Commentary: Goldman Sachs saga shows unregulated market is a jungle

[unhappycamper]

Commentary: Goldman Sachs saga shows unregulated market is a jungle
The Anchorage Daily News
Posted on Wednesday, November 4, 2009

So-called sophisticated investors. Purchase of favorable ratings on investments. Cayman Islands for escape from federal regulation. Bets on a housing collapse. Trolling for suckers. If anyone thinks our financial industry doesn't need tougher regulation, just check out the McClatchy newspaper series on the Goldman Sachs Group, a bank holding company, that began Sunday and concludes today.

Here was an iconic Wall Street investment house, a heavyweight player with a history of Washington connections, misleading investors here and abroad, leaving ruin in its wake and tarnishing its own name.

Goldman Sachs used its name to buy, bundle and sell some of the worst investments in the history of trading. It jumped into the subprime game with dubious mortgage lenders. And it played it ruthlessly, selling off toxic assets that carried bogus quality ratings and the assurance of its venerable name.

By the time the nature of the game became clear, Wall Street was in meltdown and there was talk of a depression. Families were losing their homes.

~snip~

But the lasting lesson of the Goldman Sachs story may be that it's too big to go rogue, too big to run wild without real government regulation.


Rest of article at: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/340/story/78307.html

[JHB]

1. Deregulation: Freedom for swindlers and the most ruthless.

Not for the entrepreneures and investors always invoked to justify ever-fewer and lighter regulation, nor for the jobs that are always promised but never materialize. All they get is the risk.

[FiveGoodMen]

4. Exactly!

[4dsc]

2. As Max Keiser says "Goldman Sachs is SCUM"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSwWy4E6I04

[yurbud]

3. not just unregulated but given preferential treatment