So, we’re listening to the conference call Goldman is holding with journalists right now in order “to clarify Goldman’s relationship with AIG,” led by CFO David Viniar. The whole thing was getting fairly boring until this little bit of hilarity, courtesy of the British sense of humour.*
Andrew Clark, the Guardian: Do you accept that it was your collateral calls last year that put AIG over the edge, and do you feel guilty about that?
David Viniar: Ummm..uhh..we didn’t do anything wrong. All we did was call for the collateral that was due to us under the contracts. There’s no guilt whatsoever.
Andrew Clark, the Guardian: Do you accept that it was your collateral calls as their biggest counterparty that pushed them over the edge?
David Viniar: I don’t know that we were their biggest counterparty…we knew we were one of the big ones. All we did was call for the collateral that was due to us.
Andrew Clark, the Guardian: Now with 20/20 hindsight, has their been any soul searching at Goldman Sachs for having done a large amount of damage?
David Viniar: That’s a very broad and difficult question to answer. We didn’t come out unscathed ourselves…you always wish you had more things that went right and things that didn’t go wrong.
*Though we get the impression he was serious in his line of questioning.
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- Use the Bloomberg command
NH BLG_DEALBREAKER <GO>
to access Dealbreaker
Goldman and guilt do not go together do they? I think in retrospect this mess will all trace back to the Goldman conspiracy give or take a few degrees.
why the f* wouldn’t they require AIG to post collateral when they got downgraded?
I am sure he was serious – the guardian is full of lefter than thou middle class liberal twits.
AIG was bailed out to keep the good ol’ boys form Goldman from going bust themselves.
That’s the reality. It pays to be well connected. It pays for GS alumni to be in Treasury and the White House.
Goldman’s risk system, SecDB, does not deal with counterparty risk well.
Why should it? They can always call on the American taxpaying sucker to be the counterparty of last resort.
oh, for sure. when you make a stupid bet, it’s the casino’s fault that you go broke because they took the chips, certainly not your own for making a wager. this assclowenery of nothing anyone does being their own fault really does get a bit wearisome…
Good Lord, this shit is right out of Atlas Shrugged.
How about we ask Ted Clark if he feels guilty about being a fucking moron and wasting everyone’s time?
Viniar: Stupid Question: Obviously the Devil has no soul. Next
Of course the CFO was wracked with guilt and remorse. Like a shark feels guilty about having a cute seal pup for lunch.
@9 funny. seal pup…heh heh
The correct response to this assclown’s inquiries should have been something along the lines of “next question.” How the fuck do n00bs like this schmucko from the Guardian even get on these calls?
@analyst- the call was held for journalists, not analysts.
clark might as well have been from the news of the world looking for a headline.
viniar should played the fish; “i’m not sure i follow. could you please re-phrase that question?”
@13
I understand that, but gimme a freaking break, the guy obviously doesn’t have a ice cube’s chance in hell of understanding what he’s presumably attempting to write about.
I don’t get why every media outlet has its own “business reporter(s)” when they could just cut out the cost and syndicate a far-better written/researched story from Reuters/FT/DJ/my 5 year old cousin.
The Guardian is the shame of Britain – a ‘liberal’ newspaper that serves as a sounding board for a wide variety of disaffected rabble rousers, lesbians, fembots, active communists (yes indeed- we still have many of these in GB) and terrorist apologists.
This idiots raison d’etre was merely to find some fuel for his insane anti-capitalist, commie witterings.
Guardian Journalists are even bigger s–t-eaters than Wall Street welfare babies.
@9 – Especially when that shark has a frickin’ laser on his head!
@16, @17, The Daily Mail readers, are we now? I can smell you a mile away, you fascist dogmatic scum.
i dunno, sounds like typical british humor if you ask me.
besides, c’mon, like any of you would have the balls to ask goldman such a personal question.
@19 — FT readers, methinks, the Daily Mail doesn’t really interest the type you will find here. Please fuck off back to “Comment is Free” and/or Hampstead, and don’t forget your official “champagne socialist” starter kit of a magnum and the collected works of Seumus Milne (its a rather small book, so please don’t lose it).
people who call people “fascist, dogmatic, scum” are almost always both dogmatic and scum. And they are never any fun to talk six nations rugby with.
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