April 24, 2010

Goldman’s Big Short

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The New York Times reports that Goldman Sachs is a big fat liar:

In late 2007 as the mortgage crisis gained momentum and many banks were suffering losses, Goldman Sachs executives traded e-mail messages saying that they were making “some serious money” betting against the housing markets.

The e-mails, released Saturday morning by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, appear to contradict some of Goldman’s previous statements that left the impression that the firm lost money on mortgage-related investments.

Hmmm. Really? What statements were those?

Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and head of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said that the e-mail messages contrast with Goldman’s public statements about its trading results. “The 2009 Goldman Sachs annual report stated that the firm ‘did not generate enormous net revenues by betting against residential related products,’ ” Mr. Levin said in a statement Saturday when his office released the documents. “These e-mails show that, in fact, Goldman made a lot of money by betting against the mortgage market.”

You know, I’m as willing as the next guy to rubbish Goldman Sachs. But 2007 is not 2009, and Goldman’s mortgage-related results might very well have been different during those two years. What’s more, making lots of money shorting the housing market is entirely consistent with Goldman’s statement that it “did not generate enormous net revenues by betting against residential related products.” The obvious conclusion from this is that they lost a truckoad of money on mortgage products and made a truckload of money shorting mortgage products. Apparently the second truckload was bigger than the first during certain periods, but that’s all.

As far as I can tell, this has been Goldman’s story all along. They were long housing up through 2006, got nervous, and then started to short the market. As a result, they came out of the financial meltdown in decent shape. Not great shape, as their conversion to a bank holding company and $1.3 billion “missing month” in late 2008 demonstrate, but not bad.

There are plenty of things to hate about Goldman Sachs, but this one is a real stretch. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t really see any kind of serious deception here.

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