Today's Independent reports that affluent Japanese "are turning to China's burgeoning human organ transplant industry, paying tens of thousands of pounds for livers and kidneys, which in some cases have been harvested from executed prisoners and sold to hospitals."
Today's Xinhua reports that Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd. has "established 'strategic' ties with Goldman, Sachs in a move to help build itself into a modern, sophisticated banking giant."
What the hell is Goldman waiting for? There is an entirely unregulated, highly inefficient market here, and that is where real money gets made. What's the price on the April '09 peasant liver call option? No one seems to know. What's higher beta, spleens or corneas? Not sure. Is there any research on peasant kidneys versus political dissident kidneys? Doubtful.
And are there any excuses for any of this?
Absolutely not.
Goldman has been profiting off of the souls of its own employees for long enough that it should be able to flip a buck in Chinese organs without breaking out in a case of the morals.
Come on, gentlemen. Get in there. You'll roll up the profits as exotics, and no one will ever know.
ICBC teams up with Goldman Sachs [Xinhua]
Japan's rich buy organs from executed Chinese prisoners [Independent]