Wednesday, March 28, 2012

HOW GOLDMAN SACKS YOUR PORTFOLIO


What are three quick ways to climb the corporate ladder at Goldman Sachs?


According to former Goldman Sachs executive director, Greg Smith, you need to do the following:


1. Persuade clients to invest in the stocks or other products that Goldman is trying to dump.
2. Even if it's wrong for the client, sell them whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman (i.e. “Hunt Elephants").
3. Secure a desk where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

Got that? You sell Goldman's garbage. Or you find suckers clients with deep pockets (like local governments) to buy up risky but potentially "high yield" products. Even better, you can specialize in selling products that federal regulators find difficult to track and, only with great difficulty, can assign blame.

You shouldn't be surprised by any of this (nor be swayed by Goldman Sachs' lame response to Smith). Michael Lewis wrote all about the culture and practices of Wall Street that Smith discusses in Liar's Poker ... back in 1989!



Regardless of what people like Alan Greenspan say, the collapse of 2008 was not an aberration. The looting of America is deliberate, and has been going on for quite a while now.

- Mark

1 comment:

Mtarango said...

Informed or uninformed, educated or not educated about finances, we, regular people, all have a gut feeling that the system and companiies like Goldman Sachs are cheating on the clients. Having said that, I, for one that is novice about financial stuff, feel at a loss as to what to do to be more financial savvy. Every time I try to understand these things, I come across something I don't know and feel lost...