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AT its nadir last November, Goldman Sachs’s share price closed at $52, nearly 80 percent below its high of around $250. By then, many of its chief competitors — Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and UBS — were dead or shadows of their former selves. Even Morgan Stanley, long considered Goldman’s archrival, had nearly died. But somehow, less than five months later, on the heels of a surprisingly profitable first quarter of fiscal 2009, Goldman Sachs is once again riding high, with its stock closing Tuesday at $115 a share. The question many Wall Streeters are asking is just...

April 22, 2009 More Goldman Sachs Secrets that Tim Geithner Might Not Share with You! by Reggie Middleton Okay, this is going to be a quick and dirty review of Goldman's derivative real estate and off balance sheet real estate exposure as is probably reflected through their credit exposure as well. OTC Derivative Credit Exposure ($ mn)   Feb-09 % of total Nov-09 % of total Credit Quality Deterioration? Comments AAA/Aaa $15,387 15.6% $14,596 20.7% (5.10%) <--Very significant decrease in AAA exposure AA/Aa2 $33,820 34.2% $24,419 34.7% (0.50%) <-- Decrease in AA exposure A/A2 $25,291 25.6% $16,189 23.0% 2.6% <--...

This is getting surreal. Goldman principal program trading is now well over 5x compared to its customer and agency trades and a 150 million share pick up compared to last week. For yet another week, Goldman's principal trading represents more than half of all NYSE member firm principal transactions.

Posted by Tyler Durden at 6:58 PM Recently, there has been quite a bit of discussion of Goldman Sachs' principal program trading dominance in the NYSE, culminating with none other than Goldman Sachs themselves providing their perspective on the matter, via spokesman Ed Canaday:["]The NYSE report that Zero Hedge discussed shows Goldman Sachs trading over 1 billion shares in the principal program trading category. What the table doesn’t show, but a deeper look at the numbers reveals is that the vast majority of this total is trades by our quantitative trading desk. This desk is participating in a relatively new...

Wow, that has to be a record for shortest tenure ever at the NY Fed. His resignation letter (below), is as Dealbook notes, rather disingenuous: Mr. Friedman was chairman of the New York Fed at the same time he was a member of Goldman’s board. He also had a substantial stake in the firm as the Fed was crafting a solution to keep Wall Street banks afloat. Denis M. Hughes, deputy chair of the board, will take over as the interim chairman, the New York Fed said in a statement. (Read Mr. Friedman’s letter after the jump.) Because the New...

Last week the Wall Street Journal columnist Evan Newmark called Hank Paulson a "national hero." We noted that it's a bit early for that kind of thing and predicted that "history may yet render a more negative judgment." Matt Taibbi is a bit more direct, calling Newmark "a craven, bumlicking ass-goblin" in his latest post on TrueSlant. He points out that Newmark didn't disclose that he once worked for Goldman Sachs, which Paulson ran before being tapped to head up the Treasury Department. And that's just for starters. Here's a brief excerpt (but you really should read the whole thing):...

What? No Goldman Sachs "buy programs" to save the rally? Read » After getting hammered early on, stocks stayed low today and couldn't mount any meaningful recovery. The lack of a late-day rally was particularly remarkable, seeing as that kind of action has characterized the market for the past several weekends. No Goldman Sachs "buy programs" could save the bull today. All of the major indices were off about 2.2%, with the Dow down 187. Among the losers today: Financials, which were down across the board, commodities (down on dollar strength and recession concerns) and healthcare companies, as investors freak...

Goldman to make record bonus payout Staff at Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm's 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms. A lack of competition and a surge in revenues from trading foreign currency, bonds and fixed-income products has sent profits at Goldman Sachs soaring, according to insiders at the firm. Staff in London were briefed last week on the banking and securities company's prospects and told they could look forward to...

You have to love Goldman Sachs: Staff at Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm's 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms. A lack of competition and a surge in revenues from trading foreign currency, bonds and fixed-income products has sent profits at Goldman Sachs soaring, according to insiders at the firm. Nothing like a little taxpayer money funneled through AIG to add to the pool, right? In April, Goldman said it would...

The well-placed and well-connected are set to make trillions off new climate bill; economic collapse about to accelerate The sweeping new bill which just passed the House last Friday, the Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 [2], is ostensibly about climate change, but it is in fact a bill of staggering economic ramifications that is going to accelerate the takeover of the economy by the well-placed financiers who have already plundered the Treasury and the Fed of $12+ trillion and counting [3]. It was rushed through the House in the tradition of such nightmarish legislation as the Patriot Act...

Goldman Sachs bankers in line for record bonuses Bankers at Goldman Sachs could be in line for record bonuses as compensation on Wall Street looks set to rebound in spite of problems in the wider economy. By James Quinn, Wall Street Correspondent Published: 5:21PM BST 02 Jul 2009 The headquarters of Goldman Sachs. The bank is reportedly on course to produce a total compensation pot of $20bn this year for its bankers Photo: Getty Images Goldman, which continues to attract the very best investment bankers and is chaired by Lloyd Blankfein, is on track to pay staff more than it...

You may not care for Matt Taiibi but I think his article is well worth reading in it he points out how Government (Goldman) Sachs wants Cap and Trade. I think it is important to know who your enemies are. In the article which is now available on line he adds one more bubble to the list: the "global warming bubble," or specifically, the proposed cap-and-trade legislation that would allow companies to trade pollution credits on an open market. Taibbi's argument suggests the Wall Street bank may well want to turn climate change policy into yet another Wall Street casino...

When Wall Street imploded last year, the Fed and Treasury took "some of the right moves" in order to revive the financial system, says William Cohan, author of House of Cards. But the government blew at least one crucial act of the saga, Cohan says: The backdoor bailout of AIG’s counterparties, notably Goldman Sachs, which received $13 billion of TARP funds via the AIG conduit last fall. Adding insult to taxpayer injury, Goldman Sachs is primed to benefit should AIG ultimately file for bankruptcy and default on its debt, Cohan reports, having invested about $200 million in related credit default...

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...

If you haven't read Matt Taibbi's recent Rolling Stone piece on Goldman Sachs, make sure to get your hands on it ASAP. It's a must read on how Goldman Sachs and the U.S. government work hand in glove to produce giant investment bubbles... bubbles that allow Goldman to work over investors for hundreds of billions of dollars. We don't think you can lay all the blame for the housing bubble and the tech bubble at Goldman's feet... but we do find it suspicious that a ton of high level government posts are staffed by Goldman employees. It's close to a...

Al Gore and Wall Street traders will rake in millions of OUR MONEY while the cap and trade plan won't do a thing to help the environment!Obama's cap and tax scam isn't just a payoff to the environmental lobby, or the big government liberals salivating over the gold mine of new tax revenue they can use to buy more votes. Nope! The cap and trade scam will be a huge financial payoff to the rich Wall Street traders who overwhelmingly backed Obama in the presidential election. It's no secret that the security and investment community gave the majority of their...

Here is video of Bill O'Reilly last night going after Al Gore and President Obama's "Cap and Trade" legislation. O'Reilly called the "Cap and Trade" Bill a "Con." The "con" comes in because if businesses exceed the limit on carbon emissions, they have to buy "carbon offsets" as a penalty. The cap and trade deals would be made on the Chicago Climate Exchange, which is in President Obama's hometown, and which Goldman Sachs has a 10% stake in. Goldman would "vacuum up" commissions on every trade made. Employees of Goldman Sachs gave $1 million to Obama's campaign for president. Al...

Wall Street's meltdown fueled the most profitable quarter ever at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which snatched business away from weakened rivals and churned out huge trading gains by revving up risk taking. With competitors such as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. gone, and others like Citigroup Inc. flailing, Goldman appears to be pulling off one of the biggest market-share grabs in Wall Street history. Net income in the second quarter was $3.44 billion, or $4.93 a share -- more than Goldman earned in all of 2008, when it was hammered by the financial crisis. Analysts had expected...

Dear Mr. President, This should prove a challenging week on the PR front for us at Goldman Sachs. There are a few situations surfacing for which appropriate clarification will provide you sufficient context in the event that the inevitable questions arise. We also have a couple of suggestions. Regarding this nastiness of the past week, please do not be too concerned about all this talk surrounding our super high-speed fully automated transaction processors. Also please understand that they are our future. Admittedly, we are enamored with the technological prowess we have acquired. Don’t believe those jealous rumors coming from begrudging...

“Goldman will surely deny that its risk-taking is subsidized by the taxpayer -- but then so did Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, right up to the bitter end. An implicit government guarantee is only free until it's not, and when the bill comes due it tends to be huge. So for the moment, Goldman Sachs -- or should we say Goldie Mac? -- enjoys the best of both worlds: outsize profits for its traders and shareholders and a taxpayer backstop should anything go wrong.” “So what’s wrong with Goldman posting $3.44 billion in second-quarter profits, what’s wrong with the company...