Goldman Suchs
I had mixed feelings about the notion that pride was a mortal sin. After all, one could be pleased with the work one has done, or behavior that was good and proper. Surely there could be nothing wrong with that kind of pride. If it didn't get out of hand of course; if one didn't rest heavily on one's laurels and not seek to produce new ones.
But where the sin part comes in is where pride is stretched to the excess of arrogance, and no where is that more evident than in the behavior of Goldman Sachs and their top executives. Emails among the Goldman brass have surfaced that reveal their obscenely smug glee at having ripped off investors.
What they did was not very complicated, and should be understood by every American; especially those who have lost homes and jobs. Goldman Sachs bundled sub-prime mortgages that were valued at somewhere between trash and worthless and sold them as securities; like any other stocks and bonds. Then they themselves shorted the securities. That is, they invested heavily in the prospect that the securities were worthless.
Shorting is legal; you can bet that stocks will go down. But investment companies are required to reveal all salient aspects of the deals they promote; they have to tell potential investors about significant risks, too. That's where Goldman Sachs is going to find itself in deep doo-doo. They sold the securities as having value when in fact they didn’t have any. And they failed to tell investors that they were shorting the stuff.
We can only hope that the people who profited from these deals are found to have committed crimes and are sent to jail. For as Frank Rich so aptly put it, they didn't just rip off investors, they brought the world's economy to its knees, cost eight million Americans their jobs...and they reaped billions in profits while they hurt us.
©2010 SetonnoteS
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