News: Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics

bright · Aug 16, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/business/09paulson.html

Before he became President George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary in 2006, Henry M. Paulson Jr. agreed to hold himself to a higher ethical standard than his predecessors. He not only sold all his holdings in Goldman Sachs, the investment bank he had run, but also specifically said that he would avoid any substantive interaction with Goldman executives for his entire term unless he first obtained an ethics waiver from the government.

But today, seven months after Mr. Paulson left office, questions are still being asked about his part in decisions last fall to prop up the teetering financial system with tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, including aid that directly benefited his former firm. Testifying on Capitol Hill last month, he was grilled about his relationship with Goldman.
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bright · Aug 16, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/09/AR2009080901081.html

The New York Times on Saturday reported records of two dozen conversations between Paulson and Goldman chief executive Lloyd Blankfein the same week last September that rival bank Lehman Brothers collapsed and insurer American International Group -- closely connected to Goldman -- was rescued with public funds.

Goldman was a major beneficiary of the AIG bailout, receiving nearly $13 billion in counterparty payments ultimately funded by taxpayers, according to AIG disclosures in March.
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bright · Aug 16, 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/andrew-clark-on-america/2009/aug/10/goldman-sachs-aig-treasury

Just how useful are Goldman Sachs's connections in high places? To date, I've been a bit sceptical about conspiracy theorists who say the bank's glittering list of alumni in government give it a kind of golden protection. But an astonishing factoid emerged this weekend about Goldman's relationship with President Bush's treasury secretary, Henry Paulson.

Paulson's office calendar at the treasury, obtained by the New York Times through a Freedom of Information request, reveals that he spoke to Goldman's boss, Lloyd Blankfein, two dozen times during the September week in which the treasury bailed out the troubled insurer AIG. That's "far more frequently" than Paulson talked to any other Wall Street executive.
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Txtriathlete · Aug 16, 2009

Re: Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics

Goldman runs this country, get over it.

chad · Aug 17, 2009

Re: Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics

bright is obsessed.

Barbara · Aug 17, 2009

Re: Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics

chad said: ↑

bright is obsessed.
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Reminds me of that guy that pops in randomly to complain about the sorry state of our education system and the teachers who caused it. I can't remember his name and I'm too lazy to look it up.

The Jitty Slitter · Aug 17, 2009

Re: Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics

Txtriathlete said: ↑

Goldman runs this country, get over it.
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Still - it is amazing that you can rip the tax payer off so obviously and for so much money * live on TV * and get away with it.

Oh - and at the same time take out your competitor

Txtriathlete · Aug 17, 2009

Re: Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics

The Jitty Slitter said: ↑

Still - it is amazing that you can rip the tax payer off so obviously and for so much money * live on TV * and get away with it.

Oh - and at the same time take out your competitor
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That's simply because you underestimated them
They have like a 97% positive trade day ratio(dont quote me on that), which is ridiculous, however its one reason we stopped trading equities a long time ago. Government Sachs can literally move markets.

bright · Aug 18, 2009

An article from last month's Rolling Stone about Goldman Sachs.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine/

nicephoras · Aug 19, 2009

They're the descendants of the Rothschilds I tell you, the Rothschilds!

bright · Sep 10, 2009

Re: Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics

http://www.americanbankingnews.com/...uld-bring-transparency-weve-been-looking-for/

Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC) is refusing to cave in to threats and allegations from New York Atty. Gen. Andrew M. Cuomo, and is ready to go to legal battle if the $33 million settlement agreed upon with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is disallowed by a federal judge.

What this is all about, in reference to the agreement by Bank of America with the SEC, is whether they bank hid important information from shareholders when they agreed to the acquire Merrill Lynch & Co. in the fall of 2008; specifically in reference to bonus payouts they they made to a number of Merrill Lynch employees tallying at $3.6 billion.
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If this does go to trial, what will happen is key executives from Bank of America would have to testify, including CEO Kenneth D. Lewis and the CEO of Merrill Lynch at that time, John A. Thain. More importantly, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke would be called before the court, as well as Henry Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary.

What that would do would force them to go on record as to what their involvement in the deal was and how everything went down. What lawsuits and bills in Congress haven’t been able to do, this particular trial would force to be done; at least in regard to this particular circumstance. It would give a real look into the machinations of the leading financial men in America and what they said and did in this case.
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bright · Sep 24, 2009

Re: Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32957834/ns/business-the_big_money/

It’s now clear that Henry Paulson is experiencing a remarkable abandonment by his former compatriots in last year's bailouts. In a cast of dozens of lawmakers, regulators, and Wall Street CEOs who bicker endlessly, they nearly all agree on this: Paulson deserves the bulk of the blame for designing a hasty, sloppy, expensive series of last-minute bailouts of the financial system.

It's a startling state of affairs because Paulson didn't work alone. He had less power than Fed chief Ben Bernanke, was farther from the heartbeat of Wall Street than Tim Geithner, and had less political influence than Congress, which passed reams of legislation. In many of the accounts published about the crisis, Paulson looks like part of the problem while Geithner and Bernanke, who marched in political lockstep with him, have somehow been hailed as part of the solution. This doesn't add up, and it's a dangerously convenient misrepresentation of those desperate days.
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Txtriathlete · Sep 24, 2009

Re: Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics

I cant believe that clown was reappointed!
Even Faber calls him a criminal.

MattR · Sep 25, 2009

Re: Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics

Txtriathlete said: ↑

I cant believe that clown was reappointed!
Even Faber calls him a criminal.
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What are you talking about. He saved America, avoided the second great depression(tm) and everything is turning around.

Now go shopping!

That Phat Hat · Sep 25, 2009

Re: Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics

Ethics and conflict of interest aside, I've met and talked to many people from GS, in investment banking and asset management, and from offices worldwide, and all but one turned out to be at least somewhat of a dick. Must be in their training.

bright · Nov 5, 2009

Re: Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics

http://www.portfolio.com/views/2009/11/03/icahn-wins-paulson-loses-with-cit-bankruptcy/

So how was your weekend? I don’t know about you, but I woke up Monday morning poorer by $2.3 billion.

Not me personally, needless to say, but me as a metaphor for the U.S. taxpayer. I’m referring to the ultimate example of “throwing good money after bad”—the $2.3 billion bath that taxpayers are getting from the loss of every single penny of bailout money that was pumped late last year into CIT Group, the big commercial lender that filed for bankruptcy on Sunday. In the waning days of the Bush administration, the government decided that CIT Group, which funds thousands of small businesses around the country, was too big to fail. In went $2.3 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, for which the Treasury received preferred stock.
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Henry Paulson, the former Treasury secretary and ex-Goldman Sachs CEO, negotiated a deal that would have gotten him canned if he was still at Goldman. We know that with relative precision because Goldman negotiated a $3 billion loan with CIT Group in June of 2008. The fine print of the Goldman deal gave the bank understandable protection in the event of default. The term of the deal was for 20 years, and CIT was obliged to pay Goldman $1 billion in the event of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. When the Treasury negotiated the deal with CIT in December, the insurer was in much more desperate straits and should have been forced to cough up far better terms. Instead, the taxpayers wound up with absolutely nothing in the event of default. (And Goldman Sachs became a principal beneficiary of the taxpayer-screwing bailout. Surprise, surprise.)
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QuakeAttack · Nov 5, 2009

Re: Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBsIcRZBh3A"]YouTube- Chevy Chase as Fletch[/ame]

Cascarino's Pizzeria · Nov 5, 2009

Re: Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics

bright said: ↑

http://www.portfolio.com/views/2009/11/03/icahn-wins-paulson-loses-with-cit-bankruptcy/
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These fcukers hardly ever lose, even when the economy implodes. They must be the smartest beings in the entire universe.