After my Rolling Stone piece about Goldman, Sachs hit the newsstands last week (unfortunately the piece is not yet up on the magazine's web site, so I can't link to it yet -- but it is out in print), I started to get a lot of mail. Most of it was thoughtful and respectful criticism, although there was an amusingly large number of people writing in impassioned defense of their right, under our American system, to be ripped off by large impersonal financial companies. "If my pension fund is buying [crap mortgages] from Goldman, and my pension fund loses lots of value, that's not Goldman's fault," wrote one reader. "No one is forcing anyone to buy anything. The only thing Goldman is guilty of is making profits."
I'm not even going to go there -- the psychology of a human being who would take the time to actually write in a complaint like that is so bizarre that it would take more time than I have today to even begin discussing it. One other complaint that I will address quickly, though, is the notion that I didn't tell Goldman's side of the story. "Not exactly a balanced approach," complained one reader. "You should take an ethics class. You have to give the other side a fair shot."
Actually I did contact Goldman and gave the bank every opportunity to respond to the factual issues in the article. I'm bringing this up because their decision not to comment on any of those questions was actually pretty interesting. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
On giving Goldman a chance After my Rolling Stone piece about Goldman, Sachs hit the newsstands last week (unfortunately the piece is not yet up on the magazine's web site, so I can't link to it yet -- but it is out in print), I started to get a lot of mail. Most of it was thoughtful and respectful criticism, although there was an amusingly large number of people writing in impassioned defense of their right, under our American system, to be ripped off by large impersonal financial companies. "If my pension fund is buying [crap mortgages] from Goldman, and my pension fund loses lots of value, that's not Goldman's fault," wrote one reader. "No one is forcing anyone to buy anything. The only thing Goldman is guilty of is making profits." I'm not even going to go there -- the psychology of a human being who would take the time to actually write in a complaint like that is so bizarre that it would take more time than I have today to even begin discussing it. One other complaint that I will address quickly, though, is the notion that I didn't tell Goldman's side of the story. "Not exactly a balanced approach," complained one reader. "You should take an ethics class. You have to give the other side a fair shot." Actually I did contact Goldman and gave the bank every opportunity to respond to the factual issues in the article. I'm bringing this up because their decision not to comment on any of those questions was actually pretty interesting.
Actually I did contact Goldman and gave the bank every opportunity to respond to the factual issues in the article. I'm bringing this up because their decision not to comment on any of those questions was actually pretty interesting.
There are still people who believe the US health care system is the best in the world even when they've been denied insurance or primary care - because anything else would be [twitch, froth] socialism.
In a move set to infuriate and send many Zero Hedge readers over the top, the NYSE has taken action to make sure that nobody will henceforth be able to keep track of the complete dominance that Goldman Sachs exerts over the New York Stock Exchange. This basically ends our weekly Program Trading updates disclosed every Thursday indicating that Goldman has singlehandedly captured all of NYSE's program trading. from Zero Hedge via Taibbi
from Zero Hedge via Taibbi
