 The Wild Wild World of Wealth |  |
Yesterday, Goldman Sachs settled fraud charges associated with Abacus CDOs for $550 million. Not surprisingly, the settlement excluded Fabrice P. Tourre, who will no doubt be hung out to dry as the Tourre de Toxic winds to a close.
Personally, I think the government just got pimp-slapped. Here are five reasons why:
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?
In the Senate chamber yesterday, our elected officials grilled reps from Goldman Sachs. The Senators illustrated, I think, the outrage felt by Americans over bailout dollars that turned into banker bonuses. Even if—Senator Carl Levin trash-talked with the kind of language that triggered FCC fines of shock-jock Howard Stern:
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:
Michael Lewis has done it again. The Big Short is a must read, even if you don’t know anything about finance. With his trademark ability to identify unlikely heroes, he chronicles the lives of people who bet against subprime mortgages. The prose is lucid. The explanations make sense. And Lewis explains what happened behind the scenes leading up to Wall Street’s 2008 debacle.
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