Never let it be said that we don’t work our tails off here at Market Talk to get you the news. We have in our hands an advanced, embargoed, exclusive copy of Goldman Sachs chieftain Lloyd Blankfein’s testimony to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which he will deliver later today.
It took the work of secret couriers, an indigenous Vietnamese agent named Co Bao (“You weren’t expecting a woman, were you?”), one Groucho Marx disguise, and a punk staffer in the Senate who’s shorting the testimony, but here — finally — we got it:
“The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our in-the-dark counterparties; we did.
“But you can’t hold a whole bank responsible for the behavior of a few sick, perverted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn’t we blame the whole banking system? And if the whole banking system is guilty, then isn’t this an indictment of our financial institutions in general?
“I put it to you, Carl Levin! Isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do what you want to us, but we’re not going to sit here and listen to you bad-mouth the United States of America! Gentlemen!”
Oh, wait, that’s Eric Stratton’s testimony. I guess we don’t have Lloyd’s after all.
Dean Jackson
April 27, 2010
[...] DJMT has the exclusive inside testimony of Llyod Blankfein: “The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our in-the-dark counterparties; we did. [...]