Goldman's chief financial officer then and now, a fellow named David Viniar, wrote a letter in February 2004, commending the SEC for its efforts to develop "a regulatory framework that will contribute to the safety and soundness of financial institutions and markets by aligning regulatory capital requirements more closely with well-developed internal risk-management practices." Translation: Thanks for letting us ignore all those pesky regulations while we turn the staid underwriting business into a Charlie Sheen house party.
Goldman and the other banks argued that they didn't need government supervision for a very simple reason: Rooting out corruption and fraud was in their own self-interest. In the event of financial wrongdoing, they insisted, they would do their civic duty and protect the markets. But in late 2006, well before many of the other players on Wall Street realized what was going on, the top dogs at Goldman — including the aforementioned Viniar — started to fear they were sitting on a time bomb of billions in toxic assets. Yet instead of sounding the alarm, the very first thing Goldman did was tell no one. And the second thing it did was figure out a way to make money on the knowledge by screwing its own clients. So not only did Goldman throw a full-blown "bite me" on its own self-righteous horseshit about "internal risk management," it more or less instantly sped way beyond inaction straight into craven manipulation.
"This is the dog that didn't bark," says Eliot Spitzer, who tangled with Goldman during his years as New York's attorney general. "Their whole political argument for a decade was 'Leave us alone, trust us to regulate ourselves.' They not only abdicated that responsibility, they affirmatively traded against the entire market."
They knew the financial crisis was coming, because their own actions assured it would happen. And knowing it was coming, they then proceeded to bet massive amounts of money that the housing market would collapse into a massive depression. For this, they were rewarded tens of billions of dollars, and given hundreds of billions more in government credit to make more bets to earn even more money to "pay back the Treasury department." It was a win for GS. It was a win for the Treasury department. And when Obama saw what he had inherited, he realized he had no choice but to keep playing or watch the country snap back into depression.
But somebody's got to pay for all this mess. Guess who? Go look in the mirror if you want a hint.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment