Goldman is not a trader. It's a scammer. If they can't scam, they lose.

Everyone knows about the Abacus trade back in 2007-2008, where Goldman scammed some German banks so that John Paulson could make a fortune shorting the subprime market.

Saying this is not conjecture or libel on my part. Goldman ADMITTED to fraud and paid a fine. One of many.

So now it comes to light in a new court case in the U.K. that Goldman scammed the Libyan sovereign wealth fund by putting it into questionable investments. Goldman of course made a fortune in fees on these deals. Check it out:

In a trial at London's High Court, the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) is trying to claw back $1.2 billion from Goldman Sachs related to nine disputed trades carried out in 2008.

The LIA argues Goldman took advantage of its financial naivety by first gaining its trust, then encouraging it to make risky and ultimately worthless investments. Read more.

This is how Wall Street operates. Their business model is fraud. They can't trade. They are losers if they are not able to scam clients.

Ha ha ha...score one for the little guy!

Goldman commits all kinds of crime: fraud, market manipulation, insider trading and nothing happens. Maybe...MAYBE...they pay some fines.

But when some low level programmer leaves the firm Goldman accuses the guy of stealing their precious high frequency trading code and the prosecutors and cops are right there to arrest this kid. He's gotta defend himself through not one, but TWO trials and he's found innocent each time.

I am happy for the kid, but his life is probably still ruined while the real criminals go on doing what they've been doing--ripping off everyone. (Or as Lloyd Blankfein calls it, "God's work.")

The "Japan is going to have a debt crisis" man, Kyle Bass, now taking a position in JC Penney

Bill Ackman is out, after his disastrous foray into JC Penney (and before that, Herbalife) where he took major losses and contributed nothing of value or fresh perspective to the embattled retailer.

So now a new group of clueless hedge fund morons comes in, this time headed by none other than "Japan is going to experience a debt collapse," Kyle Bass. Bass has been putting on quite the dummy show in the past ten months telling everyone who would listen (mostly CNBC) that Japan won't be able to find enough "external funding" to pay its debts (which are in yen and which, last time I checked, are created solely by the Japanese government).

I guess Bass has now decided to focus his Einstein-like intellect on the retail sector and, seriously, that ought to be fun to watch.

I'm wondering if Bass might decide to take some cues from a fellow "genius" hedge funder, Eddie Lampert, you know, the Libertarian, Ayn Rand espousing, CEO of Sears Holdings (Sears, K-Mart), the American retailing icon that he has been phenomenally successful in destroying?

Line 'em up, folks. Whether we're talking about Bass or Lampert or Ackman or Paulson or Cohen or even Jamie Dimon and Goldman, this is what American capitalism has devolved into. A bunch of privileged, whiny, egotistical, arrogant, sociopathic jerks playing casino games with vast amounts of chips who leave a path of destruction in their wake everyhwhere they go that the rest of America has to swim through.

Real Housewives' fraud charges a travesty

It's a travesty when two of the stars of Bravo's "Real Housewives of New Jersey" face 50 years in prison for fraud, when HSBC, BofA, Goldman, JP Morgan and other Wall Street banks can commit massive fraud, nearly bankrupt the entire global financial system, and nothing happens.

Teresa and Joe Giudice are facing 50 years in prison for falsifying loan documents dating back to 2001 to 2008, in addition to lying about their financial condition when they filed for bankruptcy several years ago. The two have been indicted on 39 counts of fraud and face major prison time. Read here.

Meanwhile, HSBC is caught laundering billions in illicit money, BofA fraudulently foreclosed on homeowners and took away their homes, Goldman admits to fraud and Jamie Dimon is in flagrant violation of Sarbannes-Oxley with his "tempest in a teapot" whale trade, yet nothing happens.

What a travesty.

After losing money as a fund manager at Pimco, "TARP BOY," Neil Kashkari, goes back to government where he can impoverish more people

So according to the Wall Street Journal, Neil Kashkari is resigning his position at Pimco after poor performance running some of their equity funds and he's returning to where all former money-losing-ex-Goldman-Masters-of-the-Universe go when they're done blowing out tons of money--to government. Kashkari is running for office in California, it seems, as a Republican. So now he'll just impoverish people via the public sector, with classic Republican austerity, anti-labor, pro-corporate, predator capitalistic policies rather than doing it via the markets route.

ZH — New York Fed Is Back To Transacting Opaquely, Sells AIG Holdings To Goldman

The last time the Fed tried to dump Maiden Lane 2 assets via a public auction in a BWIC manner, it nearly crashed the credit market. This time, the FRBNY, headed by one ex-Goldman Sachs alum Bill Dudley, has decided to go back to its shady, opaque ways, and transact in private, with no clear indication of the actual bidding process or transaction terms, and sell $6.2 billion in Maiden Lane 2 "assets" to, wait for it, Goldman Sachs, the same firm that would benefit in the first place if AIG's assets imploded (remember all those CDS it held on AIG which supposedly prevented it from losing money if AIG went bankrupt?). One wonders: does Goldman have a put option on the ML2 portfolio if the market experiences a sudden and totally impossible downtick some day? But all is well - we have assurance from the Fed that the sale happened in a "competitive process." Luckily, that takes care of any appearance of impropriety.

Read it at Zero Hedge
New York Fed Is Back To Transacting Opaquely, Sells AIG Holdings To Goldman
by Tyler Durden

Goldman Sachs conquers Europe

Someone recently asked in the comments about the political reach of Goldman Sachs. Here is the first installment.

Simon Johnson, the former International Monetary Fund economist, in his book 13 Bankers, argued that Goldman Sachs and the other large banks had become so close to government in the run-up to the financial crisis that the US was effectively an oligarchy. At least European politicians aren't "bought and paid for" by corporations, as in the US, he says. "Instead what you have in Europe is a shared world-view among the policy elite and the bankers, a shared set of goals and mutual reinforcement of illusions."

This is The Goldman Sachs Project. Put simply, it is to hug governments close. Every business wants to advance its interests with the regulators that can stymie them and the politicians who can give them a tax break, but this is no mere lobbying effort. Goldman is there to provide advice for governments and to provide financing, to send its people into public service and to dangle lucrative jobs in front of people coming out of government. The Project is to create such a deep exchange of people and ideas and money that it is impossible to tell the difference between the public interest and the Goldman Sachs interest.

Read the whole post at The Independent

Goldman Sachs conquers Europe

(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)

Give "the revolving door" new meaning.

Cost of Government — buying it, that is

Zero Hedge, Two Political Parties For The Prices Of $1,188,644,055

Zero Hedge sights MMT at Goldman

Zero Hedge picks up on Jan Hatzius's latest report in which he explains the sectoral balance approach. The comments at ZH are of course dismissive, but they do get it that Haztius is "doing MMT." Actually, Haztius is following Wynne Godley, who he brought to GS for a while, but Haztius is not totally in paradigm either.

Goldman Fires Another Warning Shot Across Bernanke's Bow

Unfortunately, the connection of MMT with Goldman is hardly a recommendation, given Goldman's current reputation. But any publicity is good publicity in that it increases name recognition.

As a bonus for the file, a commenter at ZH provides a link to an Austrian critique of MMT that I had not seen previously.

Sorry MMTers, the Economy Doesn't Exist and GDP is Bogus

Is Goldman TBTP (Too Big To Prosecute)?

Bloomberg: Goldman Sachs ‘Too Big’ to Face Criminal Prosecution, Hintz Says

Hintz, ranked the No. 1 analyst covering brokerage firms in a survey by Institutional Investor last year, said that the Justice Department’s approach to criminal charges against companies has changed since accounting firm Arthur Andersen LLP’s business collapsed following a felony charge.

A 2003 Justice Department policy document “stated that prosecutors can reward cooperation by offering a negotiated settlement to a targeted company that can range from immunity from criminal indictment to a deferred prosecution agreement,” Hintz wrote. “Ultimately, the targeted company is treated not as a hardened criminal but as the equivalent of a juvenile offender that can be reformed.”

Goldman Sachs’s potential civil litigation risk related to sales of mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations “is manageable,” Hintz wrote, because the statute of limitations for many of the claims has already passed.

Surprise. Looks like GS will get away with a slap on the wrist, if that.

See also Robert Scheer's Geithner and Goldman, Thick as Thieves