
Goldman Sachs is imploding right before your very eyes — though they do not see. The gale force winds blown by the mainstream financial media over Goldman Sachs’ second quarter profits cloud the fact and confuse the issue. The fact is Goldman Sachs, in its rapacious quest for profits, is inflating risk, manipulating markets and has tethered its risky investments to an unknowing and already overburdened taxpayer. T he issue is risk not profits.
Goldman Sachs is the Dark Star, whose implosion will suck what’s left of the world economy down into it, just as the insiders sell out, leaving only the bewildered taxpayer to fight the infinite gravitational pull of economic depression. All this will occur even as the bank will continue to burnish the glossy veneer of its exterior to a high brilliant luster.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. posted record earnings as revenue from trading and stock underwriting reached all-time highs less than a year after the firm took $10 billion in U.S. rescue funds.Second-quarter net income was $3.44 billion, or $4.93 a share, the New York-based bank said today in a statement. That surpassed the $3.65 per-share average estimate of 22 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg and was 65 percent higher than last year’s second quarter.
Goldman’s earnings included $1.4 billion of writedowns related to commercial real estate, including $700 million of fixed-income writedowns, $500 million lost on equity investments and $170 million of impairment charges, Viniar said in an interview with Bloomberg.
The figures also included about $300 million of writedowns related to the narrowing of the firm’s own credit spreads during the quarter, …
Level 3-According to the Goldman Sachs earnings report ( page 4 )level 3 assets were approximately 50 $4 billion as of June 26, 2009 (down from $59 billion as of March 27, 2009) and represented 6.1% of total assets.
“The big sandout= fixed income, currency, and commodities- is blowing up not only from less competition, but a steep yield curve thanks to low interest rates and continued volatility in debt. The other moneymakers, equity and debt underwriting, have the wind behind their backs as companies from all industries exploited market optimism to raise capital in the second quarter.”
The positive earnings come even after the firm’s one-time preferred dividend of $426m, included in the $10.04bn repurchase of TARP preferred stock from the US Treasury Department. Goldman completed a public offering of 46.7m common shares at $123 per share for total proceeds of $5.75bn in an effort to boost capital.
Chief Financial Officer David Viniar said on a conference call with analysts today that there are no call provisions on the $30 billion of government-guaranteed debt that Goldman issued between November and March so the firm isn’t able to buy it back.
And while you struggle to swim with the deadweight of $43 billion to bailout the executives bonuses, and the global economy careens toward another Great Depression, the company and its cheerleaders do not understand what you do not understand.
James Reynolds, chief executive officer of Loop Capital Markets LLC in Chicago, said criticism of Goldman Sachs’s success was misplaced.
Government’s Intention
“This is what the government investment was meant to do,” Reynolds said in an interview. “I just don’t understand why the country, or a working person in Michigan, Ohio or Kansas, would cheer against Goldman doing well just because the government invested in Goldman at a time when the financial markets were in chaos.”
Well, James, let’s see if we can help your misunderstanding. The out-of-the-loop working person really believed the government’s investment wasn’t meant to pay billions of dollars in bonuses to the people who broke their company and crashed the economy. Imagine their surprise, James.
Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein, after repaying the government’s bailout money along with $426 million in dividends to taxpayers, is reverting to a business model analysts deemed irretrievably broken during the global credit crisis. While rivals including Morgan Stanley have pared risks, Goldman Sachs has increased them this year.
“The wind is at their back, so their earnings numbers are going to be very strong,” said Jon Fisher, a portfolio manager at Fifth Third Asset Management in Minneapolis, which oversees about $18 billion. “I think numbers are going up. I think they repeat this quarter next quarter and the quarter after that.” Fisher said Fifth Third doesn’t own the shares now and will probably buy them in the next few weeks.
Fisher said Fifth Third doesn’t own the shares now and will probably buy them in the next few weeks.
Is Fisher talking about Goldman Sachs shares? Fisher is a liar. Why wait? Why not buy them now? Because Fisher wants you to buy shares of Goldman Sachs and he is happy to sell you his, after he gets a few more points up of course. Who said pump and dump wasn’t legal?
“This stock’s move up is exhausted,” said Luis Benguerel, a trader at Interbrokers Espanola in Barcelona who looks at technical indicators such as Bollinger Bands. “Not even today’s earnings may keep the shares at these technically high levels.”


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