Unlike the would-be prosecutors, who aren't especially interested.
In the notorious Hudson transaction, for instance, Goldman claimed, in writing, that it was fully "aligned" with the interests of its client, Morgan Stanley, because it owned a $6 million slice of the deal. What Goldman left out is that it had a $2 billion short position against the same deal.
If that isn’t fraud, Mr. Holder, just what exactly is fraud?
But here’s the thing: most of the crimes Wall Street people commit involve highly specific, highly individualized transactions that won’t fit Eric Holder’s bag of cookie-cutter statutory definitions. That is not the same thing as saying they’re not crimes. They are: the crimes of the crisis period were and are very basic crimes like fraud, theft, perjury, and tax evasion, only they’re dressed up in millions of pages of camouflaging verbiage.
Or, even more often, the crimes have also been sanctified in advance by “reputable” law and accounting firms, who (for huge fees) offered their clients opinions that, if X and Y are signed in accordance with Z, and A and B are stipulated by the parties, and everyone’s sitting Indian-style and facing the moon when the deal is agreed to, then it’s not fucked up and illegal when Goldman Sachs tells you it’s a co-investor in your deal when it’s actually got $2 billion bet against you.
You know that look a dog gives you when you show it something confusing, like an electric razor or a lawn sprinkler? That’s the look federal prosecutors give when companies like Goldman wave their attorneys’ sanctifying opinions at them.
It’s political, sure, these decisions not to go after the Goldmans of the world, but more than that what usually rules the day is just pure intellectual fear
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/ag-eric-holder-has-no-balls-20120815
Edited by bleeding heart, 15 August 2012 - 10:30 AM.
