Government will not Pursue Charges Against Goldman Sachs

[samclem]

From the WSJ:

After a year-long investigation, the Justice Department said Thursday that it will not bring charges against Goldman Sachs Group Inc.or any of its employees for financial fraud related to the mortgage crisis.
In a statement released Thursday, the Justice Department said "the burden of proof" couldn't be met to prosecute Goldman criminally based on claims made in an extensive report prepared by a U.S. Senate panel that investigated the financial crisis.
"Based on the law and evidence as they exist at this time, there is not a viable basis to bring a criminal prosecution with respect to Goldman Sachs or its employees in regard to the allegations set forth in the report," the statement read.
The Justice Department reserved the right to bring charges in the future if new evidence emerges.

So, looks like there were no problems at GS leading up to the mortgage crisis worthy of prosecutorial attention according to the government. Our long national nightmare is over. Okay.

Here's what GS was accused of:

. . . But the Goldman accusations are likely to provoke the biggest uproar, as the bank is again accused of assembling and aggressively marketing billions of dollars in poor quality mortgage securities called collateralized debt obligations that it bet against and purportedly deceived its investor clients.

The subcommittee released new documents showing how Goldman recommended four CDOs, Hudson, Anderson, Timberwolf, and Abacus, to its clients without “fully disclosing key information about those products,” or Goldman’s own views of the securities.


“Their incentives were not aligned. Their investment in the long side, risk side, the portion of the equity, amounted to $6 million, they were secretly short $2 billion in Hudson. In other words their opposite position was 300 times the size of their aligning position,” said the panel’s chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, at a press conference.

 

[silentfaith]

GS is slapping eachother on the back saying hey, if we got away with this, why not come up with more schemes to line our pockets with our DUMB customers money.

 

[grasshopper]

GS if their talking their lying.

 

[Notmuchlonger]

Lots of BS going around. For example the school system in San Diego taking out those crazy bonds. When I hear about Goldman and that school system. I just think about reaping and sowing.