The Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against Goldman Sachs is revealing a cavalier culture in which the firm invested recklessly and bet against its own clients. Here are some of the company’s questionable practices:
Created its own blood bank and sat on all deposits until the Haitian earthquake
Tried their hardest to dissuade risk-loving pensioners and teachers’ unions from buying into unsound derivatives, but in the end it wasn’t enough to stop them
Drove up commodity index while hedging against price increases by maintaining a 20-acre facility crammed with full barrels of crude oil, stockpiled bales of cotton, and tens of thousands of lean hogs
The guy who delivered lunch every day was always tipped with one of the company’s crumbling mutual funds
Offered clients discounted concert tickets that junior analysts won by repeatedly dialing into radio contests
Invested in the highly lucrative underground organ trade through its Mexican subsidiary Goldmando Saques
Over the years, executives secretly dumped the contents of nearly 2,400 convenience stores’ take-a-penny-leave-a-penny trays into their suit pockets
Taking your money and not telling you what the hell they’re doing with it
