How To Rob The Treasury For Bonuses

Karl Denninger
Market Ticker
Jun 24, 2009

You have to love Goldman Sachs:
[Goldman to make record bonus payout -Guardian 21 Jun 2009]

"...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 set aside half of its £1.2bn first-quarter profit to reward staff, much of it in bonuses. It is believed to have paid 973 bankers $1m or more last year, while this year's payouts are on track to be the highest for most of the bank's 28,000 staff, including about 5,400 in London."

Let's remember that Goldman got roughly $10 billion in AIG-funneled money to "settle" CDS that their CEO said was a fully-hedged position and which would have had no material impact if AIG had gone down, mostly because they had collected nearly all of the hedge before AIG got in serious trouble.

That is, they got paid twice - once with their hedge (good move guys) and again by government fiat, directed by Henry Paulson who coincidentally used to run Goldman.

Also note the size of the first-quarter profit, multiply by four (assuming equally good results) and then compare against the "extra" payout through AIG to figure out whether there would be any bonus pool absent that payment.

Looks to me like the US Taxpayer is funding all of Goldman's bonuses, never mind this ditty:

"Last week, the firm predicted that President Barack Obama's government could issue $3.25tn of debt before September, almost four times last year's sum. Goldman, a prime broker of US government bonds, is expected to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from selling and dealing in the bonds."

Nice, eh? Do Treasury's bidding, get paid for it, get an extra $10 billion from the taxpayer as a gift to cover a bet you had already hedged against default, and pocket it all.

Change we can believe in - yep, we'll steal even more than we did under The Bush Administration!

Disclosure: No related company-specific positions.

Jun 22, 2009
Karl Denninger

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