Posted on 04/17/2010 10:23:07 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The chickens may have come home to roost for Goldman Sachs and perhaps for a host of other purveyors of rotten mortgage-backed securities that were fobbed off on unsuspecting investors.
The Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement chief revealed Friday that his investigators were looking at "other products and practices" on Wall Street that might also lead to eventual fraud charges for others. In the meantime, be aware that the government is seeking the disgorgement of illegal profits Goldman Sachs ( GS - news - people ) obtained as a "result of fraudulent misconduct."
Last but not least, the U.S. Attorney in New York, had "no comment' when asked if the Justice Department had in the works a criminal investigation of this civil fraud action by the SEC. In the present climate of anger toward Wall Street you can probably count on a criminal investigation. Justice recently divulged it was looking into accusations that Lehman Bros. hid massive debts from investors just before it went bankrupt.
Truthfully, any indictment is unlikely as it would threaten Goldman's charter as a dealer of Treasury securities and throw the financial community back into panic.
Goldman is adamantly protesting its innocence, as it did in a Bloomberg Business Week cover story recently and in Lloyd Blankfein's letter to shareholders as chairman. Goldman apparently did not wish to settle this matter even though it only received a fee of $15 million for issuing the securities in 2007.
Let's go to the videotape. Where Goldman is most at fault is in not informing its innocent investors in mortgage-backed securities that a masterful hedge fund operator, John Paulson, played a key role in choosing the soon-to-evaporate-in-value mortgages. Nor did Goldman reveal in its documents Paulson was making massive short bets on housing prices against buyers of the securities.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Some background articles.
It was unclear whether the govt let Lehman fallto teach Wall Street a lesson It was to save Paulsons Goldman Sachs http://tinyurl.com/n2ebof
Hank Paulson’s Former Co Goldman Sachs Admits Its Software Can “Manipulate Markets in Unfair Ways http://tinyurl.com/kjea5l
In order to shift funds to his former company Goldman Sachs, Hank Paulson got a “Waiver of ethics disclosure” for conflict of interest.
DNC and Obama using Goldman Sachs SEC problems to push their goal of power. How hypocritical of Obama and his thugs.
Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government, said in an e-mail: It must be nice for the Democrats that the SEC’s filing against Goldman Sachs so conveniently fits into their political agenda. But at the end of the day, all the theatrics and tactics in the world will not successfully divert the American people’s attention away from the inescapable fact that the very people the Democrats are trying to blame for main street’s problems are the same people that they gave a blank check to when they bailed them out with hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars.”
Are you saying both parties are culpable?
I agree. Did you happen to see porker of the year is a republican?
$29,992,000 by Senate Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) for 27 projects, including: $4,000,000 for the Jamie Whitten Delta States Research Center, Stoneville; $1,500,000 for Berryman Institute, Jack Berryman Institute, Utah and Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Experiment Station; $1,002,000 for Mississippi Valley State University, curriculum development; $939,000 for the Agricultural Wildlife Conservation Center; and $231,000 for e-commerce research, because no one knows how to go online.
With Republicans in charge earmarks hit their peak at $29 billion in 2006. Now down to $19.6 billion in fiscal year 2009.
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