this GS congressional testimony is comedy gold

[droski]

I have an innocent question...while what GS did wasn't illegal, would it have made a difference if it was? I guess what I am asking is would the financial crisis have been as bad if this wasn't going on, or would it have had little effect anyway and GS was just practicing good business acumen?

paulson among others were pretty vocal that they were shorting these things and people still bought em. they just thought that paulson was crazy. if goldman told these clients they were shorting them they might hvae not bought the securities, i guess, but these people are supposed to be sophisticated investors themselves. and anyone thinking goldman brokers are selling stuff to instiutions they think are good investments and aren't simply selling whatever management wants them to is too stupid to be running big time money in the first place. institutional brokerage has been working this way for as long as it has been around.

 

[droski]

They just hedge the position in case they have shares they can't sell and the bottom falls out of them.
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that's the party line and i'm sure that is what they did once they realized these things were unsellable, but i don't for a minute think if goldman wasn't long a single CDO that they wouldn't have shorted the housing market anyway. from everything i've read they were long this stuff, freaked out when they realized it was going south, and the shorted as much as AIG would give them right before the biggest collapse.

 

[BigPapaVol]

that's the party line and i'm sure that is what they did once they realized these things were unsellable, but i don't for a minute think if goldman wasn't long a single CDO that they wouldn't have shorted the housing market anyway. from everything i've read they were long this stuff, freaked out when they realized it was going south, and the shorted as much as AIG would give them right before the biggest collapse.

They definitely shorted all they could to offset the enormous risk they had, but they were shorting across the board and not selling what they knew to be crap securities. They had an investment opinion, but it wasn't focused on a particular issue, as is being suggested here.

I'm really surprised they found takers on the other side of their shorts.
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[droski]

They definitely shorted all they could to offset the enormous risk they had, but they were shorting across the board and not selling what they knew to be crap securities. They had an investment opinion, but it wasn't focused on a particular issue, as is being suggested here.

I'm really surprised they found takers on the other side of their shorts.
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agreed.

according to what i've read only aig was taking these bets in size late in the game which explains why paulson and others made money off of bear and such, but goldman almost only had exposure to aig. of course a lot of them wanted to do it with aig because aig was AAA which turned out to be a stupid reason;

 

[allvol123]

Sorry to butt in on the BPV and droski classroom, but just have to say that once again I loathe these fools and their dog and pony shows. The audacity they have to sit there and ridicule these former and present employees for doing what is best for themselves and not what is best for the whole. Just utterly laughable.

 

[BigPapaVol]

Sorry to butt in on the BPV and droski classroom, but just have to say that once again I loathe these fools and their dog and pony shows. The audacity they have to sit there and ridicule these former and present employees for doing what is best for themselves and not what is best for the whole. Just utterly laughable.

Politicalgrandstanding just sucks. All a show for the pending regulation crap we're about to see.

The Chinese Wall I quasi agree with. The rest is protecting stupid people from themselves, which has proven a vote getter from said stupid people.
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[paul1454]

Sorry to butt in on the BPV and droski classroom, but just have to say that once again I loathe these fools and their dog and pony shows. The audacity they have to sit there and ridicule these former and present employees for doing what is best for themselves and not what is best for the whole. Just utterly laughable.

That's what I find most hypocritical. They are chastising GS employees for following their self-interest while the very reason that congress brought them there to testify was due to congressional representatives following theirs.