Blankfein: "I do not miss any opportunity to express my appreciation for what the governments and central banks have done." Read the entire interview here. http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,650289,00.html
This is called "talking your book".... The question line should have been a lot more pointed....just basic garbage.... The GS model will soon be mostly irrelevant....
No big investment bank will admit the (unregulated brokers)of morgages is the beginning. Unregulated brokers sell to lenders who sell to investment banks who sell all over the world to wealthy clients. 1. Brokers get the subprime customer (they do not care if income is documented, no one is watching them) Then sell for profit. 2.Broker sell for profit to lenders like( Washington mutual, New Century, Country wide, Ameriquest, Lehman brothers...) 3.This lenders sell for profit to investment banks. This investment banks have units to bundle these loans (MBS) and sell all over the world. The brokers have NO REGULATION. They are the people who find the customer for the subprime loan. And I will never believe the big investment banks do not know where all the loan start from, (the unregulated broker)
................................................. There is no question.... This is why.... The movement from non-electronic paper document based securities transfer with price opaqueness..."the reason for the previous brokered model's previous existence".....Mer, Leh, Bear, etc...had been reduced down to opaque debt and derivative instruments....in mass....and in fact made record amounts because of them....and they obliterated themselves/world economics because of them....and are still doing it.... The paper based non-electronic markets of the past....represent days gone by....thus the model gone by.... It is just a matter of time until all securities will have to go through public price discovery on a first come first served fully electronic direct access exchange.... An exchange has become a direct access per personal computer electronic exchange "software" that just couples an electronic time stamp ownership feature of units.....it really makes no difference if it is a stock, bond, derivative, whatever....and the computer banks can be anywhere.... The cost of transfer should be no more than 20 cents per 100 units....ie...before, the rate was over $100.... Secondly....the strongest move forward is going to be China based....not US based....and the top bankers in China are being paid $230,000 per year.....not $60 million as GS Blankfein.... The writing is on the wall.... It will be a cold day in hell that "public" products will be allowed to be priced "privately" ....if so ...NFL...not for long....or for purely politico nonsense.... And most importantly ....the GS model profitability is dependent on "financial conflicts"....without these ...their profits will plummet....The US legal politico movement is beginning to test these waters in spite of many GS employees in US govt....
Remember he's a lawyer by training, so pay attention to the answers. Good find by the OP - thanks for the link.
Yes. Quote from the article: SPIEGEL: So only modest, good people work for Goldman Sachs? We hardly believe that. Blankfein: I have stated my honest view of things. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote from the article: SPIEGEL: What are you trying to say with that? Blankfein: This crisis was not just caused by complex derivatives. SPIEGEL: What caused it, then? Blankfein: Too much money was lent to people who had bitten off more than they could chew. When the bubble burst and recession hit, default rates went through the roof ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That is fascist thinking when Blankenfein think his people are the good people, his derivitives are good too, but the bad people are people who took money they can not pay. What Blankenfein will not admit is the market for the subprime was CREATED just for the purpose of the structured finance. I will never believe the big banks like Goldman, Deutche...do not know how, why, where the product they leverage and sell come from. So simple to see if you make a subprime morgage, and try to say the risk is cover because they charge sometime 22% interest on the loan to low income and subprime people, that make no sense when who cares how much interest is charge on a loan, (WHEN THE PEOPLE HAVE NO MONEY TO PAY)