Hypocrisy is Sh*tty

I'm fed up with these self-righteous, hypocritical, demagogic politicians.  Listening to the members of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations question Goldman Sachs executives today made me feel the utmost sympathy for the Wall Street titans, and given the nature of the emails authored by those on the hot seat, that is some feat. Specifically, subcommittee members continuously referred to an email where a Goldman executive referred to the securities he was selling as "sh*tty." 

So, what does that email prove?  It proves that, like all the other guys at all the other banks, Goldman executives knew they were selling a product that had a high likelihood of imploding. What does that have to do with the fraud case against Goldman, which they were hailed in to discuss? NOTHING. In fact, to be sure, the actual litigation claims Goldman Sachs misled investors by failing to disclose that a hedge fund named Paulson & Co., which was shorting the U.S. mortgage market, helped the CDO manager select securities to include in the portfolio involved in the SEC suit. To that end, the self-nicknamed "Fabulous Fab"

Tourre, the 31-year-old at the heart of this mess, stated that he indicated to investors that Paulson was interested in taking a short position on the deal. 

So, as everyone knew from the beginning, this suit was about political grandstanding and not punishing law-breakers. No one would argue that these guys, or any others that were involved in the CDO mess, have great character, but at least they're not devoid of character and hypocritical. As the clown court was attending to its fake business today, Reid was counting the money he received Sunday night at a dinner in New York sponsored by Roger Altman, who is now chairman of Evercore Partners, the “most active investment banking boutique in the world.” (See http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/36389_Page3.html ). And everyone knows Obama received $1 million directly from Goldman Sachs during his campaign. And I'm not saying it's a partisan thing.  In the 2008 election cycle, $89,221,944 was given to Democrats and $68,022,536 to Republicans and so far for the midterm election season, Democrats have received $21,513,828 and $12,867,315 has gone to Republicans. (See http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/21/democrats.wall.street/index.html?hpt=Sbin). It must be infuriating to be ignorantly and indignantly questioned  by people after you line their pockets and send them on their way to do your bidding in Washington.