It's all Goldman Sachs' fault says Matt Taibbi

[Jan Klimkowski]

Lucas van Praag, global head of corporate communications at Goldman Sachs, responds:

Taibbi’s article is a compilation of just about every conspiracy theory ever dreamed up about Goldman Sachs, but what real substance is there to support the theories?

We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance of being a force for good.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/145631-g...-to-taibbi

Phew! That's all right then.

Goldman Sachs is a force for good.

:trytofly::trytofly::trytofly:

Mr Zero Hedge has some observations about the made men of Goldman Sachs:

Tuesday, June 30, 2009
NYSE Halts Transparency, Feels Goldman Program Trading Disclosure Is Unnecessary
Posted by Tyler Durden at 1:26 PM
In a move set to infuriate and send many Zero Hedge readers over the top, the NYSE has taken action to make sure that nobody will henceforth be able to keep track of the complete dominance that Goldman Sachs exerts over the New York Stock Exchange. This basically ends our weekly Program Trading updates disclosed every Thursday indicating that Goldman has singlehandedly captured all of NYSE's program trading.

In an information memorandum released on June 24 (09-31), the NYSE Regulation team has announced the Decommissioning of the Daily Program Trading Report (DPTR).

From the memo:

The New York Stock Exchange LLC (“NYSE”) will be decommissioning the requirement to report program trading activity via the Daily Program Trading Report (“DPTR”), which was previously approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”).1 The last trade date for which member organizations will be required to file the DPTR with the Exchange will be July 10, 2009 and therefore the last required date to submit the DPTR will be July 14, 2009.

In the 2007 rule filing, the Exchange proposed to eliminate DPTR. The 2007 filing noted that there was some duplication between the DPTR data and the audit trail information that member organizations provide to the Exchange via account-type indicators at the time that they submit program trades to the Exchange... [A]fter consulting with the SEC, the Exchange announced that it would delay implementation of the two redefined account type indicators, and pending such implementation, member organizations would be required to continue filing the DPTR with the Exchange. The current delayed implementation date of the redefined J and K account type indicators is June 30, 2009. Accordingly, the Exchange still requires member organizations to submit DPTR.

The Exchange has filed with the SEC to implement the decommissioning of the DPTRrequirement following the July 10, 2009 trade date. Accordingly, the last required submission of the DPTR will be on July 14, 2009, which is the second business day after the last trade date for which the DPTR is required.

In addition, in connection with the decommissioning of the DPTR, the Exchange will not be implementing the proposed redefined program trading account type indicators (J and K) and will continue to use the existing J and K audit trail account types. Upon further analysis and based on industry input, the Exchange has determined that these redefined account type indicators do not enhance the regulatory audit trail because the proposed redefined J and K could subsume some of the other, more granular account type indicators that the Exchange currently receives. Accordingly, the Exchange has determined not to redefine the J and K account types in the manner previously proposed, and is instead leaving the J and K account-type definitions unchanged.

The Exchange further notes that it will use the existing account type indicator data – which captures program trade information for those orders sent to and executed on the Exchange – to report to the Commission on a weekly basis the program trading statistics for portions of program trades executed on the Exchange. Accordingly, beginning on July 23, 2009, the Exchange will provide the Commission with its weekly statistics on program trading based on account type indicator data rather than DPTR data. Similarly, at the same time, the weekly statistics regarding program trades that the Exchange provides to media outlets will also be derived from account type indicator data rather than the DPTR.

Basically this is the beginning of the end of unmodified data transparency. Going forward the NYSE will provide whatever data it feels comfortable, after sufficient internal "audits," and media outlets such as Zero Hedge, which had presented its millions of readers the only data point about Goldman's complete encroachment of not only NYSE but Program Trading, will be henceforth unreliable and likely will present no useful information at all.

This is a travesty, as well as a complete obliteration and a mockery of the move for transparency that the Administration, Regulators and Exchanges have been posturing they support.

We advise all readers to contact the provided staff on the memorandum and voice your incredulity with this brazen move to completely obfuscate Goldman's behind-the-scenes take over the world's biggest stock exchange.

Robert Airo, Senior Vice President, NYSE Euronext at (212) 656-5663 or
Aleksandra Radakovic, Vice President, NYSE Regulation at (212) 656-4144

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/06/ny...ldman.html

Genesis/Karl Denninger chimes in:

Conspiracy to hide Bubble-Formation
The Market Ticker
Wednesday, July 1. 2009
Posted by Karl Denninger in Regulatory at 09:15
Conspiracy To Hide Bubble-Formation

In yet another move to make a mockery of so-called market transparency, and again with mad props to Zerohedge, we have this:

The Exchange has filed with the SEC to implement the decommissioning of the DPTRrequirement following the July 10, 2009 trade date. Accordingly, the last required submission of the DPTR will be on July 14, 2009, which is the second business day after the last trade date for which the DPTR is required.

Go read the entire Zerohedge article; what this means, in short, is that the ability of people (like you and I) to see the fact that a handful of banks, most specifically Goldman Sachs, constitute the majority of NYSE trading volume - and they're trading for their own book, not for customers, will no longer be disclosed.

This "back and forth trade" between a handful of institutions is nothing more than the old "pump and dump" game that has been played in the OTC market forever - and almost always screws the individual investor.

This is no different than you and I selling a house back and forth between us repeatedly, each time at a higher price. We both appear to be geniuses as we're both making a "profit", right?

Well, no. One of us is destined to take a horrifying loss if we do not find a sucker to make the final transaction with.

The embedded scam is that real gains require real parties at interest and not a closed system of a couple of guys passing an asset back and forth in a transparent attempt to "bait" someone else into becoming the sucker to offload that asset to.

The parallels to the housing bubble are not coincidence. There is no "value" being created nor is there any actual value appreciation taking place when people pass an asset back and forth at ever-higher prices. Only when there are lots of parties participating on their own, organically, does a market truly exist and does value align with price. Otherwise the so-called "price" is nothing other than a cheap parlor trick.

Zerohedge has been documenting this game now for months as Goldman in particular has come to represent an outrageously large percentage of the entire NYSE volume.

The problem of course is that, at least on paper, market manipulation, irrespective of what form of parlor trick you choose to use, is a serious violation of the law. Of course these violations of the law have been ignored for so long that nobody seems to care any more, but the fact remains that should the public come to believe that the NYSE has turned into nothing more than a gigantic pump-and-dump scheme operated by a handful of banks trading between themselves with publicly-guaranteed funds the consequences could be catastrophic.

So rather than stop it, the NYSE is doing what all good robber barons do - they're obscuring the data so nobody can see it any more.

More "change we can believe in"; the blackjack dealer is once again stashing a whole bunch of aces and kings under the table for his use whenever he deems that he "should" have a blackjack, and you, once again, are the sucker just as you were in the housing bubble.

Wanna play some 21?

Update: The NYSE apparently didn't like Zerohedge's characterization and issued a response; my comment is the same as theirs - why not ADD to the disclosure instead of redacting the "older" format? I'm with them on this - more disclosure always beats less.

http://market-ticker.org/archives/1176-C...ation.html