The Obama Adminstration's Handling of Wall Street.

I read a pretty good article about The Clash in Rolling Stone recently.

Did you know Bob Dylan is turning 70?

 

Really? Tell me - what do you know about the federal investigation? Who's being investigated? What evidence has been collected? What charges are being looked at, and how close are they to going public?

You seem to have a lot of information not available to the rest of us, so please share.

Unfortunately, a Rolling Stone article is unlikely to be accepted as factual evidence in a court case.

Good thing the $600MM fine was not for that dirty money then, eh?

Or maybe since the Senate Commission does it's work in public, while the SEC doesn't talk about it's investigation, you just have heard about what one is doing and not what the other is? Could that be remotely possible, or do you have inside sources into the SEC?

Why? Can you point to the specific crimes committed by specific people with specific evidence? Or is your entire argument that Rolling Stone laid out a larger case and that should be enough to convinct people of some law you don't know or understand based on specific evidence that you don't have?

It would be interesting to put a bank in jail. I don't think we have any jail cells that could really fit even an average-sized Wachovia branch, let alone one of their bigger ones.

You seem to have already decided the last straw a long time ago.

I think government goals and your own personal goals are two very different things. TARP's goal was to stabilize the financial system and prevent a complete meltdown. That's it. Your desire for revenge and everyone's goals of reform were not part of TARP - it was emergency legislation to fix a specific problem. Which it did - at ZERO cost to taxpayers, and a high price to the financial institutions that got saved.

 

^^^A one line statement that identifies everything wrong with the typical Major point of view.

 

I don't know if what Goldman did is illegal. invest at your own risk, the investments aren't ponzi schemes like madoff. they are real products.

 

Generally I agree with the notion of investing "at your own risk" but what Goldman did by unloading CDO's they knew were complete **** onto investors while simultaneously holding a large amount of insurance against the default of those loans without disclosing that to the same investors, is pretty terrible.

 

You're assuming that everyone's personal goals are the same?

 

Yes and no.

1) Personal goals have a lot of variability of course, and from that perspective Major's argument is understandable. On the other hand, certain goals are virtually universal. In this case, one could very easily argue that all people would like justice to prevail, and that inasmuch as the government represents the people (not at all, honestly - more on that later) the government is beholden to act accordingly. If we can agree that all people want (deserve) fair treatment and protection from the government, the executives at GS, and the Company itself deserve not merely prosecution, but punishment and punitive damages, preferably (in my opinion) including the complete break up of the company. More to the point, if the people are going to bailout companies that take absurd risks and act illegally to the point of threatening the entire economy, they deserve absolute authority over said companies' operations ex post facto.

2) In most every argument of this type, Major has a penchant for defending the interests of the system, usually under the guise of stability. It's shameless pandering to the powers-that-be, the elites and mega-conglomerates with totalitarian influence in Washington. I don't want system stability, I want a better system! Fundamentally, this is my problem with most of Major's political commentary - he's a conformist without a cause.

 

Goldman doesn't sell these things to Grannie down the road, but to institutions that should be able to make their own decisions about the validity of an investment.

Yeah....a Goldman Investment Banker is selling something thats so great and he's all in it! Anyone that believes that should not be in a postion of power in an institutional investor group.

If they were running clients money in discretionary models and used them as a toilet to flush their bad mortgages, we'd have a story.

 

A typical response with no actual substance from you. The simple fact is that you can't deem a bill a failure just because it didn't do what you want. It did exactly what it was meant to do, despite the cries and whines of people who claimed it wouldn't.

 

But was it illegal? Goldman has a lot of very smart lawyers who know how to navigate complex laws. We all agree it was unethical - but you can't jail people for unethical. You have to prove things were, beyond any reasonable doubt, illegal based on the set of laws actually in place.

 

I think we all also agree that we are a nation of laws, and that we don't put people in jail because of a feeling or an anger towards them. I haven't defended Goldman Sachs anywhere in here - all I've done is defend the idea that an investigation actually has to be done before we conclude anything. One of 4 things may be true right now:

1. The Justice Dept / SEC didn't care and are protecting GS.
2. They have some evidence, but not enough to prosecute
3. GS did unethical things, but nothing apparently illegal.
4. There is a case being built.

As of right, we have no idea which of the above is true.

I'm all for changes in the system - in fact, I've advocated for very serious ones. I'm not for hyper-emotional attacks on companies based simply on a desire for revenge, especially at the expense of everyone else (which is exactly what the anti-TARP people were arguing for: revenge, even if it destroys the entire economy).

 

You most certainly can! I think you are failing to understand the difference between

a) A bill that worked "as intended"
and
b) A bill that's "intentions" were misguided and insufficient.

 

Funny how such a sentiment never seems to apply to the radicals and protesters working for change...tangential, I know, but poignant nonetheless.

As to the topic, laws that provide one set of rules for the people, and another for faceless corporations are hardly worthy of my respect. Regardless of that, laws ceased to be necessary when TARP bailed out the banks. TARP should have stipulated all sorts of regulatory and trust-busting as provisions from the beginning, rendering any such arguments about illegality moot. I've been arguing this from day one. And I was right - now we see that despite Major's prognostications to the contrary, jack **** is being done to regulate and prosecute in the aftermath. Furthermore, if the laws are not providing protections and justice, one is perfectly justified to be angry.

Investigations have been done, reports are surfacing, and intelligent people are starting to understand the mechanisms that preceded this fiasco. Reactions are accordingly, appropriate.

Let's see...red herrings, fear mongering, and ad hominems. Good job.