Think of it this way – if you drafted some of the contracts and instruments in the deal that GS set up for Greece, would you dare to invest heavily in those same debt instruments? Attorneys and accountants have strict conflict of interest rules, but bankers are allowed to rip off and destroy their own clients, I suppose.

If I were running a large company (not that such a thing would ever happen) the last people I would want to do business with would be GS. Talk about inviting wolves into one’s house…

Hate to be all Johnny Buzzkill here, but not only is what you describe not a crime under existing law as I understand it, it’s far from clear that it is even civil fraud.

You might want to start by showing evidence that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that said company did every element of an actual voilation of some provision of Title 18 of the United States Code. Anything short of that is a waste of everyone’s time.

Err, no, yourself.

Go back and read the quoted passage.

Key points: Goldman HELPED the Greek government LEGALLY circumvent the Maastricht rules.

Feel free to argue that what the Greeks did shouldn’t be legal. I will probably not disagree with you. But for the moment, it is legal.

Goldman may have done a lot of things that reasonable people can be unhappy about. This is not one of them.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....erivatives

Seems that Citi’s great new game for avoiding suffering from the trauma of accepting only modest returns for responsible lending to small businesses and consumers is to offer a great new financial product – crisis derivatives.

Credit specialists at Citi are considering launching the first derivatives intended to pay out in the event of a financial crisis. The firm has drawn up plans for a tradable liquidity index, known as the CLX, on which products could be structured that allow buyers to hedge a spike in funding costs.

What can possibly go wrong?

Citigroup was very big in this space, JP Morgan too, and the more heavily endebted Eurozone countries had these sorts of derivative trades on with just about every investment bank on the planet. If Italy runs into trouble, you’ll see all the usual suspects rear their heads.

Top of the list though, that will be Goldman… the fact the the governor of the Bank of Italy is ex-Goldman, just a coincidence.