Paulson Goldman Fraud Case - Page 2

Absolute nonsense.

Way to show your ignorance and intolerance for all to see. I guess you would also favor suspension of the Fourth through Eighth Amendments to the Constitution whenever YOU decide that the accused is unworthy. I represent a death row inmate who was convicted of murder. I guess you think I am a slimeball too, although I could not care less if you do.

Take your political views and shovel them somewhere else. The rules of this forum are simple and this entire thread should be disappeared because politics are off limits.

what's funny is that YOU are the one who turned this thread political by bringing up the constitution, not majid. You chastise him about "political views" and then go right on ahead with your very own political views.

Oh snap!

Only comment I can make is that this whole world is going to hell in a hand basket. I don't trust any of the slime balls at the top.

The constitution is the fundamental law of a country - it is a legal issue, especially in his context. He's talking about what he does as a lawyer, not some politicized interpretation of the constitution.. Under the separation of powers politics should be left to the legislature and executive. But people talk about laws on head-fi - copyright laws, personal issues etc...

Really?

You're right, but in this context, moderators will, as they have done so in the past, lump this together with the general "no politics/religion posts."

did goldman/paulson did anything wrong - i am wondering.

let's say you want to place a bet in the baseball market for $1MM. and the way you decide to place that bet is by creating a baseball team of the standard 25 man roster. you go to MLB because they have the resources you need to create this roster and execute the bet and in return you pay them a fee - this is goldman.

so you go to MLB (goldman) and assemble your roster. now most people would want to get the best players possible but you don't. you want to use players who you think are "bad" - i.e., in your opinion below average hitters and pitchers. you do this because your bet is that this team will fail (not win) or in baseball terms, play below .500. and if they do fail, you win the bet. this is what paulson did.

now for the bet to work, there has to be someone willing to take the other side for a bet always has two parties. and one always wins and one always loses. so you (paulson) assemble your roster and then ask MLB to find someone to take the other side of the bet - that is, someone who thinks the team will win, or play above .500. so MLB takes the fully completed roster and shows it around to other bettors asking if they would be interested in the $1MM bet. these are the potential investors. they are given the full roster of players - they know exactly who every pitcher and hitter is - and have full and complete access to all the publicly available statistics for those players (batting average, home runs, wins, era, etc). now some of these bettors decide to pass on the bet, but one decides that this team is good enough to play over .500 ball and takes it.

the season plays out and the team fails miserably. you (paulson) win the $1MM bet. later the bettor (the investor) learns that the roster he looked at had been assembled by you. he claims that if he knew this information, he never would have bet and that MLB (goldman) was required to tell him this information.

is he right or just trying to cover up his bad judgment?

From what I understand, the ratings agencies rated these investments as safer than they turned out to be. At any rate, we're all having to deal with the broader ramifications of these bad mortgages being issued when they shouldn't have been.

He's right. Paulson helped pick the losing team he bet against and relied on GS to talk up the team's prospects while knowing they were handicapped. It may or not prove to be fraud, but it certainly represents a conflict of interest endemic to any firm who both advises clients and operates its own trading account to capitalize on the insider info generated through the advisory relationship -- that this model was allowed to continue for so long is surely a contributing factor in the various recent banking crises.

I'm not sure how a thread about ethically-challenged bankers turned into the bashing of lawyers, who are no more bound to be "slimeballs" than are the members of any other profession, it seems to me. And as the son and brother of lawyers, one of whom works for a high-powered NYC M & A firm, I can tell you that in the investment banker-lawyer relationship, it's the former who wield the greater power, for better or (often) worse.

best,

o

Some may advance the defense that mistakes were made, yet we see a pattern of practice in their defense while only some profit who either should have known better (the incompetence defense) or they in fact conspired .

Guardian UK , reports:Now we know the truth. The financial meltdown wasn't a mistake – it was a con !

Now we know the truth. The financial meltdown wasn't a mistake – it was a con | Will Hutton | Business | The Observer

Yep. Arguments by lawyers in this thread don't count.

It was a con that has been set up for a long time. Seems every generation gets fleeced by the financial barons and this is our time. The world was set up for failure so real value could be stolen from the world economy. Much more profitable with less destruction than wars. Greed seems to be human's strongest drive.

Understood and agreed. It would certainly make for a far too rational and logical debate for this bunch.