(Quote by GS trader Fabrice Tourre.)
Ironically, "Frankenstein" was the name of the inventor not the monster, though we often associate that name with the creature. Frankenstein’s monster lacked identity. His lack of identity and abandonment by his maker fueled his vile behavior. According to Wikipedia:
Part of Frankenstein’s rejection of his creation is the fact that he does not give it a name, which gives it a lack of identity. Instead it is referred to by words such as "monster", "demon", "fiend", "wretch" and "it". When Frankenstein converses with the monster in Chapter 10, he addresses it as "vile insect", "abhorred monster", "fiend", "wretched devil" and "abhorred devil".
During a telling of Frankenstein, Shelley referred to the creature as "Adam". Shelley was referring to the first man in the Garden of Eden, as in her epigraph:
- Did I request thee, Maker from my clay
- To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee
- From darkness to promote me?
- John Milton, Paradise Lost (X.743–5)
Here’s a collection of articles on the infamous GS subprime shorting routine. – Ilene
Goldman’s Tourre E-Mail Describes ‘Frankenstein’ Derivatives
By Christine Harper
April 25 (Bloomberg) — Fabrice Tourre, a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive director facing a fraud lawsuit in the sale of a mortgage-linked investment, said an index that facilitated derivatives trading in the market was “like Frankenstein.”
The so-called ABX index is “the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: ‘Well, what if we created a ‘thing,’ which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?’” Tourre said in a Jan. 29, 2007, e-mail released yesterday by Goldman Sachs. Watching the index fall is “a little like Frankenstein turning against his own inventor.”
…
“Of course we didn’t dodge the mortgage mess,” Goldman Sachs Chairman and Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein wrote in an e-mail dated Nov. 18, 2007, that was also among eight pages of documents made public by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. “We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts. Also, it’s not over, so who knows how it will turn out ultimately.”
Some e-mails indicate that selling securities to customers was part of the firm’s effort to get rid of its mortgage risk and take a negative stance on the market.
“My basic message is let’s be aggressive distributing things because there will be very good opportunities as the markets goes (sic) into what is likely to be even greater distress and we want to be in a position to take advantage of them,” Chief Financial Officer David Viniar wrote in a Dec. 15, 2006, e-mail to a colleague.
Goldman’s Tourre Foresaw Subprime Chaos, Emails Show
By SUSANNE CRAIG And JOHN D. MCKINNON
Newly released emails show that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. trader Fabrice Tourre foresaw the meltdown of the subprime-mortgage market and compared the product he helped create to a "Frankenstein turning against his own inventor."
The new documents about Goldman Sachs also included some emails released by Senate investigators in which top Goldman executives cheered the gains they were reaping as subprime-mortgage securities collapsed in value in 2007.
Goldman on Saturday morning released its own description of its involvement in the mortgage market, as well as a collection of emails including Mr. Tourre’s. The firm said it didn’t make the big profits some have described and didn’t have any special information that caused it to know the U.S. housing market would collapse. Goldman said the Senate investigators cherry-picked emails to make a point, although the firm released some of the same messages.
Goldman Sachs Emails: Firm Had ‘The Big Short’ As Economy Fell
As homeowners were falling behind on their subprime mortgages, wreaking havoc for investors that owned slices of their mortgages in securities peddled by Wall Street, Goldman Sachs was "well positioned," according to internal company emails from top executives.
The firm had "the big short," declared chief financial officer David Viniar — Goldman Sachs was making money off the souring of the very securities it had peddled to the market.
The internal emails released Saturday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations paint a picture long known by most of the country, yet never before so vividly and explicitly articulated by Goldman officials. (Scroll down to see the full text of the emails.) As early as May 2007, as homeowners were being crushed under the weight of subprime mortgages, the most profitable firm on Wall Street had long taken out a form of insurance on those delinquencies.
New Goldman PR Disaster: Execs Celebrated Subprime Implosion
By Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism
Excerpt: "And now Goldman’s PR is in a head-on collision with granular examination of its conduct. Its posture, that it was merely acting as a middleman and therefore providing a socially useful function, does not square with its having continued to push subprime products like its Abacus program out the door as a way to achieve a short position."
