The Goldman Sachs Witch Hunt

Yesterday I watched Phil Angelides grill Mr. Blankfein. Phil is a liberal democrat, no problem with that, differences makes the world go round. What hit me yesterday watching Mr. Blankfein getting grilled by the Democrats, was when I worked at GS, I was shocked at how many of my colleagues supported Obama and the Dem’s. I never understood why any capitalist market makers would get behind the Democratic ideology , but many did, and now Lloyd gets to hang out with Phil.

During my tenure at GS, we purchased residential mortgage loans, underwrote them very tightly, the bond sales guys sold the securities and institutional investors bought them, with pure transparency of the assets outlined in the prospectus. GS also shorted the market with CDS underwritten by AIG, I was not close to that, but in my view, it was insurance, and it paid off (as a shareholder, I appreciated that trade). Yesterday, Mr. Blankfein correctly stated GS is a market maker, he didn’t apologize for that and he shouldn’t.