In non-polo news, the Financial Times scooped this morning that the Financial Crisis Inquiry (aka Angelides) Commission is threatening to audit Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Sachs is facing a threat by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to bring in outside accountants to comb through the bank’s systems for data on its derivatives business, the panel’s chairman has said.
The commission will not back down from demands for information Goldman’s executives have maintained they do not track, Phil Angelides told the Financial Times.
It’s nice that Angelides et al are taking a tough stance on this, but it’s pretty esoteric stuff, this derivatives business.
— Remember how Goldman, an Audit funder, was saying it was fully hedged on AIG and the insurer’s collapse would have been immaterial to it?
Yeah, not , so much. Officially, now. Its counterparties included bulwarks of strength like Citigroup and Lehman Brothers, Gretchen Morgenson reported on Saturday.
“This illustrates that the Goldman version of reality is not entirely accurate,” said Christopher Whalen, managing director at Institutional Risk Analytics. “They did have exposure to A.I.G., and that is what drove their behavior in the bailout.”
Bloomberg follows today:
Joshua Rosner, an analyst at research firm Graham Fisher & Co. in New York, said the list of counterparties indicates that Goldman Sachs may have had difficulty collecting on those swaps.
“Clearly Goldman’s calculation was more tied to their expectation of the political dynamics of forcing moral hazard than the fundamental realities of the financial strength of counterparties,” Rosner said.
— The Raleigh News & Observer sure doesn’t pull any punches in this article on the state of the baby boomers. Here’s the first three paragraphs:
The generation known as baby boomers may go into old age broke and fat, researchers say.
Those among the first decade of boomers – now at retirement age or within 10 years of it – may find that a combination of unhealthy living and unwise personal finance decisions will leave them in rough shape after age 65.
They may not mind so much, however, because researchers say they’ll also be more likely to be stoned on drugs than either their elders or younger people.
Broke, fat, and stoned. Brutal!
Ryan Chittum is a former Wall Street Journal reporter, and deputy editor of The Audit, CJR’s business section. If you see notable business journalism, give him a heads-up at rc2538@columbia.edu. Follow him on Twitter at @ryanchittum.