Catch Andrew Ross Sorkin’s column about Goldman Sachs this morning? Charlie Gasparino did and he didn’t like it. Noting Goldman Sachs’ desire not to make a big deal about the money it made correctly predicting the housing market crash, perhaps in an attempt not to attract anymore attention from Senator Carl “Goldman Sachs is a financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest, and wrongdoing” Levin, Sorkin encouraged the Masters of the Universe to stop denying their success. Rather, ARS would like to see them “take a bow,” as their housing call is something they should be proud of and which shareholders and taxpayers alike should be happy about, since it meant the latter didn’t have to bail the firm out to the extent it did Citi and AIG. And that pissed Gasparino off something fierce.
Normally he wouldn’t say anything (“‘I’m not and never have been in the Goldman is the root-of-all-evil-camp,” CG prefaces) but after last month’s antics wherein the firm dared to deny his report Lloyd Blankfein’s friends claim he’s thinking of retiring, Chaz can no longer bite his tongue. Not to get too off-topic, but it still baffles CG as to how GS spokesman Lucas vP “can deny someone’s impression from a private conversation.” Sorry, he just had to get that out there. But back to the suggestion that Goldman should be taking any bows– bull shit, Gasparino says. Bull, shit.
“The last thing Goldman should be doing right now is taking a bow and telling the world it’s a great firm, because when it comes down to it, Goldman isn’t really a great firm.
“What is it then,” CG asks fuming. Not being here to simply raise questions without providing answers, Gasparino goes on, attributing a well-known saying to a guy he gets drunk with.
“Well, in the words of a drinking buddy who is a frequent consumer of financial news, ‘Goldman is like the tallest midget in the room.’”
How did Goldman become the tallest among short people?
Standing the tallest among these little men is Goldman, the firm most adept at exploiting the corrupt system that puts the government in bed with the big banks. Just today, Goldman announced that it earned $1.64 billion in the first quarter of 2011 even after repaying Warren Buffett the $5 billion he lent them in 2008 when the firm was teetering with the rest of Wall Street. Seems like a pretty amazing feat until you consider how Goldman earned all that cash. Low interest rates from the Fed over the past two-plus years means Goldman can basically borrow at next to nothing to place its market bets.
Those bets, it turns out, really aren’t bets at all. Firms like Goldman began buying depressed mortgage bonds in 2009 because they knew prices would rise. How did they know something like that? The Fed instituted a program to buy these bonds in the open market as a way to support the housing market. Like most things tried by the Obama administration to jump-start the economy, the plan didn’t work for Main Street. But not long after the buy-back program commenced, Wall Street — and Goldman in particular — began announcing record profits and bonuses to its bankers and traders. All of which transpired as Blankfein and his team tried to convince the world that Goldman really didn’t need all that bailout money in late 2008 and that they accepted the $10 billion in cash from then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson because they were forced to do so by a government more worried about the health of entire financial system than the financial condition of Goldman Sachs. Sounds like a very modest gesture until you calculate how the taxpayer bailout of the giant insurer AIG was in actuality a back-door bailout of Goldman Sachs.
It didn’t have to come to this, Gasparino says, this being his exposing GS, and it wouldn’t have, if everyone had just listened to Uncle Charles way back when.
As all this came to light back in late 2009, I wrote a column here on HuffPost saying Blankfein should just resign and save the world the trouble of holding him accountable for explaining why Goldman is such a large midget.
GASBAG Sucks
BS – everybody is doing it. From defense to consulting to alt energy and manufacturing. Agri subsidies worked for decades for food manufactures. Fin companies are no different than any others. Chaz, you are wrong – what GS is doing is what most of American corporations been doing for decades already. It is called corporate welfare benefits. This is one of the reasons the deficit is so high and growing for the last 30 years.
Is it just me, or Gasparino seems a little too sensitive on the whole “shortness” topic?
“Goldman isn’t really a great firm.” said Gasparino, echoing thousands of people who could not make it past the 15th round of interviews at Minetta’s because they could not come with gold-plated testicles, so the interviewers could not know it’s them.
More like could not even slide their resumes under the front door. Chaz is da pussssss…
Typical for most “Italian Stallions”
Lighten up, Gas. More Petronius, less Savonarola. Or just go abuse some pharmaceutical stocks until your mood changes.
Charlie Gasparino is a friend of mine.
/C. Gasparino
Chaz, come over here. I like you. No, really I do. Here have some of this kool-aid.
-Lloyd
Bess,
Any relation??
- Deutsche Bank Casino Expert
In a land full of rats, the weasels are kings!
Good thing all those bonuses fund soup kitchens, homeless shelters, neighborhood gardens, alternate energy scientists, programs for kids with disabilities like Down syndrome.
Oh wait, they don’t, do they?
Charlie, keep riding them. Help bring these matters to light and maybe, just maybe, the world will be a better place.
C-Gas is a pretty good reporter with great sources. But his diatribe seems a bit misdirected. So far, GS has convinced regulators that it has always played by the rules. This means that their outperformance is just a result of them being the best player in a game with weak rules. Therefore, “Don’t hate the playa. Hate the game.”
Welcome to the forum, Portonrick. First time, right?
Hey Proton Dick,
When you’re done donating a kidney, spend a few minutes perusing the site so you don’t ever write crap like this again.
Gaspagool can’t be happy about his brethren claiming this:
http://blogs.forbes.com/robertlenzner/2011/04/17/there-cant-be-a-criminal-prosecution-of-goldman-sachs/
“There Can’t Be A Criminal Prosecution Of Goldman Sachs”
finally a not worthless comment from the jackass
Let’s not leave out the American Consumer either… they’ve been benefiting from govt welfare plenty themselves!
McLean and Nocera, in “All the Devils…,” contend that one of the reasons for Goldman’s relative success was simply that it was “a stickler for using what’s known as mark-to-market accounting, meaning that it marked its books, every day, at the price at which securities traded in the market.”
Meaning, in turn, that it didn’t deceive itself about its actual portfolio. Confronting rather than avoiding reality. Not a bad take-away lesson.
McLean and Nocera, in “All the Devils…,” contend that one of the reasons for Goldman’s relative success was simply that it was “a stickler for using what’s known as mark-to-market accounting, meaning that it marked its books, every day, at the price at which securities traded in the market.”
Meaning, in turn, that it didn’t deceive itself about its actual portfolio. Confronting rather than avoiding reality. Not a bad take-away lesson.
“C-Gas is a pretty good reporter with great sources…..”
I quit reading there.
“C-Gas is a pretty good reporter with great sources…..”
I quit reading there.
Too bad.
Huffington Post In The House.
Hello, U Need a drink, et al. Thank you.
And, no; rude, ignorant trolls do not scare me.