Sunday, December 6, 2009

Top Ten Reasons Goldman Sachs Would Be Dead Without Government Help

10) TARP

9) TALF

8) Being allowed by the Government to become a Bank Holding Company (thus gaining an implicit government guarantee) overnight;

7) Being able to issue FDIC insured debt as a bank holding company;

6) Temporary SEC ban on shortselling when investors starting selling Goldman short during the height of the crisis and Goldman changed its position on short sales and asked the SEC for a ban;

5) Getting paid 100 cents on the dollar as a counterparty to AIG credit default swaps as a result of the government's AIG bailout that prevented AIG from going bankrupt;

4) The revolving door between the Fed, Treasury and Goldman that made Goldman privy to non-public information regarding the government's deliberations during the crisis;

3) Selective government intervention, or lack thereof, that allowed some of Goldman's competitors to fail, most notably Lehman Brothers, thereby bolstering Goldman's trading positions;

2) Being allowed to actively market and sell the toxic assets at the heart of the crisis while at the same time selling them short and eliminating them from their balance sheet;

1) If murder wasn't illegal mainstreet would have killed everyone at Goldman by now for being tone deaf while doing God's work.