Ban email archives thrown open in devastating financial crash report | Hacker News Reader

Ban email archives thrown open in devastating financial crash report

computerworlduk.com

44 pointsDMPenfold200828 comments

The report itself: http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2011/PSI_WallStr...

Was just about to post this myself. I was quite frustrated that not only did writer not provide a link to the source, but didn't even mention the report by name.

Call me jaded but nothing is going to come off this. Not one single person from any of the wall street firms has gone behind bars for the massive amount of fraud and deception that caused the financial crisis. Worst case there will be a fine paid by a few firms (which is probably going to be less than some of the bonuses they dole out). The best part about these fines is that firms get to declare "No admission of any wrong doing". Really ?

Perhaps something will:

Senator Carl Levin, releasing the findings of a two-year inquiry yesterday, said he wants the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to examine whether Goldman Sachs violated the law by misleading clients who bought the complex securities known as collateralized debt obligations without knowing the firm would benefit if they fell in value.

The Michigan Democrat also said federal prosecutors should review whether to bring perjury charges against Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein and other current and former employees who testified in Congress last year. Levin said they denied under oath that Goldman Sachs took a financial position against the mortgage market solely for its own profit, statements the senator said were untrue.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-14/goldman-sachs-misle...

Was financial melt down even caused by CDO's? It was caused by sub prime mortgages mainly by Fannie and Freddy and everyone knows that however people those who are in power want to look other way because they want to continue with that, finally they have to put the blame on something, and this is something.

Sub-prime mortgages - even in the billions - were not enough to cause total financial implosion. However, CDO's (the value of which exceeded, I believe, $45 trillion), most certainly could.

So yes, yes, a hundred times yes. Fraudulently-rated CDOs were the heart and soul of the Crash. That, and extreme regulatory capture (which is something else that people who can't even afford home payments are unlikely to buy).

If this moves forward, I expect Mr. Levin's tragic death in a small plane crash.

Edit, apparently people are not familiar with cases like that of Paul Wellstone, or documentaries like "Conspiracy of Silence"

Maybe people are just tired of the stupid conspiracy theories that seem to run rampant throughout the tech community.

Maybe if people weren't actually dying mysteriously when they were opposed to totalitarian / oligarchs, then we'd stop bringing it up.

I understand the sentiment behind this grousing, but I do not understand the practical value of voicing this cynicism.

Surely you don't think reports like this should never be produced and disseminated?

Don't get me wrong, I strongly want to see some folks go to jail. But saying "crooks need to go to jail" is a far cry from saying "nothing is going to come of this". One statement is assertive and explicit, the other is defeatist and ambiguous.

How did "fraud and deception" cause the financial crisis? Do you have a specific criticism?

Or is your complaint merely "those guys in suits did stuff I don't understand, and OMFG bad economy, I need a scapegoat!"

Actually, it's more like "those guys in suits did something they didn't understand (re mortage backed securities, plenty written about this) yet still got a get out of jail card aka fed bailout"

Well, to a degree, they personally didn't get a bailout. (Speaking more for the UK as I'm here so know it better.) Their business model was flawed, they went bust, we bought them up quickly to protect their customers, which ends up impoverishing the bank's previous owners who had allowed it to operate so recklessly.

This isn't to say I don't think bits of the relief work for the banks could've been done better, but it wasn't exactly a free gift to them.

No purchasing or nationalization happened in the US. The people who made the bad bets just got public money with essentially no strings. They did not get acquired, the same people maintained control and are now paying themselves about the same as before.

If anyone is interested in this, I highly recommend reading "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine"[1] by Michael Lewis. It talks about Greg Lippmann (mentioned in the article) and how he and others cashed out before the impending crash in 2008.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0...

I also recommend "All The Devils Are Here" [1] which covers basically the same ground as "Inside Job" the documentary but in more detail.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/All-Devils-Are-Here-Financial/dp/15918...

Why can't these media outlets name names? Who were the people writing these awful emails and making these decisions? Seems no one is willing to call them out in the article.

Bloomberg puts names to their quotes http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-14/goldman-traders-tri...

Not really sure why it matters, though.

Believe me I am the first person to tell anyone that dwelling on the past doesn't solve future problems, but are you suggesting that accountability doesn't matter? Thanks for the link by the way.

No, not at all. Actually I suspect crimes have been committed and I'd like to see an independent prosecutor with subpoena power. But I don't see how naming the names of middle managers at goldman does anything to help you, the news consumer.

And I believe all the quotes are sourced in the actual report, which others have linked to.

Well for starters when this guy tries to sell me securities in the future, I can turn him down. I'm sure the names are in the report, just found it curious that they would be anonymized when reported in the news.

Is the email corpus available? One valuable thing that came out of Enron was real-world email data.

Second highest donor for Obama in 2008 is Goldman Sachs at $994,795.

Timothy Geithner appointed of a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist to be his chief of staff.

Goldman Sachs partner Gary Gensler is Obama’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission head

Former Chief of Staff Emanuel received nearly $80,000 in cash from Goldman Sachs during his four terms in Congress

Tom Donilon is Obama’s deputy national-security adviser. He earned just shy of $4 million representing high-profile meltdown clients including Goldman Sachs.

Nothing will happen to Goldman Sachs while this government/bank incest continue.

EDIT: 'Second highest donor'

According to this list the top donor was University of Calif at 1.6MM - http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&...

$994,795 seems like a pitifully small number on the scale of Goldman Sachs & government donations - but I would think this is a drop in the bucket. I don't buy that ~1MM buys the administration. Wouldn't it be more likely this amount was donated simply by Goldman employees acting independently? If the amount was $100MM then yeah, I think you have a case for the conspiracy theory.

It is also tough for me to believe that $80,000 buys the chief of staff.

Am I off-base?

That's the thing about lobbying. The ROI is very high.

Then the University of California is doing something wrong...

My mistake. Correcting post to say 'second highest donor'.

This is one of the few areas where bipartisanship works. Wall Street is the most important part of the economy no matter who is in power.

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