Poor Goldman Sachs. According to Megan McArdle, one of the Atlantic Monthly’s Wall St apologists, argued on CNN’s Your Money in a debate with Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi that the laws were too confusing and it would be too hard to figure out ig they did anything wrong. While conversely, she insinuates that those who the toxic assets were sold to should have known what they were buying. Let’s blame the victims. Megan even admits that she hasn’t read all the documents while Taibbi has. How does Megan have any credibility on this is beyond comprehension. Here are some of the “high” points from the transcript of the video:
MCARDLE: What we have to do is disclose. It’s perfectly legal for a dealership to sell me a car I’m not going to like or that’s too expensive for me. It’s not legal for them to sell me a car that’s not what they represented it as.
And we set certain legal minimum standards and that’s what happened here. At least, John Losera and all the devils who are here argues that he actually has gone through these documents and says that a lot of these things were disclosed. That in fact Goldman laid out in very lengthy detail all of the ways in which this could go wrong. I haven’t read the disclosure documents personally.
TAIBBI: I have.
MCARDLE: There are two competing versions of the story.
VELSHI: Matt, you’ve read them?
TAIBBI: Well, I’ve read all the documents in this report and I’ve also talked to some of the principals in this entire story. I definitely know some of the client that is Goldman was talking about were completely blindsided by the fact that, for instance.
They were buying assets out of Goldman’s own book when they were told that Goldman was buying these assets off the street. They definitely did not make key disclosures that they were legally obligated to make.
The People vs. Goldman Sachs
By Matt Taibbi
A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges
They weren’t murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.
Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn’t leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.
What’s so hard to fathom, Megan? They committed fraud and then lied about the fraud. Lloyd Blenkenfein isn’t too big for a cell next to Bernie Madoff. The Justice Department and Eric Holder needs to get its act together.
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