Wall Street’s most powerful firm – Goldman Sachs – has been caught red-handed blatantly stealing from their clients. And before Congress they believe they’ve done nothing wrong. The accusations are “completely unfounded in law and fact.” They might want to consult an ethics textbook as well so they can deny crossing the line of being a trustworthy ally to their customers.
To simplify it as best as I can. Goldman Sachs traders herded their clients to invest in securities mostly based on subprime mortgages. Nothing wrong there per se. However, Goldman Sachs had handpicked the mortgages for the securities as the most likely ones to failed and never instructed the clients of such. Then the company went and bet against all these securities and made a killing from their own clients when the securities did indeed sink underwater.
They charged people for 1) their ‘expert’ advice even though it was all a lie 2) to place money in these securities and then 3) took even more money as the investments soured.
Can you believe the gall of these greedy SOBs? (And this from the son of a banker.)
Among the accused mastermind’s of this fraud, Fabrice Tourre, a Goldman Sachs trader who has since been promoted to executive director of Goldman Sachs International in London, responded by saying ” I believe my conduct was proper.”
This from a person who in an e-mail described himself as “The fabulous Fab standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades I created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!”
The Securities Exchange Commission, Congress, and ordinary citizens have a different opinion on what is proper.
“Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio, while telling other investors that the securities were selected by an independent, objective third party,” SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami said in a statement.
The formerly-trusted bank issued a rebuttal statement that it never mischaracterized anything and it wasn’t obliged to “disclose the identities of a buyer to a seller and vice versa.”
Too big to fail as been a mantra around Washington D.C. in recent months. How about we amend that with too big to trust?
Capitalism does have a good side, but it also has dark side where greed overshadows all common sense and leads to common people being led down a path of ruin by others that had been deemed trustworthy in years past.
To read the original article from the Associated Press, please visit Finance.Yahoo.com. Direct link to the story: http://yhoo.it/cUFmiC
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