While Orrin Hatch is busy being worried about the unfairness of college football's Bowl Championship Series, Wall Street poster child Goldman Sachs has admitted that special "program trading" software that allowed it to manipulate the financial markets has been stolen, which is ironically proof that Goldman Sachs has been engaging in highly criminal behavior.Bernard Madoff needs someone to keep him company in his prison cell, and Goldman Sachs would be a good place to start the search to find a whole bunch of those someones.
When the whistle was blown on Bernie Madoff several months ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission and everyone else who knew what was going on turned the other way and ignored the problem. Now, when the ability to bring world financial markets to their knees has been released through theft to the world--the United States Senate is debating whether the Bowl Championship Series is fair or not.
According to the July 8th, 2009 edition of the radio program "What Really Happened", Goldman Sachs has, since the Clinton administration, been part of the Plunge Protection Team. Whenever the stock market is on the ropes, the Plunge Protection Team magically--behind the scenes, and usually near the end of the day--props up those falling markets. According to DailyKos, Goldman is currently the only participant in this "Supplemental Liquidity Provider" program.
Bloomberg reported today that:
[Sergey] Aleynikov, 39, is the former Goldman computer programmer who was arrested on theft charges July 3 as he stepped off a flight at Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey. That was two days after Goldman told the government he had stolen its secret, rapid-fire, stock- and commodities-trading software in early June during his last week as a Goldman employee. Prosecutors say Aleynikov uploaded the program code to an unidentified Web site server in Germany.It also reports Goldman's dire fear of what could happen if the software falls into the wrong hands:
The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways.It already has been used to manipulate the markets in unfair ways, Goldman Sachs. You were using it.
Goldman's primary concern seems to be that someone besides them can now "use it to manipulate the markets in unfair ways." Under normal circumstances, Goldman executives would be worrying about prison time. Remarkably, they don't indicate any of that sort of worry whatsoever.
Bernie Madoff is lonely.
But Orrin Hatch and the rest of the U.S. Senate are worried that USC made more money at their college bowl game last year than Brigham Young University did.
Utterly bizarre! I guess the GS execs operate under the rubric, "Don't worry. You can trust us." Of course, it appears they were functioning under the 'good faith' of the U.S. Government, where elected and appointed officials also use this same motto.
ReplyDeleteSen. Hatch, on the other hand, seems to have taken the motto, "What, me worry?"
Perhaps now that this software is in the hands of other bad guys, we can have some kind of detente -- protection by mutually assured destruction.
Maybe the safest thing to do at this point would be to release the software to everyone. When everyone has it, no one will be able to use it without being detected.
Frank, I think you'd be interested in this piece by Bob Cringely that talks about the role of trading software is the economic collapse.
ReplyDelete