Winston wrote:
On 4/19/2010 12:00 PM, John R. Carroll wrote:
Winston wrote:

(...)
At that point, most of the behavior that proved so problematic
wouldn't have happened because all of the sleights of hand would
have been obvious in real time.

To whom? Goldman Sachs was quite aware of what they were doing, all
protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. Does anyone else
matter?

To anyone who wanted to see what was being traded, in what notional amounts
and by whom.
When you can see, in real time, that a seller is betting against one of
there own products, you have a hard look at that product.

None of this couldn't have happened in the face of a well informed,
active and motivated electorate.

Had you known for certain in October of 2008 that Goldman Sachs was
going to defraud investors of a billion dollars by selling them
instruments based on worthless mortgage securities, what would you
have done to prevent them
from getting their TARP loan?

I was writing about this sort of behavior from personal experience in 2003
and 2004. Right here in this newsgroup in fact.
It should have been obvious to anyone as early as 2005 and there has always
been a large cadre of well respected and experienced people calling
attention to the issue.

Warren Buffet, for example, called derivative products weapons of mass
financial destruction or something like that.
He spent 400 million dollars to get them out of General RE and to get
General RE out of that business. Warren Buffet, John Bogle, Ed Gramlich -
the list is very long, learned, experienced, and distinguished.

In the absence of a resolution authority like the FDIC for non banks, TARP
was a distasteful necessity.
Nothing I knew in 2008 about G/S would have caused me to oppose it. TARP
adressed a completely different issue.

I think a lot gets lost in the politics of all of this when it comes to the
deal everyone involved has made - and it is everyone, including the American
public.

--
John R. Carroll