More Hypocrisy From Lloyd Blankfein On Charlie Rose
Courtesy of Tyler Durden
Just because Goldman refuses to get it, and wishes to inflict even more pain on itself with more and more public appearances, here is Lloyd on Charlie Rose last night. More of the same: "We did well because we had the disciplined hedging [on housing]." Paraphrase: "Thank you Paulson for letting us steal your idea and have our prop book go $10 billion short two months before HSBC and New Century went tits up. Also thank you for reminding us to short hundreds of millions worth of Bear stock." Also, the amount of money put into Goldman by the government was not important for us. Ok Lloyd, please refund all the $2 billion in CDS profits you made by shorting AIG immediately.
And again Lloyd blatantly misrepresents the truth, by saying that doing away with prop trading would only cost the firm 10% of the firm’s revenue (so why the massive fight against the Volcker rule?). Forget all this market maker, liquidity provider generic fallback bs and mumbo jumbo. How about some disclosure on just how you classify prop trading Lloyd? Because something tells us that at least 50% of your flow and correlation desk is purely Prop (and certainly serves to bolster prop profits instead of putting clients "first" as we have disclosed about 10 times in the past week alone), as the 901 pages in Goldman discovery make only all too obvious (we will post on that soon). Hey Lloyd, here’s an idea – how about instituting P&L stop limits on all your OTC FICC prop trades just like RBS? Oh yes, we’ll go there… and in much more detail. Soon.
In the meantime, Goldman will "soul search" as an adjustment for people to "understand that Goldman’s fortunes must be aligned with the interests of its client." We are sure this will take the average Goldman prop trader exactly 2 milliseconds (or longer than it takes a Redi algo to frontrun a flashed block) to begin and end their soulsearching as they take their G-5s to Tahiti for the weekend.
And here is the kicker: "The reason why we get the best people, why we retain the best peopl, is because we get people who are really interested in doing something that they think is good for the public, for the world they are in." At which point, Charlie shoots down the faux nobility with one simple phrase: "Make a lot of money and then go out and do good." Brilliant. And the consumate retort: "most of our people at the height of their careers go into public service" – does the "forced" liquidation of $700 million of Goldman shares just to "serve the public" maybe have something to do with this Lloyd (ref: Hank "Bazooka" Paulson). To be sure they can also buy GS stock… while in possession of material inside information while "serving the public" (ref: Stephen Friedman). Or how about Paulson then going out and making it all too clear, without a shred of evidence, that the collapse of Goldman would start WWIII.
Jesus, Lloyd, don’t you understand that the public is not as dumb as you think it is? That even the regular Joe Sixpack can read the hypocrisy behind just that one statement? In that one sentence alone you blow your entire case to appease the public yet again – and you do it over, and over, and over. Stop treating Americans like idiots, and your world tour may actually not be an abysmal failure. Continue to insult people’s intelligence, and you will flounder. But then deep down you are a trader at heart, to whom any admission of weakness is suicide, just ask any trader. Which is why this lawsuit could very well be your, your firm’s, and Warren Buffet’s, undoing. In the meantime, please Lloyd, spare us any more unsolicited TV appearances – we already have "As The Obama World Turns" soap opera everyday to keep us distracted as your "public interest" focused nobility robs this nation blind just so they can buy that 5th private jet. How else will Goldman Sachs Conviction Buy Textron EPS hit new all time record highs.
