Comment by mmanfrin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mmanfrin | Hacker News Reader

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  "This resolution holds Goldman Sachs accountable for its serious 
  misconduct in falsely assuring investors that securities it sold were 
  backed by sound mortgages, when it knew that they were full of 
  mortgages that were likely to fail."

"serious misconduct in falsely assuring investors that securities it sold were backed by sound mortgages, when it knew that they were full of mortgages that were likely to fail"

GS told these investors that these were safe investments when they knew they weren't. This is not a case of a pension fund calling up GS-General-Store and demanding to buy CDOs, this is a case of GS saying 'hey these are really safe investments for you' when they knew full well they weren't.

My problem with this is that we trying to fix finance by expecting Goldman Sachs to act as good citizens. Guess what will never happen.

Goldman is not a good citizen. It is a market maker. It provides the function of creating financial products that people want to buy. Goldman also wrote the first swaps against the mortgages in these securities. Guess what, they didn't do it out of the goodness of their hearts. They did it for the fees.

Goldman is one of the few actors in this mess that performed their jobs well. Rating securities was not their job. Determining if mortgages were sound was not their job. Their job was to package loans that were underwritten by other banks and sell them to _qualified investors_ who wanted to buy them. Goldman did it's job very well.

Ratings agencies had the job of determining the quality of these securities. They did their job poorly.

Investment managers had the _incredibly high paying_ job of selecting sound investments. They did their job poorly.

Goldman is the only one who even comes close to being competent in this entire mess.

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