Am I the only one who is amused not only by the way GS sold what they obviously knew to be worthless paper not only to their clients but to other IBs, thus avoiding the whole cycle of writedowns that everyone else is getting killed by, but how they simultaneously made a killing shorting it as well... brilliant, I have to give those assholes credit for being the best scumbags on the street.
The Art of War is a Chinese military treatise written during the 6th century BC by Sun Tzu. Composed of 13 chapters, each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare, it has long been praised as the definitive work on military strategies and tactics of its time. The Art of War is one of the oldest books on military strategy in the world. Like a work of mathematics or science, much of the work is dedicated to defining its concepts in what has been described as a series of formulas. It is the first and one of the most successful works on strategy and has had a huge influence on Eastern and Western military thinking, business tactics, and beyond. Sun Tzu was the first to recognize the importance of positioning in strategy and that position is affected both by objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective opinions of competitive actors in that environment. He taught that strategy was not planning in the sense of working through a to-do list, instead it requires quickly responding appropriately to changing conditions. Planning works in a controlled environment, but in a competitive environment, competing plans collide creating situations that no one plans.
So if I *KNOW* that a stock I own is going to go under (not based on insider knowledge but based on my analysis) I'm an asshole if I sell it to you? If some idiot wants to buy it, that's their problem. Shorting wasn't a sure thing, the mortgage crisis could have occurred a year later and they'd have lost a ton of money. If you want everyone to be nice to each other, go live in fantasyland, this is wall street
What's amazing to me is that the traders were taking home just 10-15 million. Considering typical funds do 2 and 20, it's no wonder these guys eventually go out on their own.
What a complete scam. This whole system is so riddled with conflicts of interest its insane. How can you not read that article and throw up? They are going to give at least two billion back in law suits.
I see nothing wrong with what they did. Most people are angry with them because they did very well. But I doubt anyone would sympathesize with them if they had lost a great deal of money. Case in point, Citigroup, Merrill, Morgan, UBS, Bear Stearns, et al. Most people would point to these guys and say good for them, the greedy bastards. The group saw that they needed to hedge and did an outstanding job.
The gentlemen at Goldman are pretty sharp. What isn't known is how they used CDO's to manage their risk positions. I doubt that anyone (in the public) will ever find out how that was done. I know a young scandinavian man who is probably smiling broadly as he reads this article His research and hedge form were probably the basis for most of Goldman's success this last year. hyygelig arbeidsamler!!