Quote from Optional:
I haven't spent much time acctually following the SECOND complaint against Goldman or what they are alleging that was done. Recommending trades to your customers and then taking the other side because you are convinced of the outcome.
Let's say I'm a retail broker, and I call 100 clients and convince them to get LONG pork bellies, and after they do so, and I make my transaction fees, I go SHORT in my own personal account. If I'm correct about the market, the clients win, and I get to make more and more transaction fees, but lose in my personal account. If I'm wrong, my clients lose and I make money in my personal account.
How is what Goldman is alleged to do any different than this?
Welcome to Wall Street?
Quote from the1:
This is not even close to what Goldman did. There is nothing wrong with getting your clients long bellies and yourself short because there is no way you could know with certainty that the market would go up or down.
What Goldman did was package mortgages that <b>they knew would fail </b>and sold them - with help from the cozy relationships they had with the rating agencies - to institutions as AAA rated securities and shorted them because they knew they were garbage. That is pure and absolute fraud.
You don't know for sure if bellies will go up or down so there is fraud involved.
Quote from wutangfinancial:
Completely different. CDOs and especially synthetic CDOs are opaque, illiquid, and difficult to value. The problem was deceiving clients regarding the product itself-they misrepresented a highly risky asset as being basically riskless. Pork bellies are pork belies and barrels of oil are barrels of oil. So the analogy does not work.
Quote from Mike Morrison:
First of all nobody can KNOW whether or not any deal will fail.
Beyond that it not like the contents of these deals were only known by GS. Anyone buying them could of and should of done their homework to make sure the deal made sense. Apparently some did and refused to buy the junk. The ones who didn't got burned. That's life pal.
In any event anyone who thinks that selling garbage to someone else and betting against them is fraud probably is a little too soft for this business.
Quote from the1:
This is not even close to what Goldman did. There is nothing wrong with getting your clients long bellies and yourself short because there is no way you could know with certainty that the market would go up or down.
....
You don't know for sure if bellies will go up or down so there is fraud involved.
Quote from wutangfinancial:
Completely different. CDOs and especially synthetic CDOs are opaque, illiquid, and difficult to value. The problem was deceiving clients regarding the product itaeldf
-they misrepresented a highly risky asset as being basically riskless. Pork bellies are pork belies and barrels of oil are barrels of oil. So the analogy does not work.
Quote from wutangfinancial:
Completely different. CDOs and especially synthetic CDOs are opaque, illiquid, and difficult to value. The problem was deceiving clients regarding the product itself-they misrepresented a highly risky asset as being basically riskless. Pork bellies are pork belies and barrels of oil are barrels of oil. So the analogy does not work.
Quote from Dataa:
Are you for real ?
You believe Goldman defense. You actually believe what they are saying.
Gosh there is a sucker born every minute
What about Goldman cheating on High Frequency Trading.
Front running orders.
What ??
Never heard of that one eh sucker![]()
Quote from Specterx:
Whether or not it's illegal, it's clearly unethical to recommend that a client engage in a trade when you yourself are taking the opposite side. It's little different than a penny stock pump n' dump scheme. Brokers should definitely have a fiduciary duty to clients, to the point where an arrangement like the OP describes would constitute fraud. It's one thing to give poor advice or make a bad call, quite another to advise a client to buy security X when you yourself are shorting it.
A big part of the problem is that an institution like GS combines market-making, prop trading and research/advisory businesses under one roof. A bigger part are the multiple bailouts and tremendous government subsidies to the finance industry that allow the bad apples to take infinite do-overs.