These stories just leave us fainthearted
As we sink into criminality uncharted;
The horror perverse
Just keep getting worse,
And we know, we’ve only just started.
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/
There’s some curious things about that SEC case, like who’s actually charged with what. There’s no Jonathan Egol, Fabrice Tourre’s partner at Goldman, no hedge funder John Paulson, no Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Instead, the only person the SEC names -far as I’ve seen- is Fabrice Tourre, who, at the time the Abacus deal involved played, was all of 28 years old.
That age thing keeps on itching me. It somehow points to the degree of involvement of the likes of Blankfein, Goldman president Gary Cohn and CFO David Viniar. These guys don’t let a mere kid play with billions of their capital without keeping a close watch. They were all down there on the trade floor for extended periods of time, figuring out what exactly transpired, as can be proven.
Moreover, the then (2006-7) 28-year old Tourre was claiming something that was the 180 degree opposite of what other traders at Goldman had a lot of the firms’ money invested in, namely the continued upward growth of the housing market. Tourre’s contrary claims were nothing short of revolutionary, certainly in the eyes of the older, and more bullish, traders. So it should not come as a surprise that the highest echelons of the firm spent a lot of time with Tourre and other traders. They would have been mad not to. That also means, however, that claiming they didn’t know what was going on is not believable
If after all that, Blankfein, Cohn and Viniar still didn’t know what went on, they should be fired on the spot by the shareholders. If they did know, which is faaaar more likely (you don’t get to the GS top spots by being complete doofuses), they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Which is where Cuomo should come in, but, yes, he’s campaigning… So maybe right now would be an appropriate moment to check out where his campaign donations stem from. We might just find some juice.
