How Goldman Sachs secretly bet on the housing crash

[Vessol]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/77791.html

[xpiher]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/77791.html

Edit: Didn't read the whole article. I hope they are all sent to prison but of course that won't happen.

Edit #2: Why is it legal to for companies making bad loans to then bet against those bad loans? The entire stock market is fucked up IMO

Edit # 3 http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/22/real_estate/playing_the_home_price_market/

So basically everyone knew this was going to happen and wanted to cash in on idiots? WTF

[Vessol]

They aren't sent to prison because Goldman Sachs is running the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and consequently the White House.

[xpiher]

They aren't sent to prison because Goldman Sachs is running the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and consequently the White House.

Uh hu... Yea Super Conglomerate corporation take over. I love the evolution capitalism has taken.

Do you remember when I asked what books to read? Can you give me one on the stock market so I know exactly when this fiasco of allowing the stock market to be a giant cluster fuck of a betting system that is easier to manipulate than a cards in a deck

[Vanno]

Corporatism is more a fault of democracy than capitalism. Rearrange the way we approach elections, and the sort of anti-competitive power grabs that have come to define American Economics won't be as much an issue as they are.

[Vessol]

Uh hu... Yea Super Conglomerate corporation take over. I love the evolution capitalism has taken.

Do you remember when I asked what books to read? Can you give me one on the stock market so I know exactly when this fiasco of allowing the stock market to be a giant cluster fuck of a betting system that is easier to manipulate than a cards in a deck

Read, End the Fed.

It has a very good and long chapter on the current mess.

[Pumpkin]

http://www.correntewire.com/goldman_sachs_are_scum

I lol'ed

[Attau]

Uh hu... Yea Super Conglomerate corporation take over. I love the evolution capitalism has taken.

Do you remember when I asked what books to read? Can you give me one on the stock market so I know exactly when this fiasco of allowing the stock market to be a giant cluster fuck of a betting system that is easier to manipulate than a cards in a deck

This video and this guys book is a good place to start. Most of his pre-crash lectures are fun to watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G3Qefbt0n4&feature=PlayList&p=3FBA79932EC17518&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=1

[Vessol]

The people who warned us about this for years are laughed at.

The people who caused this are the ones whom we are trusting to fix it.

Somethings not right.

[tsalin]

GS made the decision to sell some paper to sophisticated institutional investors; those institutional investors made informed decisions to buy, and the value of the investments eventually declined. In marketing disclosures filed with the SEC regarding each pool of subprime bonds from 2001 to 2007, Goldman listed an array of risk factors that grew over time. Among them was the possibility of a pullback in overheated real estate markets, especially in California and Florida, where the most subprime loans had been made.There's no smoking gun here and no foul; people are just playing the blame game after making bad decisions. These look like normal, regulated capitalist arms-length transactions between very educated, very rich people.

[Attau]

GS made the decision to sell some paper to sophisticated institutional investors; those institutional investors made informed decisions to buy, and the value of the investments eventually declined. There's no smoking gun here and no foul; people are just playing the blame game after making bad decisions. These look like normal, regulated capitalist arms-length transactions between very educated, very rich people.

And the decisions to put people at the head of the government bailout/stimulus programs who were among the architects in creating these 0 sum paper assets was an informed decision as well. But you can believe what you like.

Privatize profit on the way up - bring in tax payer funds to bailout the losses. Pretty simple scam if you ask me. Notice how Peter Schiff mentions Alan Greenspan and his Ayn Randian roots? Greenspan understands this stuff and he was running the show during the 'pump up the bubble' phase.