SEC Investigation Reveals Goldman Sachs Engaged in Deceit, Firm Proudly States That Deceit Is Just the “Tip of the Iceberg”
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) went after Goldman Sachs with guns a-blazing in April charging that the firm and one employee, Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre, knowingly marketed, sold and then bet against billions of dollars in debt securities that the bank knew were overvalued reaping hundreds of millions in profits.
Earlier this month, Goldman and the SEC reached a settlement agreement (via LA Times).
Goldman agreed to pay $550 million to resolve allegations that the company misled investors who bought subprime mortgage-related securities created by Goldman. Although Goldman neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing, it made a rare concession that its marketing materials for the securities had been “incomplete,” which it acknowledged was a “mistake.”
The SEC, still stinging from ignoring the Bernie Madoff scandal for over a decade and failing to discover that Lehman Brothers was routinely hiding $50 billion of liabilities off-balance sheet, quickly claimed victory (via WSJ).
Robert Khuzami, the SEC’s director of enforcement, said the settlement is a reminder to Wall Street firms that they must deal fairly with clients, “even if the product is complex or the investor sophisticated.”
However, the SEC’s celebration, which included two bottles of Andre’s Cold Duck, some Triscuits, thin slices of Kraft Sharp Cheddar cheese and a seemingly never-ending loop of Kool & The Gang’s 198082;s hit Celebration, was tepid compared to the euphoria displayed by another group – Goldman investors.
The deal sent the investment bank’s stock price up nearly 10% in a surge that began on rumors late in Wall Street’s regular trading session Thursday and continued in the after-hours market after the settlement was announced. The combined increase added more than $6 billion to the firm’s total stock market value.
However, the initial response emanating from Goldman Sachs’ brand new, 43-story, 200 West Street tower in Battery Park Manhattan was meek, largely because senior management told them to shut the f*ck up:
Goldman brass told managers to make sure the reaction inside the firm was subdued, fearing that cheering or other celebration would further taint the firm’s reputation.
In lieu of breaking out the bubbly, cocaine and hookers to celebrate the news, Goldman Sachs’ senior vice president of corporate communications, Dylan von Umbrayhoff, read a statement calling the settlement:
The right outcome for our firm, our shareholders and our clients.
Mr. von Umbrayhoff continued saying, “We would like to thank the SEC for their thorough investigation that served to highlight just one of the ways, deceit, in which Goldman seeks to deliver for its shareholders. However, we were disappointed, although not necessarily surprised, that the SEC’s tier-3 law school attorneys failed to discover some other key elements of the Goldman Sachs’ value proposition. It is our opinion that had more of our firm’s strategic differentiators been surfaced, our share price would more accurately reflect the underlying value of the firm, rather than the meager 10% bump witnessed in the after-hours market Thursday.
“While it is not our intent to do the SEC attorneys’ jobs for them, especially since those guys bill out at a mere $250 per hour — not even a living wage, we do think that it is in the interests of transparency and fair market valuation to disclose a little about what Goldman does and how exactly we do it. You can consider this a bit of the Goldman Sachs secret sauce.
“Firstly, let me just come right out and say this. We kill people. Not regular people, don’t worry about that. Just low performing employees mostly as part of our ‘up or snuff-out’ policy. We do this in lieu of offering severance which saves the shareholders money by shifting the financial burden to our insurance underwriter, AIG, and it also serves as an effective motivator for our remaining employees. And yeah, sometimes we ‘off’ a sell-side analyst at another firm if we learn that he going to issue a Goldman Sachs downgrade and whistle-blowers too, we definitely won’t tolerate the whistle-blowers.
“Secondly, we partner with state sponsors of terror. When Hamas wanted to plow through Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, who do you think financed their lease on the Turkish ferry at prime plus 20? Right, we did.
“When the Taliban decided to re-group in the mountainous region of northwest Pakistan called Waziristan in 2007 to prepare for another run at the coalition forces, who do you think funneled them the money for arms, IEDs and untraceable communication equipment in return for a 51% controlling interest in their poppy fields? If you answered Goldman, you are figuring this racket out…and you thought Wall Street was complex.
“Anyhow, Ahmadinejad in Iran? He opened up his first account with us just months after he pistol-whipped some of those American hostages one last time before the ending of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis; he has been a great customer ever since. If not for him, I don’t know if we would be working in North Korea right now.
“Lastly, we steal. I don’t mean that we inflate the spread on an institutional investor’s equity trade; that does not count, everyone does that. I mean stealing is a core value at Goldman. For example, we don’t have a single supply cabinet or firm-purchased photocopier anywhere in our Goldman Sachs headquarters. If you want a pen, pad of paper, photocopy or even a coffee maker for your floor, there is an expectation that you will raid another office building, rip-off a Staples store, scam a Xerox salesman or even steal from your peers in another department. Call it shoplifting, stealing, thieving, fraud, whatever. We call it practice. If you can’t figure out a way to make something from nothing, then you aren’t prepared to do your job at Goldman because the truth is, we don’t make sh*t here. We just make sh*t up. And then we send out big invoices, and trust us, people pay them, mainly because of point number one…we kill people.”
Goat note: Please note that The Daily Goat has no evidence that Goldman Sachs has engaged in or conspired to covered up a murder. However, the last reported figure we could find stated that there are 9082 unsolved murders dating back to 1985 in the NYC metropolitan area. Are we suggesting that Goldman is responsible for all of them? We are not saying that.