goldman sachs

The updated Goldman Sachs 13F is out. With 10,244 security holdings, amounting to $180 billion in gross exposure, split among 7 institutional investment managers (Goldman Sachs & Co; Goldman Sachs Asset Management; Goldman Sachs International; Goldman Sachs AG; Goldman Sachs Execution and Clearing; The Ayco Company; Goldman Sachs Trust Company), it presents an interesting picture of Goldman's core equity positions. The bulk of the security holdings are held at GS & Co. ($94.5 billion of market value), followed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management ($80 billion of market value). Furthermore, Goldman breaks down holdings based on value of Calls and Puts, in addition to underlying stock.

As we pointed out recently, excess reserves at banking institutions have hit yet another all time record over $1 trillion, courtesy not just of the Fed's burgeoning reliquification efforts via direct asset purchases, but also due to its strategy to wind down the SFP program, and keep the Federal debt level under the legal cap, thereby providing even more liquidity to banks, to the tune of$185 billion. Yet if you thought that this inability to pass liquidity over into the broader currency pool was something to be concerned about (you know, that whole lending to consumers thing), you were wrong. Or so claims Goldman Sachs in this extended expose on why central planning is in fact good for Communist America. Also, for anyone who still doesn't understand how modern Fed-subsidized cash hoarding works, this primer should explain it all.

"Goldman needs competent regulation and more of it. Among other things, Goldman’s credit
derivatives should be cleared on the exchanges. Citadel’s CEO Kenneth Griffin commented
recently in the Financial Times that Lehman’s collapse caused little disruption in the exchange traded markets. But unregulated credit default swaps and non?cleared interest rate swaps “triggered chaos in the market.” I join Mr. Griffin in saying “regulators must implement central clearing and put the integrity of the capital markets ahead of the profits of a self?interested few.” - Janet Tavakoli

"The public wanted to know if Goldman Sachs was one of AIG’s large credit derivatives counterparties, since it was involved in the bailout negotiations. In September 2008, AIG’s fresh credit rating downgrade (from AA to A) triggered a clause, requiring it to provide 100% collateral for many of its CDS contracts. It meant AIG had to quickly come up with tens of billions for some of its counterparties, and it was unable to do it. It was in that context that David Viniar made his remarks on September 16, 2008. Viniar’s remarks obscured the fact that Goldman was not disinterested. Goldman’s board first learned of its ongoing collateral dispute with AIG in November 2007, and Goldman bought protection against the possibility that AIG would fail." - Janet Tavakoli

An interesting report coming from McClatchy, concerning Goldman Sachs bets on the housing crash.

Give me a G... Goldman Sachs announced today that it plans to cut the rescue loan arranged for CIT Group by $875 million, to just $2.125 billion.

Mark the last 3 days down. Yet another classic. Goldman lowballs the GDP and panicked deflationists sell anything and everything "risk" related and pile into dollars and Treasuries. Then the "inflated" GDP is released, and suddenly risk assets of every race, gender, stripe, color, and ethnic origin are once again embraced.

Janet Tavakoli with some more great quotes ...

"A decline in the value of the dollar is necessary in order compensate for the fact that the US economy will remain rather weak, will be a drag on the global economy. China will emerge as the motor replacing the US consumer and, of course, it’s a smaller motor because the Chinese economy is much smaller. So the world economy will have less of a motor, so it will move forward slower than it has in the last 25 years. But China will be the engine driving it forward and the US will be actually a drag that’s being pulled along through a gradual decline in the value of the dollar." - George Soros

"There is a sense that if you make money you are going to give. Making money, however, is different from stealing money. If you steal the money, you are not expected to give it to a charity my friends. If you steal the money we will take the money back from you, by way of the government, and put you in jail. The American taxpayer in fact has given trillions of dollars, billions directly to Goldman Sachs so that Goldman can use the taxpayer subsidy to play a parlor game and pay themselves record bonuses." - Dylan Ratigan

The following post is a revision of an article I wrote for my blog. The topic is the similarities between the leap of faith that investors took when they gave their money to Bernie Madoff and the leap of faith required of those who currently own and buy shares of Goldman Sachs. Upon some reflection, there are a number of interesting parallels. The data does not include the most recent earnings report, but given another incredible performance this quarter I thought the commentary was still very relevant.

Max Keiser in his prime, discussing whether the crisis is over: "It'd not froth, it's fraud. This is an incredible case of accounting fraud and the American peasants have got to be the stupidest people in the world today: they don't mind becoming peasants, they don't mind living like peasants, and if that's the case, we should do nothing to step them from sliding into a peasant class." And this pearl: "The bankers on Wall Street are the equivalent of suicide bombers in other countries.They threaten to blow themselves up and blow up the economy in exchange for huge bailout money."

Zero Hedge is starting a multi-part overview of Goldman Sachs' Electronic Trading client-focused product suite, to demonstrate just how extensively embedded in modern market architecture are Goldman's various DMA and "liquidity" facilitation schemes, and the depths of dark pool domination via Goldman's global order router, and other specific topical offerings.

It would appear that employees of the NY Post can do more than merely plant stories and spread unfounded rumors. Some of them actually do investigative work. Case in point - John Crudele, who has compiled FOIA reports to create a chronological narrative of Hank Paulson's speed-dialing in the days after the Lehman collapse, in a piece titled "The secret to Goldman Sachs' good fortune." The net result: more communication between Paulson and Blankfein during the heart of the crisis than anyone else (including then-President Bush), with the only exception of Ben Bernanke. Just what were these two people talking about so frequently in the two days when the Dow made an 800 point round trip? And just who was leaking the rumors that ultimately were based on information sourced by Hank Paulson himself? Crudele's chronology presents a relevant framework for analyzing just who the critical decision-makers are in US financial markets. Hopefully one day phone transcripts will be released and the full picture of just what information Blankfein was getting straight from his former boss can be reconstructed.

"[The Fed] is bigger than the Congress, [it] has more power than the Congress. The Fed Chairman probably is more powerful than our president, and yet we refuse to look at it. The time has come for us to look at the Fed" - Ron Paul