As a financial professional, I have no problem with someone making an honest market bet, based on a very wise analysis, that pays off handsomely.
What bothers me in this particuar case is that the bet wasn’t honest, in so much as Goldman purposely crafted a structure designed to fail, and then sold it as if it was a good investment. That is not an honest bet borne of wise analysis. It is fraud.
“Goldman purposely crafted a structure designed to fail, and then sold it as if it was a good investment. “
Where were the ratings agencies?
Wait a minute. We now know that the structure required permanently rising housing values and that the government enabled the whole enterprise (which makes it stunningly hypoocritical to even level these charges without having the grace to include themselves). We only suspected it then. Goldman, Sachs people were smarter than the average bear (or bull) and knew to bet against a flimsy structure they were basically being ordered to construct and vend.
This is at least a diversion, and is probably a propaganda tool to push complete government control of the financial system and is certainly a red herring to cover government malfeasance in the whole operation, going back at least as far as Clinton and probably as far back as Carter.