It’s all Ayn Rand’s fault
When the globe was engulfed in the flood of defaults and derivative losses that emerged from the collapse of the US housing bubble two years ago, few understood that the crash had its roots in the lunatic greed-centred objectivist religion, fostered in the ’50s and ’60s by ponderous emigre novelist Ayn Rand.
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Rand’s fingerprints are all over the Goldman story. The case involves a hedge fund financier, John Paulson, who went to Goldman with the idea of a synthetic derivative package pegged to risky US mortgages, for use in betting against the mortgage market. Paulson would short the package and Goldman would then sell the deal to suckers. The SEC’s contention is that Goldman committed a crime when they failed to tell the suckers about the vulture betting against them on the other side of the deal.
It’s from some left wing Australian paper. Take it for what it’s worth.
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While we are at it more claims that Revolution Muslim is a CIA front.
Wow, that article has some very thinly veiled anti-capitalist leanings. They stop just a hair’s breadth short of coming right out and saying “profit is bad.”
“Take it for what it’s worth.”
Not a whole lot, based on my reading of it.
EVERY derivative is a hedge against something. And that means that someone is betting that things on the primary will go south.
There’s a reason derivative trading is for “sophisticated” or “qualified” investors.
And what ever happened to “caveat emptor?”
According to the article it’s the ultimate evil, or something.
I personally would never have bought derivatives, but thats because I am by nature cautious, in my opinion Caveat Emptor goes out the window when the banks themselves don’t understand what they are selling. From some of the testimny I have read and some of the emails that are floating around that situation was far to common and in my opinion that borders on, if not crosses into fraud.