The fact that I could so construct the government of the country to solely benefit me I would also do.
That I can get away with it because the people will not throw out their incumbents forcing me to re-jigger at every cycle, every year, and eventually put me out of business, is a glorious dividend, a nod from Kalki, that I am in synch with the universe. Truly anointed.

And given that, I would find a fort to live in. For sure as the earth rolls towards the sun every morning, I would be on alert the rest of my life that one day one of those people or several of them that I made money on, is going to see me as Tsar Nicholas, end my life, regardless of the legality, morality or ethics of my trades and my takeover of the global financial levers of government, placing my lieutenants at all crucial crossroads, and placed me and mine so far above the law I might as well dwell in the clouds, if not heaven itself.

Having considered and commented for months now about what The Tribe has done and continues to do, (right now Goldman Sucks is forming other securitizations to ‘earn’ fees on, and there are groups of investors who have approached Goldman Sucks and to prepare to securitize other instruments including diamonds, distressed RE, etc.) I can agree with those above who see nothing wrong in the Goldman Sucks activities.

Is is a matter of degree? Or is it the fact that GS held little of the risk on the products they sold, but stood to gain quite a bit from the hedge?

If GS had told clients that they needed to hedge also, would that make you feel better?

I don’t see any wrongdoing here. I have a huge problem with lots of other things that GS did, but this seems perfectly legal.

Mind you, I’m not a GS client. If I were a GS client I would be absolutely livid and would skin my salesman/broker alive. And I would never do business with them after they sold me this mis-rated pile. But, as others have said above, the rating agencies bear the principle blame for that.

that’s the point, peep would better off if they understood that, instead of wasting Time, and then some, w/ http://www.morningstar.com/ , or other Touts for http://www.ici.org/ , they could control the Quality of the Content, in their Troft, by, merely, being, personally, Responsible in their Spending and Investing decisions..

or, differently, let someone else make your decisions for you, and you’ll get what they like/what serves them..
~~
MikeinNOLA,

see http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=Wetware+Bias
and, remember, Bing Blowz!~

Seems clear that they pay politicians to do whatever is in the best interest of Wall Street, and exploit their customers to the hilt for as long as possible. When a scam stops working, they take a “loss” for one year, reload, and start on the next scheme. When this doesn’t work they simply take over the government and transfer money directly.

Am I wrong about this (in any way)?

when they got rid of glass stegall the mantra was “cross-selling”, save expense by combining back room offices……….okay, as much as it is bs on the cross-selling back room makes sense, yet, the reality is you end up with 1000 fiefdoms who fight for power………..obviously who gained control were the computer hedgers who believed everything in the world could be hedged, thus CEO go after that 40-1 leverage, which they did and all life was good and grand……….until AIG the bookee for the hedges disclosed, nope we aint got the money………then it was discovered, by gosh you cannot hedge away everything always, which was the believe………what happened was simple math, they ran out of things too hedge against, they had essentially hedged it all and it all reigned down on em, thus, like you say, they were too big too know what they were doing because they did not believe anyone else was doing likewise

1/2 of it was toungue and cheeck, they guys buying that stuff were huge institutions probably 2% of there portfolio, obviously some, who have already gone bankrupt were doing a carry trade with the yes, taking 20-1 leverage and all in on sub-prime………this paper was sold worldwide, what GS did not see coming was the severity of the decline in home prices taking down all the banks and them with them, which is why Paulson got involved, make no mistake the shorts had been in control of the market for 24 months and did not care if all the banks went too zero………they were scared pee-less