The clueless Bloomberg reporterette interviewing Goldman Sachs chairman Lloyd Blankfein was like one of those MSM reporters who do man-on-the-street interviews in totalitarian countries: “So, Mr. Garcia, what do you think of President Castro’s new program?” Of course Blankfein gave vague answers and was careful to cite approvingly the great knowledge and wisdom of his Congressional masters. What did anyone expect him to say?
Meanwhile, Senator Levin thinks that a firm such as Goldman that is engaged in the business of making markets is doing something immoral because it is “betting against its customers”. This makes Senator Levin a fool or a demagogue or both. Maybe he will now try to ban all trade, since the fact that each party to a voluntary transaction thinks it is getting the better part of the deal must mean someone is getting ripped off.
As someone else said around here, the country is in the very best of hands.
We are becoming a nation that conflates equal opportunity with equality of result. Yes, we all have an equal opportunity to make money on complicated financial transactions, but nowhere in my reading of the constitution does it say anything about a guarantee of profit in those transactions.
Still waiting for those Fannie & Freddie hearings. Who would ask the questions – the Senators who let it blow up?
I disagree. GS overtly manipulates the market to their advantage because they control both the Fed and the Treasury (Bernanke, Paulson = both GS boys. Geithner = many, many connections to GS). I don’t mind seeing this company burn to the ground.
They are the perfect financial firm for the modern corporate state. Still, none of those buyers was being forced to make that choice unlike, for example, buyers of Obamacare health insurance policies.
OK, I’m clueless, too.
What’s the story with them?