Now we all know of Goldman Sachs, the huge investment bank in New York. They tried to pass themselves off in 2009/10 as above the fray, too smart to make mistakes like many of their rivals. Then a few leaks indicated that they, too, were soiled by excessive greed and over reaching in their investment groups. All was not rosy at Goldman. But that was then. Now, ? Hmmmm. Maybe not so different.
It has been made public that Goldman had a significant stake in the failed Portuguese bank, Banco Espiritu Santo(aka Bank of the Holy Spirit). Now we know that Goldman has the most and biggest brains available in the financial world. How could they: invest in a loser; throw good money after bad; have several committees of brilliant experts promote a loan to the bank of $835 million; have the bank, of which they owned a significant 2.25% share, fail and be taken over by the government while in the midst of loan process that was sending the funds to Venezuela to help increase that country's oil refining business(this act defies credibility given Venezuela's descent into chaos post Chavez era).
Perhaps most galling is the remark of Chief Financial Officer Harvey Schwartz who said that the loss would put only a Small Dent in the trading division's 4th qtr results. He added that the company is still in talks with the Bank of Portugal.
Makes you wonder how the 1%'ers got to be 1%'ers. Could they just have so much going on that they have to absorb a few bad deals every now and then? Would we taxpayers have to bail out this "Too Big To fail Wall St. Mega Bank?" And they want to dilute the Dodd /Frank Law. Oh, please.
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