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The Must Have Dictionary For Those Who Don't Speak Goldmanese Good
With less than 12 hours left to the once-in-a-generation cruentus calamari roasting, here is a primer for all those who will be listening in and hoping to understand any of the guttural noises coming out of the beaks of the those doing god's work on the Senate witness stand. Below is a must-have dictionary for all who seek to speak the divine (or is that brine?) dialect of the Goldmanites, courtesy of Bloomberg's Jonathan Weil.
1. Sophisticated: Susceptible to predators, blindly
trusting of Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s credit ratings, all in
all an easy mark.How to use in a sentence: The companies that lost $1.1
billion on Abacus 2007-AC1 “were among the most sophisticated
mortgage investors in the world,” Goldman said in an April 16
press release.2. Transaction: An investment position whose scope can be
defined rigidly or elastically, as a single business deal or a
group of many, resulting in either a loss or a profit, depending
on the desired outcome. Such flexibility can be useful for tax
purposes, or for confusing an angry yet gullible public.Example: “Goldman Sachs lost money on the transaction,”
the bank said. (Notice how the word, when used by Goldman,
conveniently excludes the seriously large offsetting profits
Goldman made by shorting subprime-mortgage bonds in 2007.)3. Hedged: A public-relations term that refers to the act
of pairing a free-standing loss with a separate profitable
transaction, thus creating the outward impression that a Wall
Street bank never bore any risk. Effective only when the actual
facts are unverifiable. Not effective where showing a profit
would cause further harm to the bank’s reputation.Usage: Goldman said it wouldn’t have lost money if AIG had
filed for bankruptcy in 2008, because the bank was hedged.
Goldman said it was not hedged on Abacus.4. Select: To agree to be called a “portfolio selection
agent,” at a Wall Street bank’s request, even though one of the
bank’s bearish clients is doing much of the picking. See
statement from Goldman’s April 16 press release: “ACA, the
largest investor, selected the portfolio.”Related word: Independent. As in, ACA was “an independent
and experienced portfolio selection agent,” Goldman said.5. Investor: A company that promises to pay an outlandish
sum of money upon the occurrence of some future event, in
exchange for a small amount of cash upfront. For instance, if
you pay $1,000 to buy a $1 million life-insurance policy, the
insurance company has made a $1 million investment in you. Bet
you didn’t know that, huh?Likewise, according to Goldman, ACA made a $909 million
investment when it sold $909 million of credit protection on
Abacus, in exchange for yearly premiums of 50 basis points, or
half a percentage point of the amount insured. (That’s about
$4.5 million, by my calculation.)6. Market maker: An intermediary that matches sophisticated
investors with clients that actually know what they’re doing.
Usually employs at least one French-speaking broker who takes
orgasmic pleasure in persuading widows and orphans to buy CDOs
that he thinks were designed to fail.7. Relatively unknown: Less famous than the Paris Hilton
sex tape.Usage: “A disclosure that the relatively unknown Paulson
was the entity” that planned to short Abacus “would have been
immaterial to investors in April 2007,” Goldman told the SEC in
a letter last year.8. Hindsight: The ability to recognize the consequences of
a decision contemporaneously, as it’s being made. Example: With
hindsight, anyone at Goldman Sachs with a pulse could have seen
that the CDO it structured was designed to fail.9. Blindside: To catch a Wall Street bank off guard about a
material event, such as an SEC fraud lawsuit, thus depriving its
board members of any potential opportunity to tip off their
friends with market-moving inside information.10. Synthetic collateralized debt obligation: Don’t ask.
As Weil concludes:
Just remember this. Goldman Sachs lost more than $100
million as a market maker in a transaction involving sophisticated investors. It wasn’t hedged. The identity of the
relatively unknown Paulson wasn’t a material fact, and neither
was Paulson’s role in the selection process.Only with the benefit of hindsight could a reasonable
person see anything wrong with Goldman’s actions. Moreover,
Goldman was unfairly blindsided by the SEC’s lawsuit.Good luck, senators. You’re on your own now.
We agree (which is why we provided a CDO primer to all those who are interested in more than just the spectacle aspect of things - and yes Senators, the ever angrier public will be watching).
Full Jonathan Weil piece can be found here.
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Don't forget morts, we are morts to GS's god!
Must watch. Levin totally GETS it:
http://www.bloomberg.com/avp/avp.htm?N=video&T=Levin+News+Conference+on+...
wow.. there's no putting the genie back in the bottle now..
It's very abstract of them to say that they lost money on this, I mean really in a world of hedging, where exactly does one trade end and another begin?
the "arrangement" with Goldman was worked out months ago. you can't honestly expect that the people who buy and sell presidents can be held accountable, can you? we plebes should entertained with a very interesting circus, though the bread might soon be getting increasingly in short supply. and as we are all well aware of, you can't "eat gold". damn shame.
I have this strange feeling that Tuesday morning the Chief Blood Funnel Officer will be laying the blame on an inconsiderate, untrustworthy, oversexed, immoral, immature, out of control, dastardly, foreign frenchman who did very naughty things and failed completely to honour the squid's normative relationships to its prey, correction, to its customers.
And then my hunch is that we get a suprise from the fab, Fab, fab and he spills a lot of new beans by way of explaining that it wasn't him it was the squid people that made him do terrible things.
Fab has to be feeling pretty lonely and abandoned right now especially after GS released his private emails. My hunch is that he might be wanting to cozy up to a nice cuddly DA and turn states evidence.
you are aware that all those emails had to be released due to the Levin subpeona, right? That being said, GS has trashed fabieo since the SEC suit, but its not like those emails make GS look great.
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zero hedge on a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
as far as i can tell the world wants to know who in the heck zerohedge/tyler durden is,
more than paris hilton sex tapes. well, for people that actually read anymore. those sex tapes never interested me, but you sure do.
The zero hedge sex tapes! My favourite things in one package! Where do I send my Euros?
SEX sells, it really is one thing i have come to realize, since reading ZH. the education of sex, i can only offer direct experience though. i think they got some content here.
used PAYPAL, wasn't too painful. i am glad to help out.
kinda excited myself seeing tyler name on my paypal payment receipt.
"hoping to understand any of the guttural noises coming out of the beaks of the those doing god's work on the Senate witness stand"
ohhh. I love it here.
Kill Squid.
Grill Squid.
Rinse and repeat.
THE QUANT FROM PLANET X:
http://williambanzai7.blogspot.com/2010/04/quant-from-planet-x.html
short: long
do you remember this wave of companies scamming susceptible people and the people veing mad at the government for not protecting them? it happened after 89 when the democracies out east were still relatively new and gold-diggers from the 'developed world' moved in to rake in some ez cash. well now the government and the gold-diggers are the same people so there aint shit u can do.
So, if Goldman gets really good'n'fuckered here does that mean my cardboard Florida McShitbox will be worth the $987,680 I paid for it?
I mean, I'm underwater here because of Goldman Sachs right? That's not fair, I put like a month's salary down on this thing.
What time on the TV do the senators tell me where my money's at?
Why can the media not wrap its head around this?: It is utterly irrelevant whether Goldman made or lost money on the transaction/transactions. Whether it's true or not, it has nothing to do with the charges.
Is it supposed to make us feel sorry for them, somehow? Stick to the goddamn facts of the case, squid.
11. Doing God's work: S*cking Lucifer's d*ck and obliterating the middle class.
Couldn't have defined it better myself.
points to keep in mind during today's... "Smackdown" to provide context for the epic battle that will unfold:
1. America's financial defenders, the SEC Team, is fighting for justice
2. America's pinnacle of integrity, The US Senate Team is fighting for righteousness
3. Wall Street's godfather, Lloyd Blankfein, is fighting for mob salvation and God' own Goldman Team
"LETS...GET...READY...TO...RUUUMMMBBBLLLLE!!!!"
thanks tyler for this glossary. sorta could read and absorb. is short really mean sell?
hell, even i knew what a stated income application was.