You Are Always On The Record.
Dear Friends (and those who are eavesdropping with or without "authority" of "law"):
You are always on the record. You are always being overheard. You always leave tracks, and prints and trace evidence. Technology has you cornered. Any "privileged professional relationship" can be set aside by either brute force or by twist of the law. No indictment or conviction is truly "sealed". And, given the right inducement (either negative or positive), most any lifelong confidante can be turned into an informant.
There are no secrets, and there is no privacy. If you believe that either of these two things exists in this world in more than the form of a theoretical abstraction, you are indeed gullible.
The only private corner where your secrets may be safe and where your privacy can be reasonably assured is within the confines of your cranium -- or perhaps your soul.
Given the above, you have two choices in conducting your conversations and affairs (catered, business, social or sexual):
1. Speak the truth, and speak it consistently...as if you were on the witness stand...and be brave enough to bear the consequences ; or
2. Remain silent.
And now, in the interest of providing real-life verification of my printed words, witness the stellar example of Goldman Sachs (those folks who were doing "God's work" on Wall Street recently):
I do not want to single out the venerable House Of Goldman. I like and admire them just about as much as the majority of my readers do.
But I would like to point out that 1) their conduct is not out-of-line with, or even exceptional, in terms of the moral and ethical standards of the securities industry (and the analysts, auditors, rating services and certain 'special' government officials who are invariably parties to this kind of high-level institutionalized thievery which feasts upon the retirement funds of the general populace), and 2) they are every bit as foolish as anybody else who believes that you can do or say anthing "off the record."
Faithfully,
Douglas Castle
About Douglas Castle
Dear Friends (and those who are eavesdropping with or without "authority" of "law"):
You are always on the record. You are always being overheard. You always leave tracks, and prints and trace evidence. Technology has you cornered. Any "privileged professional relationship" can be set aside by either brute force or by twist of the law. No indictment or conviction is truly "sealed". And, given the right inducement (either negative or positive), most any lifelong confidante can be turned into an informant.
There are no secrets, and there is no privacy. If you believe that either of these two things exists in this world in more than the form of a theoretical abstraction, you are indeed gullible.
The only private corner where your secrets may be safe and where your privacy can be reasonably assured is within the confines of your cranium -- or perhaps your soul.
Given the above, you have two choices in conducting your conversations and affairs (catered, business, social or sexual):
1. Speak the truth, and speak it consistently...as if you were on the witness stand...and be brave enough to bear the consequences ; or
2. Remain silent.
And now, in the interest of providing real-life verification of my printed words, witness the stellar example of Goldman Sachs (those folks who were doing "God's work" on Wall Street recently):
April 24, 2010
Goldman E-Mails Cited ‘Serious’ Profit on Mortgages
By LOUISE STORY and SEWELL CHAN
In late 2007, as the mortgage crisis gained momentum and many banks were suffering losses, Goldman Sachs executives traded e-mail messages saying that they would make “some serious money” betting against the housing markets.
The messages, released Saturday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, appear to contradict statements by Goldman that left the impression that the firm lost money on mortgage-related investments.
In the messages, Lloyd C. Blankfein, the bank’s chief executive, acknowledged in November 2007 that the firm had lost money initially. But it later recovered by making negative bets, known as short positions, to profit as housing prices plummeted. “Of course we didn’t dodge the mortgage mess,” he wrote. “We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts.”
He added, “It’s not over, so who knows how it will turn out ultimately.”
In another message, dated July 25, 2007, David A. Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, reacted to figures that said the company had made a $51 million profit from bets that housing securities would drop in value. “Tells you what might be happening to people who don’t have the big short,” he wrote to Gary D. Cohn, now Goldman’s president.
Actions taken by Wall Street firms during the housing collapse have become a major factor in the contentious debate over financial reform. In his weekly radio address on Saturday, President Obama said Wall Street had “hurt just about every sector of our economy” and again pressed the case for tighter regulation. On Monday, Senate Democrats will try to prevent a Republican filibuster in the first major test of the administration’s effort to push through legislation.
Goldman on Saturday denied it made a significant profit on mortgage-related products in 2007 and 2008. It said the subcommittee had “cherry-picked” e-mail messages from the nearly 20 million pages of documents it provided. This sets up a showdown between the Senate subcommittee and Goldman, which has aggressively defended itself since the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a security fraud complaint against it nine days ago. On Tuesday, seven current and former Goldman employees, including Mr. Blankfein, are expected to testify at a Congressional hearing. [more].
####
The messages, released Saturday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, appear to contradict statements by Goldman that left the impression that the firm lost money on mortgage-related investments.
In the messages, Lloyd C. Blankfein, the bank’s chief executive, acknowledged in November 2007 that the firm had lost money initially. But it later recovered by making negative bets, known as short positions, to profit as housing prices plummeted. “Of course we didn’t dodge the mortgage mess,” he wrote. “We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts.”
He added, “It’s not over, so who knows how it will turn out ultimately.”
In another message, dated July 25, 2007, David A. Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, reacted to figures that said the company had made a $51 million profit from bets that housing securities would drop in value. “Tells you what might be happening to people who don’t have the big short,” he wrote to Gary D. Cohn, now Goldman’s president.
Actions taken by Wall Street firms during the housing collapse have become a major factor in the contentious debate over financial reform. In his weekly radio address on Saturday, President Obama said Wall Street had “hurt just about every sector of our economy” and again pressed the case for tighter regulation. On Monday, Senate Democrats will try to prevent a Republican filibuster in the first major test of the administration’s effort to push through legislation.
Goldman on Saturday denied it made a significant profit on mortgage-related products in 2007 and 2008. It said the subcommittee had “cherry-picked” e-mail messages from the nearly 20 million pages of documents it provided. This sets up a showdown between the Senate subcommittee and Goldman, which has aggressively defended itself since the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a security fraud complaint against it nine days ago. On Tuesday, seven current and former Goldman employees, including Mr. Blankfein, are expected to testify at a Congressional hearing. [more].
####
I do not want to single out the venerable House Of Goldman. I like and admire them just about as much as the majority of my readers do.
But I would like to point out that 1) their conduct is not out-of-line with, or even exceptional, in terms of the moral and ethical standards of the securities industry (and the analysts, auditors, rating services and certain 'special' government officials who are invariably parties to this kind of high-level institutionalized thievery which feasts upon the retirement funds of the general populace), and 2) they are every bit as foolish as anybody else who believes that you can do or say anthing "off the record."
Faithfully,
Douglas Castle
About Douglas Castle
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