Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)

All Comments on GS

  • commenter
    turkeyeyes
    Oct 12 05:36 PM
    Paulson in a State of Panic [view article]
    Shorts bring no value.
    They destroy companies and the economy.
    Reply
  • commenter
    John Egan
    Oct 12 05:17 PM
    What Does Warren Buffett See in General Electric? [view article]
    Would it be OK if I wait till all the seed falls from the SILO and then I can dig around, dust off ol' GE and decide at that time whether the company's worth buying???

    Also,Buffett didn't go out and buy shares of GE, he got a sweetheart deal that you and I cannot get. The same is true of Goldman... Heck! My credit card rate is lower than the interest that Buffett is charging either company and I don't have the right to buy shares in BofA 'in perpetuity' either...

    jegan ;-)     Reply
  • commenter
    who
    Oct 12 03:14 PM
    Paulson in a State of Panic [view article]
    shorts aren't the culprits, but taking advantage of the situation. a certain way shorts are wake up call otherwise the situation could have even snowballed bigger.

    policy and policy banks is what caused the current crisis. Chinese banks used to run on policy and lend blindly to comply with policy hence massive looses.     Reply
  • commenter
    who
    Oct 12 02:58 PM
    Financial Landscape: Writedowns, Losses and Capital Raised [view article]
    write down are simple losses. does raising capital mean a dilution of shareholder wealth by increasing the shareholder base? both, write off and capital raising not good for the shareholder in this current environment. Reply
  • commenter
    superdan
    Oct 12 02:36 PM
    Financial Terrorism? - Cramer's Stop Trading! (9/18/08) [view article]
    The world is what it is... the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
    Is this mess engineered or is it benign neglect by the government,
    or something more sinister?

    Economic terrorism is not impossible, but improbable. Heraldo thinks its the Chinese; others the Russians. But given the tight complexity of the world market if one gets hurt we all feel the pain.

    Time to really investigate this issue and put the guilty in prison with no exceptions.     Reply
  • commenter
    PastTense
    Oct 12 02:30 PM
    Paulson in a State of Panic [view article]
    1. If firms are basically worthless because they decided to make massive amounts of poor investments and bad loans there is no reason whatsoever for equity owners to receive anything at all. This is true for massive numbers of businesses of all kinds--and the answer is the same for all of them--let the investors lose all their money. Don't you understand the basic fundamental concepts of capitalism?

    2. The only reason for the government to engage in any bailouts is the effect of financial failures on the broader economy. So any government programs should be totally oriented toward this. Thus a total guarantee of deposits or goverment loans or equity investments is a much, much better proposal than the government buying junk assets from banks. The original bailout proposal was simply a proposal to move the losses for the banking industry's bad loans from the banks (where it belonged) to the federal government.     Reply
  • commenter
    short WFC
    Oct 12 02:05 PM
    We're in an Opacity Crisis [view article]
    I agree with most of it, just want to add the dire requirement for broad, and strong accountability enforced at top level administrators of gov , GSE and private entities.

    no accountability=no long term success of policy.

    2nd point is that governements role in breakig up provate monopoly shold be expanded to include 'too big to fail' organizations.

    these two ideas if strongly enforced will go a long way to protect stability, economic policy, and taxpayers     Reply
  • commenter
    madasiwannab
    e
    Oct 12 12:52 PM
    Paulson in a State of Panic [view article]
    AMEN!!! Conservatorship doesn't give Paulson the right to wipe out the GSE's to save the other mortgage holders. The laws are very specific about the charter of a conservator, and unless there's more to the purchases that secures the current company value, this goes against that charter.

    We all know the takeover had nothing to do with the solvency of the GSE's. If it did, why haven't they used any of the 200 Billion to stabilize the GSE's. Paulson knew all along that at some point he would use the GSE's to buy up toxic assets to clean the books of his buddies. I find it interesting that every time Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley stocks take a dive, Paulson comes up with another plan. Time to get the FBI and supreme court involved to stop this madness.     Reply
  • commenter
    whidbey
    Oct 12 12:49 PM
    Settlement Auction for Lehman CDS: Surprises Behind [view article]
    The perception that this was a rational trade session is probably false. The whole process was likely a mismatch of capacity v. value perceptions. This gives little confidence that CDS are understood by the public or the broker/dealers who have very little notion of how to value them. All to our peril. Reply
  • commenter
    User 218405
    Oct 12 12:01 PM
    Single Worst Week - Fast Money Recap (10/10/08) [view article]
    I own EXM and I knew it was a good company, but I didn't realize the P.E. was only 1.40. Thanks.
    Dan Kowkabany     Reply
  • commenter
    TheBookkeepe
    r
    Oct 12 11:43 AM
    We're in an Opacity Crisis [view article]
    Hi Cate,
    All that you hope to see in the way of transparency and control will return when business entities of every description return to a proper double-entry bookkeeping framework of rules. Such rules were customarily used by all business entities prior to computer software. The proper framework was never programmed into software. It will soon have to be because there is no other framework of rules that will get the present cultural collapse back on track and subject to the return to a constitutional government. The 650 year old double entry bookkeeping framework of rules supervised commercial trade since the middle ages. It is not only the de facto language of commercial trade. It is the only language of commercial trade.

    If you wish to put my words to a test, find the best accountant you know. Ask him or her to define a debit versus a credit. Send me their answer and I will send you the proper definition. You will be quite surprised to learn how little accountants know about the double-entry framework of rules.     Reply
  • commenter
    Amicus
    Oct 12 11:43 AM
    Settlement Auction for Lehman CDS: Surprises Behind [view article]
    Michael, great write-up. Thanks!

    After looking over the Freddie/Fannie anomaly and reading through this, I have an alternative conjecture for your thesis about the "split result" in the last auction, in which the stop in one part of that auction trailed out at 99-something.

    Could it be that the derivatives people participating in these auctions are simply ... not as skilled and used to running them as are, say, the primary dealers' desk?

    While not inconsistent, per se, they look ... incomplete, in a technical sense of the term. I mean, look at Barclay's bids. Under what theory would bids peter out with *declining* price? Ditto Merrill Lynch. Compare that the Bank of America - their desk are willing to take the same amount of bonds at almost any price - with a bidding strategy like that, one imagines that ISDA should create a sidecar category for "non-compete"... bids...

    To be charitable, maybe it has to do with the structure of the auctions or the structure of the markets (can't treasury dealers go short in advance of auctions, in order to protect themselves?).

    Last, keying off your insight about the impact that the net open interest might have on auction results, can we suggest that the reason that the reason the mid-market average came in below the pre-auction trading prices is that the net open interest was to sell bonds? Just under 60% of the satisfied limit orders were from three firms..

    Last, I don't understand the Barclay's limit bids, in relation to the size of their physical settlement request. They put in a physical settlement request of $130m to buy, with a dealer bid at 8, then "won" $1,080m - almost 10x - with a weighted average bid of 9.47 in the limit order.     Reply
  • commenter
    formerhawk
    Oct 12 11:29 AM
    What Does Warren Buffett See in General Electric? [view article]
    Jimmy good post. Exactly why I have kept my GE and probably why Buffett has his. If GE folds then you may as well figure that any of your investments are probably worthless including your dollars or whatever other currency you want to invest in. Reply
  • commenter
    Jimmy
    Lathrop
    Oct 12 11:14 AM
    My Website
    Apocalypse Dow: The Search for Scapegoats [view article]
    Wait wait wait, just hold on a second - punishment? Witch hunt?

    Listen, if you overleveraged your house, you gambled and lost. Lo siento.

    If you were a hedge fund or money manager and you leveraged yourself out on commodity plays, and got killed with margin calls and forced selloffs of your holdings because your clients realized you were too risky, you gambled and lost. Lo siento.

    If you were close to retirement age and you had your money in stocks when bonds are the more prudent choice, you gambled and lost. Lo siento.

    I am neither of the above three. I am a renter. I am not a day trader nor does the market make or break me. I have many moons to go before I retire. More importantly, I don't have Mercedes calling me at work asking me when my next payment will come, and my summer home is not on the market. Because LIKE 99 PERCENT OF AMERICANS I COULDN'T AFFORD EITHER OF THOSE THINGS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

    Witch hunt? Blame game? As forced selling causes overpriced stocks to fall to normal P/E levels, indeed, overshoot into single digit P/E levels, I just want to know whose hand I need to shake! Lo siento.     Reply
  • commenter
    Jimmy
    Lathrop
    Oct 12 10:17 AM
    My Website
    What Does Warren Buffett See in General Electric? [view article]
    If you are expecting a child, you begin to notice children and families more than you would have before.

    Consequently, if, upon waking, you made a point to try and catalog every product that GE had an impact in your daily life, you'd see that it was no Yahoo! or Potash or Transocean or whatever dumb pick of the day people are touting all of the time. Light bulbs, heavy engine turbines, medical imaging equipment, GE's presence is everywhere. They have a 9 month, 180 billion dollar backlog. What else do you need to prove value today, a solid block of gold the size of the Chrysler building?

    I've been as bearish as the next guy, but I never suggested we should abandon the car and take up the horse. When you hear people are shorting General Electric, that's when you know the market is really oversold. Its a Dow 30 component, many institutions held it for collateral, their brokers sent out margin calls, and forced redemptions sent GE shares out onto the marketplace at irrational prices. The market is not rational. People make fortunes at the inequalities of these irrational prices.

    Listen, if I am standing in front of a grain elevator and I say to you, make a bet as to what happens if I open the door at the bottom, an unsophisticated investor will say, grain will fall so I should bet on falling grain. Anyone can bet on that. The trouble is, gravity and equilibrium will stop the falling grain. There is no force, like short selling, pulling the grain out, and if there is, it is like pushing on a string. The bet to make is that the grain will come out of the elevator and more than likely, some farmers are going to start loading up the grain elevator so the product doesn't spoil. That is what is called having a long term. The short term could seem like a long time, like a school day seems to a third grader. Seasoned professors know the semester flies by.     Reply
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