Paulson | Phil's Stock World

“Only fraud and falsehood dread examination. Truth invites it.”
- Dr. Samuel Johnson

The SEC is formally charging Goldman Sachs with fraud in the derivatives markets, specifically with regard to Collateralized Debt Obligations related to subprime mortgages.

Investors in Goldman’s Abacus CDO lost one billion dollars.

In addition to the company, an individual VP in Goldman’s international group is being charged, Fabrice Tourre.

Paulson and Company, a major hedge fund, paid Goldman to structure a CDO based on mortgages that Paulson selected, so that they could bet against it.

"The product was new and complex, but the deception and conflicts are old and simple. Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio, while telling other investors that the securities were selected by an independent, objective third party,” said Robert Khuzami, director of the division of enforcement.

This could be construed as a deft way of throwing red meat to the angry mob, nailing a specific individual at Goldman while limiting the criminal charges against the company although there will be significant civil cases, and dealing with the billionaire hedge fund owner Paulson who made a fortune betting against the subprime market.

This could be more damaging if this includes other Goldman bets against its customers on products it represented and created, and it shows an overall intent to create fraudulent products for the purpose of shorting them. For now the SEC will not say if this fraud is a singular event or more systemic.

Goldman will almost certainly attempt to spin this as the actions of a ‘rogue trader‘ who was an aggressive exception.

Last week the White House asked Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein to ‘cool it’ on their intense lobbying efforts against derivatives and financial reform.

Perhaps this will help them in their decision.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The Wall Street Banks are knee deep in fraud.

No one can obtain the kind of consistently odds

David Reilly at BusinessWeek takes dead aim at Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the New York Fed in Secret Banking Cabal Emerges From AIG Shadows.

The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter. Wednesday’s hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.

We’re talking about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose role as the most influential part of the federal-reserve system — apart from the matter of AIG’s bailout — deserves further congressional scrutiny.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was head of the New York Fed at the time of the AIG moves. The hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform also focused on what many in Congress believe was the New York Fed’s subsequent attempt to cover up buyout details and who benefited.

By pursuing this line of inquiry, the hearing revealed some of the inner workings of the New York Fed and the outsized role it plays in banking. This insight is especially valuable given that the New York Fed is a quasi-governmental institution that isn’t subject to citizen intrusions such as freedom of information requests, unlike the Federal Reserve.

This impenetrability comes in handy since the bank is the preferred vehicle for many of the Fed’s bailout programs. It’s as though the New York Fed was a black-ops outfit for the nation’s central bank.

As Representative Marcy Kaptur told Geithner at the hearing: “A lot of people think that the president of the New York Fed works for the U.S. government. But in fact you work for the private banks that elected you.”

Let’s take Geithner at his word that a failure to resolve the insurer’s default swaps would have led to financial Armageddon. Given the stakes, you might think Geithner would have coordinated actions with then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Yet Paulson testified that he wasn’t in the loop.

“I had no involvement at all, in the payment to the counterparties, no involvement whatsoever,” Paulson said.

Fed Chairman Bernanke also wasn’t involved. In a written response to questions from Representative Darrell Issa, Bernanke said he “was not directly involved in the

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