On the theory that someone looking for fire should start where there is smoke, the Goldman Sachs record is so bad that institutional investors still using them should be investigated for some sort of kickback scheme. Why else work with a firm whose record of corruption and exploitation of its clients is as bad as Goldman’s?

According to Greg Smith the firm’s view is that their clients are moronic “Muppets”

How interesting that this should blow up just as John Kerry, married to the Heinz widow, becomes Secretary of State. I’d guess Goldman Sachs is letting Team Obama know who runs their universe.

It’s time to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate these assholes. It’s the only way they’ll ever be held to account.

Is there something like the “death penalty” in such cases?
No, I do not like the phrase, but you get the idea.

Maybe, just maybe with Elizabeth Warren asking the pointed questions and looking over their shoulder, the SEC might do something and it would please me no end to see Lloyd Blankfein do a perp walk.

The Efficient Market Hypothesis says this didn’t happen.

Why is the concept of “moral hazard”, seemingly much beloved by the right when discussing the social safety net, not broadly and loudly applied in this context?

They are also working on another scandal of housing bubbles. The Commercial Real Estate of Multi-Unit Housing/Renting is soon to blow as well.

Our 401K’s,Pensions, and other Estate Planning investments are all attached to whatever the TBTF is selling at the moment. The SEC should act diligently on this, otherwise this agency is completely defunct and should be completely overhauled.

Odd, Teddy, I was just thinking how interesting that “this” should ketchup with Goldman Sachs, right after ole Lanny Breuer left the DoJ … In fact, one imagines that the Obama-Holder DoJ is negotiating, right now, with GS to come up with an “amicable” amount to “$ettle” this perceived wee “misunderstanding” Dan mentions.?

It is nothing personal, of course.

In the words of the Great White Snark, “This is not a democracy it is a business.”

Therefore, the “price” of doing business is always negotiable, and GS is always willing to pay, within what GS considers to be “reason”..

Heaven forfend that any individuals, any muckety-muck higher-ups at GS, should be held to personal account, this all being simply the invisible handiwork of that Invisible Hand of the Market and only the busyness of the bean-counters and ole Warren Buffet. If Buffet ain’t annoyed, then why should anyone lift their Heinz-end and give a fart?

Them what listen to GS advice, well, they wasn’t forced to sell, nobody held a gun to their heads … and, besides ain’t it always the “buyers” who are told to beware?

The truly gullible are always hoi paloi who want, rather desperately, to “believe” that gummint are always the good guys and corporations are people too … that the rich must be doin’ something right, ‘cuz they’ve got all the money …

Now, Jane suggests a Special Counsel ought to be appointed to look into this recent “business” activity of GS. In a sane and rational world, where the Rule of Law actually operated, it would be realistic to imagine that the President of the United States would appoint such a Special Counsel. However, unless Barack Obama comes to personally consider that such “business” activity is “illegal”, and not merely unethical or destructive, it is unlikely that such an appointment might be made.

Who might we consider that the President would seek advice from regarding this matter? Whose voices will “our” President seek to “hear”? Who will whisper in his ear?

What would happen to the President’s “legacy” if he were to appoint such a Special Counsel to investigate? And how would he fair, financially, after his presidency were the Counsel to find wrong-doing or criminal intent?

Let us consider this episode as Obama himself might consider it, let us be pragmatic. Let us be astute.

Let us be politic.

And ketchup with the contrived “reality” of the moment.

If you were President would you stay in Dee Cee to witness tens of thousands opposed to the Keystone Pipeline, whose fate, to be built or not to be built, lies in your hands, stops its bucks at your desk … or would you go golfing with Tiger Woods?

What woods you do?

Please forgive the snark and vegetables contained in this comment, they are intended for edification of entertainment porpoises only … who, by the way, are still bitching, most unreasonably, about the “spill” in the Gulf, which, they have the unmitigated audacity to claim, is still leaking … and while a certain President is not “okay” with certain leakers, this one appears to be among those which do not even require “memos” to white-paper-over …

Such evidence as there is … suggests that there are no un$ettling blips on President Obama’s radar screen … business as u$ual seems quite well assured … as is said … “looking forward”.

DW

Errr…you realize the ZeroHedge article was (mostly) satire, don’t you? GS has had a sell rating on Heinz for more than a year and a half. There’s no evidence (at least not yet) of GS buying Heinz shares up ahead of the deal. And that insider trading inquiry is about someone using a GS account to buy Heinz options.

The economy (such as it is) is living on borrowed time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WggUweuTFxg

Fines are just the relatively low cost of doing crooked business. What really needs to be done is to put these assholes in prison for long terms and to bust up Goldman Sachs into little pieces.

The centrist solution is to invite Lloyd to play golf with the President. They could have a foursome with Robert Rubin and Bill Clinton. Or, did that already happen?

Obama is the most corrupt president in history. Sorry, Nixon, you’ve lost that dishonor.

It’s not satire per se – though ZH’s tone keeps with its Fight Club motif – but yes the sell recommendation was there for awhile. Goldman was telling it’s clients the stock was a sell while traders at GS were buying shares.

As I said we are at the beginning of the insider trading probe how far it goes is unknown, clearly someone/people within GS knew something about the Heinz merger. Another “rogue” trader?

We’ll see.

Hey, Hey, Hey….. Gonna have a good time….. Not!

And those monied interests will buy their protection …..

End the corporate fascists camel dung… Adopt Jefferson’s and Madison’s original 11th Amendment and regulate corporations as two founders had intended .End gerrymandering by corporations, and cuts their balls off! Two former Presidents as well as many other who have warned America of the threat from within posed by enthroned corporations, using money and secrecy to advance business agendas at a nation’s expense!

Why the hell even celebrate President’s Day when we essentialy ignore their collective wisdom and warnings expressed out of experience?

Gotta love justice in America. Beginning to look like the church prior to the reformation concerning bought salvation?

Paying a fine while admitting no lawlessness. Proceed to heaven. Priceless!

http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/madisoncorporationsnss2.pdf

“Madison’s Attitude Towards Corporations
There are a number of passages in Madison’s writings that help us understand his attitudes towards corporations and the role they might play in politics, and three of them are particularly useful. The first comes in the course of argu- ment in Congress on February 8, 1791, in which he mustered his reasons for opposing Alexander Hamilton’s proposal to charter a Bank of the United States. Madison began by stressing that corporations, unlike natural persons, had only the exact measure of rights that was conferred upon them by the state in ex- press terms7–in other words, they did not have “inalienable rights” which arose under natural law, like the “people of the United States” invoked at the outset of the Constitution. Moreover, Madison soon made clear that he thought corporations were “powerful machines” that might well do a great deal of mis- chief if left unguarded. He is plainly suspicious of Hamilton’s motives and talks repeatedly about “monopolies,” the risk to the economy on the whole of a run on the bank, and the risk of a nation which is credit-dependent upon this bank (here he cites the East India and South Seas Companies).
3. ”

“The Virginia of Madison and Jefferson was large and powerful, but still an essentially agrarian state not positioned to draw advantage from Ham- ilton’s mercantile initiatives. But it must be stressed that the prime worry that guided Madison was the leveraging of a corporate charter for domestic po- litical purposes. This he clearly feels would potentially corrupt the finely tuned political system of the U.S. Constitution, giving the Federalists unfair advan- tage over the Republicans, and opening the door to foreign pro-Federalist influ- ence.10
The third source is a Madison essay that was uncovered by Gaillard Hunt from a mass of Madison papers acquired by Harper’s in the late nineteenth century and published in Harper’s Magazine in the March 1914 edition. We don’t know the precise timing of this essay, though it was certainly written before 1832, and the topic and phrasing are reminiscent of speeches and correspondence from the 1790’s. Madison’s topic is “monopolies and corporations.” He warns against freely granting charters to convey monopolies, argues that this fre- quently leads to abuse and private gain and says that the state should periodi- cally reconsider and perhaps revoke such monopolies when granted. If we look at the period around 1800, it seems that the most frequently granted corporate commercial charters are in fact monopolies–a company is authorized to build a bridge, a toll road or to provide water to an area, and it is given a guarantee of exclusivity. This is a continuation of the practice of the British era, when chartered companies almost invariably rested on monopolies respecting some sort of trade or commercial activity. But then Madison states:
“Besides the danger of a direct mixture of religion and civil govern- ment, there is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the in- definite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by ecclesiastical corporations. The establishment of the chaplainship in Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights as well as of Constitutional principles. The danger of silent accumula- tions and encroachments by ecclesiastical bodies has not sufficiently engaged attention in the U.S.”

Your Madison and Jefferson comments about corporations, both here and on Attaturk’s post of this morning, are very much and thoroughly appreciated, JJ, and I hope that you might consider an extended “myFDL” post to provide members of FDL a more in-depth exposure to their thoughtful, realistic, and increasingly “realized” concerns.

DW

If it wasn’t satire it was a joke. See the intro to this ZH article: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-02-16/goldman-implicated-heinz-insider-trading-probe

The joke is that GS had a sell rating so their traders surely must be buying the shares. There’s absolutely no evidence of that – it’s a made up “fact”.

I think you’re misunderstanding the nature of the insider trading inquiry. it’s not saying that someone at GS was insider trading (though of course that’s possible though unlikely – if you worked at GS and wanted to do some insider trading would you really do it via a GS account?) It’s saying that someone using an omnibus account held at GS used it to buy Heinz shares. An omnibus account involves multiple investors: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-an-omnibus-account.htm

In other words, an investor probably made a suspicious trade through an account that was held at GS.

Is there something like the “death penalty” in such cases?

“I hope so Toto. I certainly hope so.”

Wow!!

Imagine that.

You don’t see “hoi poloi” in common usage much nowadays. Thankt you for giving it the rebirth it needed and thank you for always so “inciteful” (not a spelling error) commentary every day.

I learn so much from you.
Thanks.

http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/madisoncorporationsnss2.pdf

“He warns against freely granting charters to convey monopolies, argues that this fre- quently leads to abuse and private gain and says that the state should periodi- cally reconsider and perhaps revoke such monopolies when granted. If we look at the period around 1800, it seems that the most frequently granted corporate commercial charters are in fact monopolies–a company is authorized to build a bridge, a toll road or to provide water to an area, and it is given a guarantee of exclusivity. This is a continuation of the practice of the British era, when chartered companies almost invariably rested on monopolies respecting some sort of trade or commercial activity. ”

State based tax exempt health insurance monopolies who now get your money under punitive tax penalty levied for failure to buy health insurance because you need food or oil at 3.79 a gallon to heat your home?

Servitude is a function of law, purchased by corporation to enslave the governed, for basic necessities of life predicated on commodities manipulation, vs the facade of free market bullshit. Monopolies like those once enjoyed by a King and his chartered monopolies in commerce and trade rendering the likes of Jefferson Washington and Madison into servile business relationships. America suffers from dementia …..

Thank you DW. If you or other kind folk here would consider editing my rantings I would consider the awesome privilege.

Thank you for the kind words…

Federal Grand Jury investigative powers to determine probable cause. Put in the people’s hands where the proper authority rests. The people, the governed, not corporations….

Until a full investigation it’s how you read the activity.

It’s possible Goldman really thought HNZ was a sell all along even right up until the merger news broke. That a company, like many investment banks, that only had 14% sell recommendations had a deep conviction on HNZ being a loser that maintained itself all along.

I’m less open to that being the case but sure it’s possible. It’s only an interesting story if you combine it with the insider trading investigation.

And yes it’s possible traders used a Goldman account who were non-Goldman traders and that Goldman traders used separate non-Goldman accounts as you suggested.

There are a lot of possibilities at the moment and will remain possibilities until a full investigation is done. I’m not giving Goldman the benefit of the doubt given their history.

Which assholes, Goldman Sachs, the SEC or Obama’s DOJ ?

Goldman never stopped doing this. Zero Hedge comments on their duplicitous behavior regularly, particularly with reference to buy/sell recommendations they give their clients that they then bet against and end up winning. One Goldman employee in particular, Tom Stolper, is one they love pointing to as evidence of this in that every single one of his recommendations to clients for the past 4 years has been a loser for the client. Goldman merely does the opposite of whatever that guy tells the clients and ends up winning every time.

I’m willing to say it’s possible that this is all somehow above board, but is it likely? No.

Jefferson and those financial institutions?

Spot on! Scumbags!