse.
Lovely.
The charge against Goldman Sachs is that they used their control and influence of clients resources to create bubble markets they controlled so they could bail out at the top and leave others to pick up the tab.
These are also the people who helped Greece falsify its finance figures for euro-entry.
Adam Smith would have been as angry as Karl Marx over that.
This isn’t a market at work, it’s, to use Adam Smith’s warning phrase, ‘a conspiracy against the public good’.
His is described as an executive director and head of United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. That sounds a little higher than one of the thousands of “VP”
I think the letter is bullshit. All of a sudden after 12 years of making his money, he now has a change of heart? More likely he got passed over for a promotion or something.
I don’t see how it will change public opinion anyway. Goldman Sachs is an investment bank, not the local savings and loan. Their clients are huge corporations, hedge funds, high net worth clients and other institutional investors. It’s not like the anti-corporate anti-banking crowd keeps their checking accounts there anyway.
Well, good, then their scruples would prevent them from looting pension funds? Very reassuring.
I think the implication is that the big companies et al might not want to stay with them because they can’t trust them to not screw them over in order to make money for themselves.
I personally think most of those companies already knew that. You don’t get to be big without understanding that every other business is out to screw you over if it will help that business make more money. Maybe someone who inherited wealth might make that mistake, but even they would likely realize after a few stocks do horribly not to trust them.
I agree.
In Taibbi’s rant about the “Great Vampire Squid,” as Moidalize stated above, he points toward one important element in Smith’s outrage:
If that isn’t the essence of unethical behavior and insider trading laid bare, I don’t know what is!
I suppose you’d have to interview Goldman clients who have been at the losing end of some of these trades to find verification of this truth, which I don’t think should be very difficult to do.
Anyone who’s invested in paper assets is only fooling themselves at the moment, being drawn in by all the “feel good” news that the media is spewing out in a desperate effort to quell the growing fire of realization that the world financial system is broke beyond repair, as the trajectory for the dollar (and every other bankrupt currency in the world) is certain demise! If you think Greece was a circus, wait till you see what happens to Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and yes, eventually the U.S. in the coming 18 to 36 months.
It’s not a pretty picture waiting to happen.
That’s the thing. How come we don’t hear about all these unhappy clients that are pissed off because Goldman screwed them over?
And really, I’m supposed to get upset by the fact they call their clients “muppets”? I’ve worked in professional services most of my career (management consulting, not investment banking). We often think our clients are idiots who are annoying as fuck and will say so internally. That doesn’t mean we are trying to “scam” them. And consulting is also often thought of as a bullshit overpaid scam profession that adds no real value. That doesn’t mean clients don’t actually sometimes find real value in hiring us.
Based on what exactly?
Of course they know that! It’s not like all those CEOs and ibankers don’t know each other from the country club or Wharton reunions!
It’s not really about buying and selling stocks like on eTrade or something. Investment banks do stuff like manage company’s mergers or finance IPOs. A lot of their trades are with other investment bank trading desks and it’s pretty much known that they are trying to screw each other.
Or decided to start his own firm, one with a family-oriented culture and which looks out for long-term investors. If he can poach a couple of high net worth individuals from the GS of the world, he can set himself up for life without answering to the GS apparatus.
But maybe, just maybe, he was recently promoted into the highest eschelon of financial circles, where it’s clear they’re absolutely fucking everyone that comes within arms reach. It’s possible to think you’re working in your clients best interests at the grunt level. The big picture doesn’t crystalize until you climb the ladder a bit more. At the low level it’s just an uneasiness. It’s not until you get to the upper levels that it becomes clear it’s not just systemic, it’s systematic.
Enjoy,
Steven
Oh, come on, all the evidence is that the top players at Goldman Sachs are a bunch of amoral assholes who’d buttfuck their grandmother’s corpses to keep those hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into their personal bank accounts. The defense that being such creatures is defensible because it’s BUSINESS AS USUAL made my eyeballs fall out from sheer disbelief. I can’t say anything more about my opinion of that defense without taking it to the Pit, so I’ll stop typing right here.
Sort of a hijack, but years ago I took a finance course given by a Prof. Robert Zevin, at Boston University.
Dr. Zevin went on to found and manage a mutual fund that invested in “ethical” investments-this meant that the firms invested in had strong commitments to paying living wages, avoiding bribing officials, corruption, etc.
Since that time, several such funds have emerged-are they recognized as providing better returns than amoral companies like G-S?
I think I’ve seen some information that say they don’t - which is to be expected because they have limited investment options.
But this is apples and oranges. The beef with G-S is not that they invest in oil companies but that their treatment of their clients is unethical. It is possible (if unlikely) that the managers of a company investing in only green companies can rip off their clients by disguising bank ties to these green companies. So client treatment and investment options are two different things.
If you are so ignorant that you have to ask this question, then you haven’t been paying attention to what has been happening in the financial markets and political arenas around the world. My words but a whisper, your ignorance a SHOUT.
Seriously, you need to get up to speed.
Class Dunce Passes Fed’s Stress Test Without a Sweat: Jonathan Weil
“That’s why the results of the Fed’s ‘comprehensive capital analysis’ are more about public relations and manufacturing confidence than they are about disseminating reliable information on banks’ health.”
Alasdair Macleod: Eurozone banks and contagion risk
Greece has now defaulted, and other eurozone governments as well as agencies such as the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Investment Bank have retrospectively inserted themselves as senior creditors, a precedent that should be of great concern and which has profound implications for private sector banks.
Pimco chief Mohamed El-Erian expects 'second Greece’ in Portugal
However, the EU authorities broke their pledges so many times during the Greek saga that market faith has been shattered. Even Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has expressed disgust, signaling that it will give Club Med debt a wide birth from now on. It has already sold half its Spanish bonds.
Italy is trapped in a monetary Völkerkerker: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
I wish premier Mario Monti all the best. He is one Europe’s great gentlemen. Yet I fail to see how his labour reforms can – under current macro-policies – pull the country out of its downward slide before the debt trajectory blows out of control.
Central banks pounce on falling gold, buying it through BIS
The Bank for International Settlements, which acts on behalf of central banks, has been buying significant quantities of gold on the international market amid falling prices, traders said.
James Turk: Physical demand for precious metals cuts short-sellers off
Today’s action [in the precious metals market] is another good example that the paper shorts can only push the gold and silver market so far, even with news that should have helped them pressure prices… I think more and more people are starting to recognize this seemingly endless daisy-chain, Eric. Banks gets bailed out by governments, and then governments get bailed out when banks buy their paper. Central banks provide the grease to make it all happen with their ongoing money printing. For example, Spanish banks are borrowing EUR 152 billion from the ECB, three times the amount from one year ago. So in the end, nothing gets resolved. All the bad debts remain.…But importantly, money printing does nothing to fix so many insolvent banks - and insolvent governments too - here in Europe.
As far as the credibility of Greg Smith is concerned, the following story more than backs up what he experienced at Goldman Sachs.
Former Merrill Worker: Greg Smith Was Right…and it’s Not Just Goldman
So the Goldmans of the world turned to derivatives, structured products and synthetic securities. These highly illiquid securities are literally created out of thin air.…We were told that if we expected to get paid, we had to sell these “high margin” products, regardless of the fact that selling CDO equity was akin to selling your accounts financial poison.
Have fun educating yourself. 
Let’s see. Why would certain persons start rumors that the price of many securities is about to fall? Could it be, is it possible, that some of them would like you to panic, sell your shares or bonds really cheap, liquidate in panic? And they’ll help you by buying them–just to get them off your hands.
And then, when they DON’T go down in value, but go up, who will get the benefit?
Why, the same people who started all the alarming rumors. Amazing!
There are “end of the financial world” articles every year, every day, somewhere on line or in a financial newsletter.
Yet the financial world didn’t crash in 2000 (Y2K), or in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007. It took a huge hit in 2001 ((9/11 related) and in 2008 (liquidity crisis linked to effects of subprime securitization). But not in 2009, 2010, 2011. 2012 is doing okay so far.
Hmm.
Seriously, the fact that you have so many links to random blog postings and editorial pieces at hand and are so quick to start calling people “ignorant” for asking you to backup your absurd claims leads me to believe that you are, in fact, some kind of knowledgeable Wall Street insider and not some fat, smelly chinbearded loser sitting in his mom’s basement who has never made more than $30,000 a year.
Maybe you can help me convert all my cash into gold so I can weather the coming economic storm?:rolleyes: