Goldman's commodity trading division, J.Aron, is the crown jewel of the whole behemoth.Mother: .....And remember, the Lord loves a working man.
Navin: ........Lord loves a working man.
Father: ......And son, don't never, ever trust whitey.
-The Jerk (1979)
They will do anything...ANYTHING to protect it and further its purposes.
Current GS CEO Lloyd Blankfein came up on the trading side, J. Aron:
"When Blankfein asked about his title, a boss at J. Aron said, 'You can call yourself contessa if you want.'"(from a small collection of GS stories, "Goldman Sachs CEO: "We Didn't Realize How Bad Things Would Get" (GS)"...
-Fortune, January, 2006
From FT Alphaville:
Some deep thoughts from Goldman Sachs, by way of Jeffrey Currie and team, on the drivers of the current commodity sell-off (and no, their short gold advice from last week isn’t listed as one of them):While GS analysts have quite a bit of latitude you will only rarely see a report released to the public that hasn't been vetted somewhere along the line.
The sharp sell-off in gold was triggered by growing fears that the central bank of Cyprus would sell its gold reserves, potentially reflecting a larger monetization of gold reserves across other European central banks. The decline in prices was exacerbated by the breach of key technical price support level at $1,530/toz and then at the $1,434/toz 200-week moving average, creating the largest one day decline. Spillover from gold and renewed European and EM macroeconomic concerns also created sharp sell-offs in crude oil and base metals, that were mostly front-end driven, crushing spreads (the carry), as longer-dated prices remained remarkably stable. This stopped us out of our CCB (Commodity Carry Basket) recommendation with the potential loss reaching our 6.0% stop....MORE
