Is this ethical and how does it differ from what Goldman did?

Interesting discussion, but I see all this in a slightly different light; the kind of light that I have seen politicians both Republican and Democrat use for the last 50 years. Their method is as old as the hills.

Politicians are desperate right now. Banks are failing, millions out of work, people lost their retirement savings and the list goes on and on. These politicians are desperate to shift the focus from themselves to anyone else who can be blamed. It doesn’t matter who to them. It never has.

This is not about synthetic CDOs or if the laws have been broken. This is a cover up of political stupidity by making some one else look stupider, taking the blame for all this mess and becoming the public’s villain. And who better to start with than the villain of Wall Street Goldman Sachs (or any other business who looks like a good whipping boy.)

These politicians all use the same method to find the publics villain:
1. Bash the villain, especially in public hearings.
2. Totally discredit and embarrass the villain with charges and lawsuits.
3. Demand major punishments for them because of how they hurt the public.
4. Pass new laws that do little to change the root causes of government ineptitude and mismanagement.

A great example of this was Enron. Every politician in the U.S. had their prayers answered after the markets crashed after 2000 when Enron stuck its neck out to be slaughtered. Politicians said “Enron showed us how corrupt U.S. business was that caused …” So then they passed Sarbanes-Oxley (SO) as a cure all. This got all the stupid politicians off the hook. Enron was now the villain. Not our inept government. Did Sarbanes- Oxley stop anybody? Nope. Books are still being cooked like in the ‘Repo 105’ for Lehman.

These politicians could give a dam if GS is guilty of anything. All these politicians are trying to do is save their asses from the public. GS is just one of the many scapegoats and sacrificial lambs they must slaughter or lose their jobs. They have got to find some entity that takes the place of the government as the bad boy in the public’s eye. Government will not stop until they thoroughly pin the blame on some one else as the cause of the banking crisis.

Clowns like Levin (an #$%@&*% from my state) are tasked to make GS look bad, bad and bader. This was a typical bash the villain hearing. Levin wanted the typical voter who lost his house to know that the bad boy from Wall Street was doing Sh*t 12 time worse than anything the government had done. He was saying “Look voter…here is your villain…he was the reason you lost your house not us clowns in the government…. aren’t you glad I found him for you….what do you want me to do to him…”

If they can’t make it stick to GS then they will keep looking for another patsy until they have trampled them under foot and it sticks in the public’s eye.

 

Nice post Rabbit. Let us not forget under whose watch all this happened. Not only asleep at the wheel, but actively promoting the bubble in some cases.

But, I don't blame the politicians too much, they have to win elections and they are just pandering to the public. The public love to blame politicians for what went wrong, conveniently forgetting who elected them in the first place. The fact is, most political pandering in a democracy is the fault of the electorate much more than the politicians who dance to their whims. Politicians are scapegoating and ignoring the facts because the public want a scapegoat, not the facts.

 

You are making shit up - they didn't recommend ANYTHING.

 

You either don't trade money, are new to this business, or both. Take your tin-foil hat shit back to the yahoo boards.

 

Excellent thoughts Ghost of Cutten. It reminded me of these quotes:

Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty. (Thomas Jefferson)

Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. (Gerald Ford)

I believe that the way our goverment is growing out of control we are indeed shamed as a group of lazy souls. We need shake free from this tyrany before it I too late. We must now retake control of our governemnt before we end up in the chains our forefathers broke free from.