Şmenul "ţapului ispăşitor"

N-o s-o întind prea mult. Cam nimeni în lumea asta, vorbesc despre politic şi justiţie, nu are suficientă forţă să se lege de marile bănci, care, într-un fel sau altul, au ajuns să conducă lumea, direct şi prin interpuşi. Iar băncile sunt ca ţiganii: "Bă, o făcurăm? O făcurăm! Ia zi-i lu' ăla micu' să-şi facă valijoara, să meargă la mititica! A venit vremea să-şi facă educaţia".  Pentru cine are nevoie de explicaţii suplimentare, să vadă cazul Bercea Mondialu'.

Cam aşa a procedat Goldman Sachs, după ce a fost prinsă cu ipoteca vopsită în criza subprime. Din toată ceata de bancheri, şefi şi şefuţi, avocaţi de afaceri, analişti, traderi, matematicieni, care s-a ocupat de împachetarea rahatului şi vânzarea lui pe post de pepite de aur, a căzut măgăreaţa pe un matematician necunoscut până şi în firmă, Fabrice Tourre, care a lucrat la elaborarea unui produs, Abacus.

"Hundreds of employees worked closely in teams, devising mortgage-based securities — billions of dollars’ worth — that were examined by lawyers, approved by management, then sold to investors like hedge funds, commercial banks and insurance companies.  At one trading desk sat Fabrice Tourre, a midlevel 28-year-old Frenchman who was little known not just outside Goldman but even inside the firm. That changed three years later, in 2010, when he achieved the dubious distinction of becoming the only individual at Goldman and across Wall Street sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for helping to sell a mortgage-securities investment, in one of the hundreds of mortgage deals created during the bubble years.

How Mr. Tourre alone came to be the face of mortgage-securities fraud has raised questions among former prosecutors and Congressional officials about how aggressive and thorough the government’s investigations have been into Wall Street’s role in the mortgage crisis. Across the industry, “it’s impossible that only one person was involved with fraudulent activities in connection to the sales of these mortgage securities,” said G. Oliver Koppell, a New York attorney general in the 1990s and now a New York City councilman.In the fall of 2009, when Mr. Tourre learned that he had become a target of investigators for helping to sell a mortgage security called Abacus, he protested that he had not acted alone.

That fall, his lawyers drafted private responses to the S.E.C., maintaining that Mr. Tourre was part of a “collaborative effort” at Goldman, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The lawyer added that the commission’s view of his role “would have Mr. Tourre engaged in a grand deception of practically everyone” involved in the mortgage deal. Indeed, numerous other colleagues also worked on that mortgage security. And that deal was just one of nearly two dozen similar deals totaling $10.9 billion that Goldman devised from 2004 to 2007 — which in turn were similar to more than $100 billion of such securities deals created by other Wall Street firms during that period.

While Goldman paid $550 million last year to settle accusations that it had misled investors who bought the Abacus mortgage security, no other individuals at the bank have been named." Restul articolului, aici.

Aşadar, băieţii şi-au plătit amenda, au găsit un prost, pe post de ţap ispăşitor, l-au aruncat în gura justiţiei, şi s-au ţinut de afaceri, ca de obicei. Doar că ţapul ispăşitor a refuzat această dubioasă "onoare", şi nu vrea să plătească singur oalele sparte. E de urmărit ce se va întâmpla, până la urmă. 

Dar aş paria că, la anu', în campania electorală prezidenţială, Partidul Republican nu va suferi de lipsa banilor...