1.)They are unethical dishonest, robber barons who knew what they were selling was "shit" and went ahead and did it anyway.
2.)They, and Republicans, should not be standing in the way of common sense regulatory reform. There is unnecessary, heavy handed, counterproductive, monopoly creating anti competitive regulation out there, but this is ASSUREDLY not it.
3.)Deep is right regarding political consequences for the GOP in opposing this.
Does not exclude Goldman, but lets point out other less than perfect people in all of this:
4.)CONGRESS: Everyone here knows what party I align myself with, but please, we can all agree on this. Every single person up there, Democrat or Republican, has most certainly taken plenty of contributions from Goldman Sachs and every other investment bank that helped fuel this crisis that has gone under since. And they did it without the same level of questioning, curiosity and outrage they showed today, rest assured. No one is getting indicted or censured or held in contempt or going to jail over the testimony they provided today. Like many things with Congress, it is largely done with the knowledge that C-SPAN is always rolling the cameras! "Lets look good in an election year yelling at what we all agree are, to some extent, the villains." Ok, I agree, Goldman was wrong times infinity squared, but saying so over and over again takes no courage. Fixing the problem responsibly does.
The equation has not changed- If Blankfein called any of them up, and yes, that includes the aggressive, charged up McCaskill, Levin and Coburn, he would get them direct on the first try. You or I, good luck even getting one straight answer from the person who answers the phone! My Dad was a Vietnam combat Veteran, Chairman of our local Democratic Committee for 15 years and he had a hard time getting in touch with our Democratic Congressman! For all the shit he gets for being "aloof," John Kerry would often follow up a call to one of his office aides with a personal call to my Dad, but he was the exception for sure. Does anyone think robber barons 1-6 sitting at that table today would be getting a blow off answer or have to wait 6 months to talk to a member of Congress?
5.)Ted Kaufmann, D-DE, Biden's place holder and longtime Chief of Staff did touch on this today, but only briefly and he had no company. How about the American people? Didn't we want houses we could not afford? Didn't we think home and stock values were going to rise forever? Didn't we throw all economic/business/historical sense out the window and let greed take over and convince us everything would be just fine?
Carl Levin said the Goldman people are treating this as if it was some kind of natural disaster with no human culpability at all, like a hurricane or a tornado. Well, he is right, but aren't we doing the same right now? Ignoring the context in which the behavior of Goldman and others developed? They were not some evil people plotting late at night on how they were going to get all those old ladies and unsuspecting families, rather, they took what was an already irresponsible mindset and pushed it even further in response to the proliferation of that very mindset.
It is this mentality that creates the demand for creative, risky, "shitty" financial products in the first place. High risk means high return, a hell of a lot of government debt floating around, China is financing it. Do they want low interest rates on their investments? No, they want high returns, so to appease them, we create risky products. So the national debt contributed to it as well.
Again, not letting Goldman off the hook here, far, far from it. I am just pointing out that they were not an island of highway robbers in a vast ocean of perfect saints.