Friday October 10, 2008, 1:06 pm
Thank you philip great!

Lust - while usually associated with sex, lust is a thought that is obsessive, excessive or a sociological compulsion. The lust of money and material gain compelled investors large and small to create the current world wide economic crisis.



Gluttony - derived from the Latin gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow, gluttony is the over-indulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of waste. Super-sized Wall Street bonuses and homeowners hunger for more home than they could afford seem to meet the standard for gluttony.



Greed / Avarice - greed, like lust and gluttony, are sins of excess usually associated with the accumulation of wealth. Greed breeds trickery, manipulation, bribery, disloyalty and theft. The golden luster of greed blinds people’s common sense quite nicely.



Sloth - laziness is the opposite of hard work and sacrifice. Since many people want something for nothing sloth gave Wall Street plenty of victims (marks) to prey on for easy money.



Wrath - while often associated with hatred, anger and revenge, it can also be directed at oneself. Wrath can blind an individual’s ability to see the truth. The current financial meltdown was fueled by denial and now taxpayers who were fiscally responsible will be picking up the bill.



Envy - is basically keeping up with the Joneses or better yet having even more than they do. Envy drove CEO’s compensation as much as greed and gluttony combined. Obscene financial compensations were just ego fueled numbers that established self worth and bragging rights between corporate executives. Main Streets inhabitants are just as guilty of falling victim to the green-eyed monster. Envy helped drive Main Street to rationalize that if their neighbor had a BMW they should own a Ferrari. If the person living in the home next door had four bathrooms they should have five.



Pride - the source and core of the Seven Deadly Sins and therefore the most dangerous. This excessive self love is so corrupt it even caused Lucifer (if you believe in that kind of thing) to fall from grace and heaven.



Wall Street and Main Street could both use a dose of old-time financial religion learned by our tight fisted depression era and post war ancestors. Fiscal responsibility should be rewarded rather than penalized. Risk taking can result in extreme gains but can also yield the tremendous losses currently being experienced by the global economy.



The real problem being experienced around the world is not so much a financial crisis it is a crisis of confidence. It is time for each and everyone one of us to take a look in the mirror and admit that “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

Saturday October 11, 2008, 3:03 pm

The Long and Short of It at Goldman Sachs Posted Dec 3, 2007 08:52 AM PST Goldman Sachs sold hundreds of Billions in subprime/CDO's and shorted them at the same time.

The degradation of accounting The folly of fair value accounting, which helped to drive up executive bonuses based on illusory values, is increasingly exposed by the US financial crisis. Goldman Sachs now has "assets" for which no market exists valued at twice the firm's capital. That route leads to insolvency.

A new analysis by Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. finds that “Wall Street banks, brokerages and hedge funds may report $460 billion in credit losses from the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, or almost four times the amount already disclosed.”

Paulson's Conflict of Interest Paulson holds 500 million in Goldman shares, now Buffet is putting five billion into Goldman. Why? Because, he has a guarantee from Paulson that Goldman will be supported by taxpayers.

Thursday October 16, 2008, 9:16 pm
Blue...I think you are refering to this: http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/18/goldman-blankfein-naked-pf-ii-in_jl_0918soapbox_inl.html?partner=yahootix which in my mind is immoral and unethicial.