User 305589

Tax Dollars at Work: Goldman Sachs to Pay Record Bonuses

It's not bashing the banks! It's rather criticising the govt to shovel billions of taxpayer money straight into the pockets of Goldman's executives and partners. Actually, they could cut this charade short in future: just close down all the banking operations of Goldman and make direct budget payments to them.
I have no issue with private bankers making money, not even from a crisis. I have huge iossues when they do so with taxpayer money, by infiltrating and corrupting the entire administration and by transferring all the risks to taxpayers, shareholders and creditors while reaping all the profits just for themselves.
GS ought to be shut down asap!


On Jun 22 10:07 AM Fund Insider wrote:

> Enough bashing the banks. If they do poorly, people complain.
> If they do well, people complain. What should they do, just close
> the doors ? They are no Angels at GS but they are doing what they
> are supposed to do, make a profilt. They avoided heavy investment
> in sub prime and that's why they are still here to take advantage
> of the current voids in the marketplace. They are smart, and others
> are jealous of them. Would you prefer if they go under and there
> are more mass layoffs and another 40% stockmarket slide ?

Option Spreads With Large Upside and Limited Downside

hm, let me get this straight: you talk of 'large upside and limited downside' - yet when looking at your vertical call spreads that you suggest, you have an upside of 108-150% and a downside of - 100%(!!)
I am myself doing a variety of vertical call spreads as well as calendar spreads, but frankly, your suggested trades look more like a gamble.
Your strike prices are so precariously close to each other and at the same time mostly out of the money and pretty near to expiration. For instance, the SPY calls with 92 strike have only a slightly higher probability of expiring in the money than have the 93s. It's basically a coin toss, imho.

I do like call spreads, though, but I use them either with long term options for stocks that are grossly undervalued imo, and then I go quite deep out of the money for 3.1 or 4:1 upside/downside.
Or I may target stocks which I consider to be a t rock bottom valuations with very little downside left and then chose calls that are in the money while selling calls at or slightly out of the money.

A Summary of Q1 Bank Earnings: World, You Just Got Hustled

Wallstreet has donated a ton of money to Obama's campaign and boy, do they get rewarded. I am quite sure, actually, that Obama doesn't do it by intention, I think he isn't even aware of the multiple scams that the people around him (most notably Geithner) pursue day after day. Still, the depth of the crisis, the levels of fear induced (not to the least by Obama's speeches) and the current president's popularity make people just accept these days whatever is going on. I seriously doubt that under GWB all this could have been pushed through.
That being said, I would not be surprised at all if Walls Streeet after raping the taxpayers like never before will do whatever they can to prevent a second term of Obama. The Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go. It's said, for all the hopes that were and still are hinging on this president and that will be nothing but shattered dreams a few years from here.

BlackRock: Goldman's Q1 Profit Non-Recurring and a Result of AIG Unwinds

Goldman is the poster child of the asset bubble that developed under Greenspan (and Summers and Paulson) since the late 1980s. The entire business model depends on dealing and wheeling in (inflated) assets and on flippüing around hot potatoes before they burn you. In this regard, it is telling that this 'highly profitable' company has reported earnings of several dozen billion dollars, but at the same time has managed to lose over 100 billion $ in cash. It is all there, plain to see for everyone who cares in the cash flow statements. Level 3 assets (illiquid stuff that you can mark to fantasy) exceed GS equity by now. I would not be surprised if goldman turned out to be just another giant ponzi scheme and the next enron to happen.


On Apr 14 11:12 PM William Cowie wrote:

> With permission, I'd like to repost a comment left in another thread
> regarding Goldman Sachs:
>
> It's amazing how far Goldman has fallen. In the past they were profitable
> because they made smart investment decisions. Now they simply rely
> on their contacts with the government to change laws (accounting,
> banking) make laws (TARP-AIG) and otherwise sanction decisions that
> reflect greed-driven leverage gains. It seems not a week passes without
> some lies, shady accounting, doubtful practices surfacing. This orphan
> month thing is just an example of shysterism bordering on criminal.
>
>
> History may well record Lloyd Blankfein in the same light as Roger
> Williams, who killed GM long before Wagoner took over the carcass.
>
>
> How the mighty have fallen...

Goldman Sachs Backlash Is Picking Up Steam

Goldman claims to have 'earned' 20 billion $ over the past five years but if you look at the cash flow statement they LOST 100 billion in cash. Since balance sheet and cash flow statements are harder to manipulate than the income statements (where you can basically report any 'earnings' you desire) I am inclined to say that things are much worse at Goldman Sucks than they appear at first glance. Add to this theat Buffet only purchased preferred shares at very punitive terms to goldman (above all the GS parthers are not allowed to cash out before him!). Add to this that their equity is LESS than their L3-assets alone. All of a sudden you know WHY they changed their reporting period in order to report seemingly good 'earnings' only to hastily make another secondary 5 bn offering.
Whoever buys these shares deserves the losses that will inevitably follow from that purchase.

The AIG/Bank Counterparty Scandal Escalates

Well, before there aren't all the details on the table, I wouldf simply regard this as yet another Barney Frank smoke and mirrors maneuver rather than an attempt to shed some light on the real happenings. Frank and Dodd are among the most incompetent politicians and share a great deal odf responsibilirty for this mess. So the letter smells very much like 'blame it on ethe foreigners' - just to redirect attention of the public away from the real issues. Could it be, that those deals with foreign banks and foreign counterparties were perhaps a bit different than those with most u.s. counterparties - implying a different treatment from legal points of view? Could it be that perhaps foreign central banks and foreign governments already did some deals with the u.s to avert a global financial meltdown and that treatment of AIG's foreign counterparties was part of these deals?
there are many possibilities and the truth may never be told.
Imho nobody needs the cds market except gamblers, speculators and crooks. let the cds markets die (ban new contracts from being written) and you eliminate a lot of systemic risks.

The Nefarious and Destructive World of TARP

AIG is THE cornerstone of the CDS-casino. That's really bad, but that's a fact. Of course, you can let AIG fail and watch how a financial tsunami rolls over the entire planet killing millions of sound businesses and many million jobs, incomes, savings, pensions etc.
Lehman's collapse and the shockwaves around the globe that followed should have given an indication of what we will likely face if AIG was allowed to fail.
On the other hand, that being said, the 512 trillion numbner sounds more horrible than it is. Ironically, the gazillions in GM-CDS that have been written (many times the actual amount of GM-debt outstanding) make it more complicated to let GM fail/file for Ch 11 and restructure it. The financial hydra has come full circle. Not only did the big banks drain ressources and talent from productive uses, they now make it harder to deal with the real economy that has been hit by their excesses.

At the end of the day, some people will again make unjustified fortunes on the back of the vast majority. Which is very bad as well - but a fact, nonetheless.