I haven't spent much time acctually following the SECOND complaint against Goldman or what they are alleging that was done. Recommending trades to your customers and then taking the other side because you are convinced of the outcome. Let's say I'm a retail broker, and I call 100 clients and convince them to get LONG pork bellies, and after they do so, and I make my transaction fees, I go SHORT in my own personal account. If I'm correct about the market, the clients win, and I get to make more and more transaction fees, but lose in my personal account. If I'm wrong, my clients lose and I make money in my personal account. How is what Goldman is alleged to do any different than this? Welcome to Wall Street?
How about: No stock to borrow, broker calls me up and suggests I go long. I buy x shares which he can now lend or short for his "other" client.
GS was equally short as they were long. They were 1% net short. This is not materially short. You people ignoring GS' defense without hearing them out are ignorant leftists who do not have the moral high ground.
And you'd be an idiot to take up his offer on his advice alone. You'd also be naive to think that a broker that lives on commissions isn't going to be a salesman, rather than a genuine advisor.
Completely different. CDOs and especially synthetic CDOs are opaque, illiquid, and difficult to value. The problem was deceiving clients regarding the product itself-they misrepresented a highly risky asset as being basically riskless. Pork bellies are pork belies and barrels of oil are barrels of oil. So the analogy does not work.
Are you for real ? You believe Goldman defense. You actually believe what they are saying. Gosh there is a sucker born every minute What about Goldman cheating on High Frequency Trading. Front running orders. What ?? Never heard of that one eh sucker
How can you defend gs, these assholes knew what was gonna happen, how many lifes got destroyed, countries going broke because of their scheme, they should hang them right front of their building.