El Cid - April 19, 2010 | 2:32 pm · Link

We deeply apologize if any inconvenience our actions were interpreted as having caused you in any way reflected badly upon our image or otherwise made our activities more difficult to pursue.

kommrade reproductive vigor - April 19, 2010 | 2:35 pm · Link

At least they’re not blaming ACORN.

Yet.

Face - April 19, 2010 | 2:36 pm · Link

Goldman Sachs has never condoned and would never condone inappropriate activity by any of our people.

Pretty sure the key hedge here is “people”. These fucking monsters aren’t people, by any common definition.

geg6 - April 19, 2010 | 2:37 pm · Link

As happy as I am to see GS taking some heat, the real criminals are still seen as oracles:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100503/hayes

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that Chris Hayes is a national treasure and should be cloned so that he can take his reportorial skills to every medium he can.

Balconesfault - April 19, 2010 | 2:42 pm · Link

If they really lost money on the deal, I’m expecting that those involved got shit-canned … or at least had their bonuses cut that year.

Call me jaded … I’m betting that when the dust clears, including all related transactions and fees, there was not a net Goldman loss.

Eric U. - April 19, 2010 | 2:44 pm · Link

I think they read the article by Sam Antar about how they were screwing themselves. I found it amusing that he thinks the SEC does this on purpose for what amount to personal reasons. It’s probably more complex than that, but I’m guessing the thought of people at Goldman stewing all weekend didn’t hurt anyone’s feelings at the SEC

Fleas correct the era - April 19, 2010 | 2:45 pm · Link

If they really lost money on the deal, I’m expecting that those involved got shit-canned … or at least had their bonuses cut that year.

Oh, yes indeed. By at least five dollars. And you know that’s gonna leave a mark! How they must have suffered…

Violet - April 19, 2010 | 2:49 pm · Link

Goldman Sachs has never condoned and would never condone inappropriate activity by any of our people.

This is like saying, “We’re against bad things.” In the real world where the rest of us live, this means nothing.

“Inappropriate activity?” Is this what we’re calling lying, cheating, and stealing these days?

Fleas correct the era - April 19, 2010 | 2:52 pm · Link

“Inappropriate activity?” Is this what we’re calling lying, cheating, and stealing these days?

Getting caught.

Calouste - April 19, 2010 | 2:53 pm · Link

Just reading between the lines of Mr. Bankfine:

the fundamental values that have served Goldman Sachs throughout our history: teamwork, excellence, and service to our clients.

Honesty and integrity are apparently not fundamental values at GS.

Goldman Sachs has never condoned and would never condone inappropriate activity by any of our people.

I guess that depends on what Mr. Bankfine means with “inappropriate”. Giving a sucker an even brake would pretty much be frowned upon at GS.

flukebucket - April 19, 2010 | 2:58 pm · Link

Okay. It is driving me crazy. There was a woman who tried to warn everybody back during the Clinton administration that there needed to be more government regulation in the trading of derivatives.

Seems like her name was Britlee Bourne or something like that.

Anybody remember?

The core of the SEC’s case is the allegation that one employee misled two professional investors

We will soon hear more than we ever cared to hear about the Lynndie England of Goldman Sachs.

kay - April 19, 2010 | 2:59 pm · Link

@EconWatcher:

The firm is noticeably distancing itself from the “one employee,” whereas Friday was a full-throated denial.

I agree. I think it’s a good sign, if you’re the SEC.

Cat Lady - April 19, 2010 | 3:01 pm · Link

@EconWatcher:

It’s good news for the SEC. The Fabulous Fab is a young guy who doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life poor and/or in jail. He’s not going down alone. Popcorn!

Cat Lady - April 19, 2010 | 3:05 pm · Link

@flukebucket:

Brooksley Born. It’s always the women who try to save us from ourselves.

R. Porrofatto - April 19, 2010 | 3:07 pm · Link

I don’t work on Wall St but I’ve worked with many WS businesses and mid-level guys. As people they are no different than anyone else – some decent, some complete assholes. What differentiates them from the rest of us, though, are the torrents of money they swim in, and the arrogant self-worth imbued in them by so much easy money to be had. Ordinary Americans have very little idea of just how much of their own work they’ve had to sacrifice to give these parasites incomes and net worth that is hundreds of times larger than the the average worker* – if we can even use “work” in this context. They are literally laughing all the way to the bank and it’s a very short ride.

Considering the billions these people accumulated legally (after getting Congress to declare it legal of course) makes it all the more stunning just how unnecessary committing fraud was. Like their organized crime counterparts, it was so easy they simply couldn’t help themselves

*Think a half million dollars per year would be a handsome income which would take care of every need and want of your family, with a nice estate for your granchildren and then some? Well, if you made $500,000 every single year since the birth of Christ – 2000 years – you’d have made one billion dollars. John Paulson, at the core of the fraud du jour, made four billion in one year, 2007. And so did David Tepper in 2009, one of the worst years since the Great Depression for the rest of us.

flukebucket - April 19, 2010 | 3:09 pm · Link

@Cat Lady:

Thank you so much. That was driving me nuts. I was googling it every way I knew possible and I couldn’t come up with it.

I watched an NPR special on Brooklsey Born once with my wife and from time to time my wife would give me that “men are such dumb asses” look.

At the time I had to agree with her.

Tsulagi - April 19, 2010 | 3:11 pm · Link

1.) We didn’t do anything wrong
2.) If we did do anything wrong, it was just a few bad apples
3.) We’re against wrong, as I’ve said lots of times!

Think I’ve heard that before.

Good luck with that, Lloyd!

Why not? Not long ago worked well for some other guys.

But Goldman needs to update with the times. After the three three-step program above, they need to follow with…

1. Must look forward, not backward.
2. Full plate.
3. Pick your serial battles, but not this one as you wouldn’t be able to get anything else done.
4. Plus also too.

Professor - April 19, 2010 | 3:13 pm · Link

Fellows, what has happened to Phil Gramm and his wife? We used to say ‘where are they now’? Did they have any part to play in this debacle?

SomeoneWhoOncePostedUnderaDifferentName - April 19, 2010 | 3:19 pm · Link

Don’t fight it. Just buy Goldman stock everytime it drops over the next few months.

When it goes up (probably after the case is dismissed, settled for pennies, or is overturned by the COA or SC), take your winnings and blow it on a two week binge in the Carribean. It’s the only way you can pull a sliver of joy out of what has happened to this country.

Cat Lady - April 19, 2010 | 3:22 pm · Link

@Violet:

Include Sheila Bair, Meredith Whitney and Sharron Watkins, give them a budget and subpeona power, and stand back. Shock and awe baby, shock and awe.

rootless-e - April 19, 2010 | 3:24 pm · Link

@ajr22: in this case, Goldman was stealing from ACA/RoyalBankofScotland, ABN/AMRO and IKB.

i just can’t get worked up about it.

It’s a weak analogy, I admit. But I can’t find it in my heart to be mad that ABN/AMRO made a naive and costly trade on the advice of GS.

kommrade reproductive vigor - April 19, 2010 | 3:29 pm · Link

And it’s AIDS, not Aids. Also. Too.

Upper West - April 19, 2010 | 3:36 pm · Link

Sorry, Lloyd—GS is out of luck:

Respondeat Superior

(n) Doctrine of Respondent superior implies the responsibility of the superiors on the actions done by their employees, agents, subordinates etc when they are doing such actions during their assigned duties. So when an accident happens while handling an explosive involved in the work assigned to such person, The master is responsible for such loss. The Latin word (rehs-pond-dee-at superior) means ‘let the master answer’

gex - April 19, 2010 | 3:40 pm · Link

@ajr22: Agreed. The Omar Littles in this story were the guys who shorted the big 5. And they even differ from Omar in that many of them tried to get the SEC to take action.

I guess the immorality of these sociopaths does not rankle some.

rootless-e - April 19, 2010 | 3:48 pm · Link

@gex:

I just don’t want to excuse the bankers. Look at IBK. Their charter was to make loans for industrial development in Germany. So dipshit Basel 2 regulators declared that roulette bets that the ratings agencies declared to be AAA could be treated as regulatory capital. And the high paid management at IBK took a pile of money and instead of lending it to people who want to make refrigerators or windmills, they signed onto a scam that would have embarrassed the folks who call old people and try to trick them into revealing their credit card numbers. And then, people who sweep streets and empty bedbans in Germany had their taxes used to bail out these morons.

rootless-e - April 19, 2010 | 3:50 pm · Link

@gex: Omar was not helping build a richer and more community oriented Baltimore either. The entire industry is based on fraud. I am suspicious of what I see as an effort to claim it’s just a few bad apples.

jl - April 19, 2010 | 3:52 pm · Link

Forget this Goldman Sachs trivia.

This here is really important.

Breitbart’s operation says Miley Cyrus is a liberal mole.

Is Miley Cyrus an Alinskyite Mole Sent to Brainwash Country Music Fans
http://yglesias.thinkprogress......c-fans.php

And what about Taylor Swift? Was in movie with Miley Cyrus, guest hosted SNL, and now in a movie with known liberal starlet eggheads Julia Roberts and Jessica Alba.

The true real Americans are under seige and infiltrated by sinister fifth columns of talented hotties. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

The evil plot continues.

Linda Featheringill - April 19, 2010 | 4:12 pm · Link

That guy – Blankfein – he just can’t shut up, can he?

If he really has to make a public announcement every 48 hours or so, and continues to do so, he might wind up talking himself into jail.

This whole drama might be more action-packed than I anticipated.

jl - April 19, 2010 | 4:17 pm · Link

@rootless-e: check for boner pill names embedded in the words.

S o s h u l i s t, for example.

Or maybe it pissed off Tunch, in which case there is no hope.

Jon H - April 19, 2010 | 4:30 pm · Link

John,

May I humbly request that any mention of Blankfein in a post be accompanied by a picture of Verne Troyer (Mini-Me). The resemblance is remarkable.

I would particularly suggest a picture of Troyer, drunk and naked, from Surreal Life.

kay - April 19, 2010 | 4:35 pm · Link

The big banks and investment houses should have asked a the peons what people were doing with debt, before they decided no one would ever default on a mortgage.

They weren’t making the mortgage first, because they needed to make the car payment to get to work, and the foreclosure process is lengthy, and the repo process is not.

Just common sense, if you’re drowning.

kay - April 19, 2010 | 4:41 pm · Link

@ksmiami:

Well, I think it’s safe to say they buy a lot of things, so there’s that.
One of the gentleman menioned in the complaint purchased a home for 41 million dollars in 2008, for example.

J. Michael Neal - April 19, 2010 | 5:04 pm · Link

Count me in with rootless. As I’ve expressed here several times over the last few days, the idea that the parties on the other sides of these trades were innocent dupes is laughable. That includes the ones at the pension funds. The people who had money in those funds, they are legitimate victims. I have ZERO sympathy for the people who ran them into the ground, and the anger of pension holders should be directed first at the clowns who ran them.

All that said, my lack of sympathy for the counterparties should not be read as thinking that the case is inappropriate. I’m all for gunning down Goldman execs in the streets and making the rest of the employees clean up the mess with toothbrushes. However, that’s on general principles, and the fraud case is merely a tool to accomplish a good end.

Mnemosyne - April 19, 2010 | 5:13 pm · Link

@kay:

The big banks and investment houses should have asked a the peons what people were doing with debt, before they decided no one would ever default on a mortgage.

They weren’t making the mortgage first, because they needed to make the car payment to get to work, and the foreclosure process is lengthy, and the repo process is not.

It’s even better than that. Remember that credit card bankruptcy bill that the banksters pushed through that made it much more difficult for people to default on their credit cards? Once it became easier to default on a mortgage than on your credit card, people kept up their credit card payments and stopped paying the mortgage.

So now, instead of losing $30,000 in credit card debt, banks are losing $300,000 (and more) from those very same people when they put their keys in the mail and walk away from their house. That’s what you get for only looking at the next quarter’s profits and not the long-term effects of a policy that you basically wrote yourself.

Mnemosyne - April 19, 2010 | 5:15 pm · Link

@J. Michael Neal:

As I’ve expressed here several times over the last few days, the idea that the parties on the other sides of these trades were innocent dupes is laughable.

Big city police departments call some homicide cases “NHI”—No Humans Involved. It’s generally drug dealers killing one another.

This is the financial version of that.

debbie - April 19, 2010 | 5:34 pm · Link

Blankfein has clearly been coached by the Catholic Church.

Jinx - April 19, 2010 | 8:29 pm · Link

@Mike Kay:

What! I thought that Garth Brooks inaugueration concert performance definitively proved that Nashville had been assimilated by ACORN. Hell, he tipped his hat to the President! Game over in the battle for the soul of country music.

Miley Cyrus? She may be a foot soldier in Obama’s war to subvert all that America holds dear, but the battle of Music City ended long ago.

I feel so bad for Andrew, his regiment must be cut off, forced to rely on old intel.

Porlock Junior - April 20, 2010 | 2:12 am · Link

@Cat Lady:
I’ll vote for that. In fact, I was going to respond to Violet in re: Bair. It was particularly striking at the height of The Crisis, when there was this triumvirate in charge of everything, except one of them wasn’t a vir. The two viri were the secty of Treasury and the Fed chairman; the unvir, Bair, was the one who was concerned with the effect of it all on actual people. Can she ever find a respectable job again?