Goldman Sachs’s Greek adventure got an in-depth look from the New York Times yesterday. The article extends on last week’s Spiegel piece, which reported that the bank helped Greece hide the true extent of its debt through the use of specialized derivative products. We first reported on the parallels between AIG and Greece in a …
Tag: AIG
Greece: the new AIG?
With the mounting crisis in Greece, another massive stash of toxic debt has revealed itself in a way that can’t be ignored. Fears of a “contagious default” in the Eurozone hammered markets yesterday, with one Greek banker calling it a “wholesale selling off of the country.” Today, markets are rebounding on hopes for an EU …
Money laundering, Goldman-style
Louise Story and Gretchen Morgenson had a lengthy new story up at the Times yesterday on how Goldman bled AIG to death. The piece details negotiations over payouts on swaps that Goldman had purchased from AIG. Details of the negotiations are interesting, but this paragraph jumped out at me: In addition, according to two people …
New York Fed used Goldman lawyers in push to limit AIG disclosures
Bloomberg reported yesterday that the New York Fed pushed AIG to withhold key information about bonuses and swap counterparties in late 2008. Today, the story is blowing up, with the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and a range of other outlets picking up on the story. There is an incredible conflict of interest at …
C.V. Starr & Co.: Greenberg’s new AIG?
The New York Times ran a great story on Tuesday about former AIG chief Maurice Greenberg‘s latest venture, the C.V. Starr empire. Reporter Mary Williams Walsh links Greenberg’s new success to the Treasury Department capping executive pay at AIG last week: “That may hasten the exodus of A.I.G.’s talent, sending more refugees into Mr. Greenberg’s …
How can Goldman Sachs afford year-end bonuses in a recession?
Two noteworthy stories chronicling the hegemonic position of the Goldman Sachs Group appeared last week. The first was a scoop by The Guardian about an internal announcement regarding the record bonuses that Goldman will pay at the end of 2009, assuming that the company’s year-end profit projections are borne out. The second piece was a …
Questions on AIG, Goldman, and Deutsche
I want to raise a few points on AIG that don’t seem to be coming up elsewhere, but that need critical attention if we are to understand how this disaster came to pass and who else is implicated. There have been a few reports that AIG stopped selling credit default swaps – the financial instruments …