Andrew McCarthy on Goldman and Paulson

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2010/04/andrew-mccarthy-on-goldman-and-paulson

Andrew McCarthy, who served as a federal anti-terrorism prosecutor with top Deutsche Bank lawyer-turned SEC enforcement director Robert Khuzami, writes in National Review Online:

Unless the SEC has more than what is laid out in its complaint, this isn't fraud. It's politics. If you want to talk material omissions, to charge Goldman but not charge Paulson is pretty darn material. If what Goldman was selling was fraudulent, it can only be because what Paulson manufactured for sale was fraudulent. The two were in cahoots. If what Paulson did was perfectly lawful, Goldman can't be legally culpable for helping him do it.

More:

The statists who gave us the financial meltdown are making a wager more insidious than anything Paulson or Goldman ever came up with. They are betting that Americans will be duped into believing that something other than pandering — something other than the government's scheme to use taxpayers' dollars to purchase the loyalty of low-income and minority voters — is responsible for our current straits. Obama & Co. are constructing a narrative that says a near-depression was triggered by greedy Wall Street predators who dragged investors under water. If you buy that, they get a double boon: They escape blame, and they bolster their campaign to grab more control of the private sector under the guise of "regulation."

Don't buy it.

I think Mr. McCarthy's article actually lets Mr. Paulson off a little easy. It's possible, after all, to be both a "greedy Wall Street predator" and a statist -- in fact, the alliance between the two is a dangerous combination. The ultimate payers of Mr. Paulson's $1 billion bet were the British and German taxpayers, and Mr. Paulson spent the period lavishing money on Senate Democrats and lobbying on bankruptcy/foreclosure bills. Who's the statist?

by Ira Stoll  |  Apr 20, 2010 at 12:06 pm Related Topics:  Goldman Sachs, John Paulson, SEC receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list