"Everything is in order. We didn't cook the books. As I speak to you right now the infidels of the SEC are being slaughtered by our own men."
Just look at the level 3 assets of Goldman, Merrill....... They can't write them all down. There would be no shareholders' equity, no book value, no ability to stay in business. This is another fine mess they've gotten us into, Stanley. I hope somebody is around to cover these naked shorts so I can get paid......:eek:
We don't know what's there for waste. US IBs dragged their feet about coming clean. Now earnings and even solvency are being questioned. This piece is short and worth reading: http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=69&art_id=4789
Oops - sorry. This is the Hutchinson article I meant to post. Brutal on Goldman. http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4809&Itemid=53
Great find. We've been talking about this privately. They've finally pushed the envelope. Maybe we can start over and get rid of the riff raff.
Here they are with this waste in Level 3 being accounted for to protecting the earnings - and they'd like to juice those very earnings even more and pay bonuses - so they reach into that cesspool, grab a piece of the waste and claim it has miraculously increased in value to the tune of 1B. Unbelievable. If 50%, or even 25%, of my bank's loan collateral assets were questionable they'd have to be put on nonaccrual, requiring a capital increase that would make them insolvent. Gummint would take the bank over.
Translating the GS statement from Wall Street BS to Plain English you get: GS has no write offs as we stopped mark-to-model valuation after the black box model blew up i.e. it wasn't able to calculate a value on the CDOs and SIVs.
GS basically said they hedged out their exposure. What's so hard to understand? Blood in the streets - look for a bounce - soon.