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?