Shitty Deal
For a second time yesterday, all the Senate Republicans + Ben Nelson were able to block the financial regulation reform bill from coming to a vote in the Senate. On the same day, however, Goldman Sachs was busy giving an assist to financial reform by getting grilled by a Senate committee. Carl Levin chewed up and spit out a Goldman Sachs executive for knowingly and aggresively selling a product that Goldman salespeople internally called a “shitty deal.”
Goldman Sachs is in some trouble now for internally betting for failure of the CDOs they were selling to external customers. Several times Goldman executives said they didn’t think they did anything wrong and they didn’t feel any regret for their actions. Just take a look at what one of their stars, the genius boy wonder “The Fabulous Fab” Fabricio Tourre said in an email:
“…More and more leverage in the system, the entire system is about to crumble any moment…the only potential survivor the fabulous Fab (as Mitch would kindly call me, even though there is nothing fabulous abt me…) standing in the middle of all these complex, highly levered, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all the implications of those monstruosities !!!“
They knew what they were doing and they didn’t care. As long as they got their payday. It makes me ill that these guys got their goverment bailout, kept their jobs and have gone back to paying themselves extravagant bonuses for screwing up.
We can’t really do much about the past. Hopefully the SEC and the FBI will be able to find and punish corporations who did things illegally. I fear the real scandal is that all this is legal. That’s why we desperately need reform – so we don’t end up with the same suicide bargain that we faced in 2008.
Keith Olbermann ran this story last night on Countdown and included an interview with Delaware’s own Ted Kaufman. The rest of the country is discovering what a gem we have.
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Tags: Carl Levin, Financial Reform, Keith Olbermann, Ted Kaufman
You mean the “reform” bill that Lloyd Blankfein supports? Yeah, that Lloyd Blankfein. The guy who got deposed by the committee in private in December before coming back for this dog-and-pony show. It’s all a sham.
But I agree with you on Kaufman. He’d be a rockstar if he stayed. We’ll see how his amendment fares.
Its GREAT that Keith asked him the question about being drafted to run but SAD that he said NO.
We NEED Campaign Finance Reform ASAP! We’ve got to get rid of the OLIGARCHY!! Ted represents his constituents better than others.
Supposedly Voinovich was going to break ranks and vote for the cloture motion.
Senator Kaufman is doing a wonderful job of representing the people of Delaware. Thank you so much Ted.
I just listened to some of the testamony from yesterday’s hearings and the Goldman defense sounds an awful lot like the old claim that it was okay to rape a woman if she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was okay to rape their investors if the investors didn’t see it coming. When the people with the power misbehave it’s always the victim’s fault. Sheesh, just sheesh.
Levin asked lowball questions of those schmucks. It was a dog and pony show. Lawrence Lessig has a great article today at Huff Post, the Dirty Democrat money.