Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Goldman Sachs Loses Money in 3rd Qtr

Goldman Sachs is out with their 3rd Qtr earnings this morning. They lost money in the quarter ($393M). Excerpt:
Results for the third quarter of 2011 included a loss of $1.05 billion from the firm’s investment in the ordinary shares of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (ICBC), net losses of $1.00 billion from other investments in equities, primarily in public equities, as well as net losses of $907 million from debt securities and loans.
Looks like they stayed long equities when the federal government implemented the strongest fiscal drag since the great recession began during the 'debt' ceiling debacle, and got caught short bonds during the big bond rally this past quarter.

This follows some sub-par results from Citi the other day. It never pays to be a moron, their ignorance about the realities of macro economics is finally catching up with them, at this point they are their own worst enemies.

I would attribute any previous outsized business success in this industry to luck and pure salesmanship. If they really were smart, they would immediately task their industry lobbyists to switch over to a message to Congress and the President promoting full employment based on MMT.

4 comments:

Chewitup said...

Josh Brown just had a funny Tweet that GS tanked Q3 for sympathy.

Anonymous said...

Looks like they need to get busy cheating more of their clients!

Tom Hickey said...

Jan Haztius gets the basis of MMT, the sectoral balance approach, but apparently he is not calling the shots, being the chief economist rather than managing trading.

GLH said...

Maybe the government will make up their losses. If not, they could take up a collection from the people on the street.