April 4, 2013

Goldman Sachs

Matthew Taylor, a former trader who worked at Goldman Sachs in New York from 2005 to late 2007, handed himself in to the FBI in New York on Wednesday morning.

During a brief appearance in a Manhattan court on Wednesday, Taylor pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud.

But, how can it be? A banker facing criminal charges? Well, you see, Taylor didn't just defraud anyone. His "victim" was Goldman Sachs. Make sense now?

Via:

District Judge William Pauley released the former trader on a $750,000 (£496,000) bail and set a sentencing date of July 26. The maximum sentence for wire fraud is 20 years in prison.

In November, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) accused Mr Taylor of concealing an $8.3bn position in the S&P 500 futures market that left Goldman nursing an $118m loss.

According to the CFTC, Mr Taylor allegedly bypassed Goldman’s internal system to input trades made on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and used another system instead.

Internal controls at the bank identified the fabricated trades in December 2007 and Goldman said that no customers suffered losses.

Authorities accused Mr Taylor of inputting false figures to conceal the scale of the losses the position was racking up from November to December 2007.

Goldman said it dismissed Mr Taylor for “alleged conduct related to inappropriately large proprietary futures positions in a firm trading account”.

Yet here we wait for a single banker to see the inside of a jail cell after millions of Americans lost their homes to the Big Banks, and we continue to hear that we just haven't sacrificed enough.

Justice...for the few.

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