seafan

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Mon Jul-13-09 01:27 PM
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Taibbi: Draw your own conclusions about the distance between Goldman Sachs and the US government

The prosecution wanted to the judge to deny bail, a la Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford, because the stolen code �could be use to manipulate the market in unfair ways.� The judge, to his credit chose to disagree. This was an alleged crime against GOLDMAN, not, presumably a crime against society. Therefore it was a �garden variety� economic crime, meaning that the normal niceties of �free on bail� were available.

via Is the U.S. Government An Arm of Goldman Sachs? - Graham and Dodd Investor � Seeking Alpha.

Surely plenty of people followed the story last week of Sergey Aleynikov, a Russian computer whiz who, well, defected from the employ of Goldman Sachs, apparently taking with him the bank�s proprietary trading code. There is a lot of backstory here that is key: if you�ve followed Zero Hedge�s speculations dating back months about Goldman somehow manipulating program trading at the NYSE, this is connected to that, as the theory here is that Aleynikov stole the computer program that Goldman may have been using to manipulate the NYSE.

Such speculations until recently may have sounded like conspiracy theories, but then last week Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Facciponti stood up in court and let loose a whopper. �The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways,� he said.

Again, this is a federal prosecutor quoting Goldman Sachs, admitting in open court that it has been using a computer program that can be used to unfairly manipulate markets. Take that information and couple it with the insane data about Goldman�s share of program trading volume since the beginning of the year and� well, you can draw your own conclusions.

.....

For Goldman, a Swift Return to Lofty Profits

July 12, 2009

Most of Wall Street, and America, is still waiting for an economic recovery. Then there is Goldman Sachs.

Up and down Wall Street, analysts and traders are buzzing that Goldman, which only recently paid back its government bailout money, will report blowout profits from trading on Tuesday.

Analysts predict the bank earned a profit of more than $2 billion in the March-June period, because of its trading prowess across world markets. If they are right, the bank�s rivals will once again be left to wonder exactly how Goldman, long the envy of Wall Street, could have rebounded so drastically only months after the nation�s financial industry was shaken to its foundations.

.....

So, how do the same MSM journalists who wrote this Times piece explain Goldman's eye-popping success?

In essence, Goldman has managed to do again what it has always done so well: embrace risks that its rivals feared to take and, for the most part, manage those risks better than its rivals dreamed possible.

Epic fail, NY Times. It's simply maddening.

It's not that Goldman Sachs is smarter than everyone else.

It's that they are cheating.

The hounds are tracking Goldman Sachs.