 The Wild Wild World of Wealth |  |
I’m here editing The Gods of Greenwich and thinking about 2008, which is the year my story takes place. So in the current theme of light summer reading on Acrimoney, here is a snippet from Chapter Thirty-Five. The paragraph is based on something that really happened the day Lehman Brothers failed, September 15, 2008.
I’ve been extremely critical of Goldman Sachs. The bonuses, funded by taxpayer bailouts, teed me off. And back on January 2, I asked, What does $22 billion in Goldman bonuses buy? Now, I have a different concern:
Is the prosecution of Goldman Sachs going too far?
Over the long term, there are no such thing as secrets. Over the long term, everything is transparent. And today, The New York Times provided a few clues about why Goldman lost $75 million, when it knew mortgages were turning bad.
Who hasn’t seen the news? The SEC accused Goldman Sachs of fraud, alleging it misrepresented an Abacus CDO. Banks lost $1 billion on the trade. And John Paulson, one of the gods of Greenwich, pocketed $1 billion.
Here are three things I don’t get:
I just watched the 60 Minutes segment on Michael Lewis and his new book, “The Big Short.” He had some terrific sound bites including my favorite about AIG: “…they didn’t know the mistake they were making.” Here’s one reason I’m buying the book. Watch CBS News Videos Online As a stockbroker, I was wary of [...]
Who needs TARP to bail out financial institutions? Your local supermarket carries a retail version at the checkout counter. We know the program as “gift cards.” Last week while I was grocery shopping, the gift-card display piqued my curiosity. So I took a few minutes to read the fine print on back of several packages. [...]
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