Predictably, none of those who sold these derivatives believes that they did anything wrong or that Goldman Sachs bears any responsibility for the near collapse of our financial system.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
On the Goldman Sachs Hearings
PBS has been live blogging about the Congressional subcommittee hearing into the derivative investments (CDO's) that Goldman Sachs sold before the mortgage meltdown that produced our Great Recession. Before taking a recess, Senator Carl Levin called attention to two charts that revealed the extent to which Goldman Sachs was betting that the CDO's they were selling to their customers were worthless. Reproduced below are the two charts. The first chart reveals how Goldman Sachs reduced its own exposure to mortgage based securities. The second chart reveals how, at times, they bypassed internal limits in order to bet nearly half of the assets of the company on the certainty that the CDO's they were selling were worthless. Click on each image to view a larger image.
Predictably, none of those who sold these derivatives believes that they did anything wrong or that Goldman Sachs bears any responsibility for the near collapse of our financial system.
Predictably, none of those who sold these derivatives believes that they did anything wrong or that Goldman Sachs bears any responsibility for the near collapse of our financial system.
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As Jimmy Paige once wrote - or was it Robert Plant? - "It makes me wonder". I wonder what defect it is in the psychological makeup of a group of human beings that would have them putting the health and well being of millions of other human beings behind the private profit of a very few. Most of these lawmakers who live in the pockets of the Plutocracy call themselves "Christians". Have they ever made a serious study of the books? You know! - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? - Those guys! How do they justify their actions? How do they sleep at night? We're talkin' major hypocrisy here! That's what makes them so much fun to watch! I always get a certain twisted delight in watching their fake piety. Imagine Wendy O. Williams being cast as Bernadette of Lourdes; or Marilyn Manson as Mahatma Gandhi. It's kind of the same thing.
Sooner or later our right wing friends, within the Congress and without, are going to be forced to admit that the era of anything goes deregulation was a really stupid idea. You can only sit calmly in a burning house, ignoring the flames all about you, for just so long. Sooner or later you'll be forced to flee for your life. After making your escape, if you still refuse to acknowledge that the house is indeed on fire, you're beyond the point where you can make rational decisions on your own. You've entered Librium Country, hombre!
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
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