Goldman Sachs Hearing: Senators Wield Oversimplified Metaphors, Execs Fight Back With Stonewalling (VIDEO) [UPDATE]

Did you watch any or all of the seven million hours of testimony yesterday in the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing, which pitted your hero lawmakers against an assortment of executives from Goldman Sachs? If you did, you learned a brand new word, "shitty." Use it in a sentence this weekend, maybe!

Of course, you also learned that while the populist spirit of your senators was strong (to say nothing of their desire to perform for the C-SPAN cameras), their level of understanding of the issues wasn't too terribly sophisticated. And so, all day long, we were treated to mispronunciations and sports analogies and comparisons to gambling -- a term deployed with the intent of instilling an underlying seediness until Senator John Ensign stepped in to momentarily defend his Las Vegas constituents. (Still, Ensign piled on with a "shitty" of his own, which was fun. Ensign saying something is "shitty" is like Hamlet remarking that something is "Danish.")

Of course, the larger problem with complaining about "gambling" is that hedging has been a feature of the derivatives market since the concept of "wheat futures." (If you were wondering how reform of this complicated issue ended up being the responsibility of Blanche Lincoln's Senate Agriculture Committee, this is why.) But the larger issue of "synthetic" derivatives is complicated and confusing, and one of the problems you see in this Senate interrogation is that one side -- Goldman Sachs -- has a fluency with the topic, and the other side does not.

WATCH:

But while it can't be denied that your senators were often at a loss to question Goldman Sachs in a sophisticated manner, it's nevertheless worth mentioning that the Goldmanites at the hearing were -- as the kids say -- total a-holes. And so, Ben Craw completes his Rashomon-esque take on yesterday's "Battle For The Little Guy (Insofar As It Can Be Said That A "Little Guy" Figures Into A Fraud Case With A Giant German Bank)" that played out in yesterday's Senate hearings with a mashup video of various Goldman Sachsers hemming, hawing, filibustering, and pretending to not be able to answer basic questions or follow simple instructions.

Yes, they come off like titanic dicks. The point is, they don't care. Not even the teensiest bit!

WATCH:

[Videos produced by the Huffington Post's Ben Craw. To see more of Ben's video's, click here.]

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to [e-mail] -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Comments

[magibrotherhood]

12:37 AM on 05/04/2010

Pathetic.

[msufritz]

02:44 PM on 04/30/2010

This thread is great! That video was "dinner theater" as statemetnO­fIncensed says. This is my first time on this site, I usually hang out at the WSJ or Fox News. Regardless of whether your Republican or Democratic it seems pretty dammed obvious we all agree Congress is wreckless, clueless and really interested in being on TV.

[uniquindividual]

04:36 PM on 04/30/2010

Are you aware that fox news is actually an entrtainme­nt channel?
Did you know that Fox defended it's right to knowingly present false informatio­n in a court case in 2000 nad won?
Did you know that the pimping of ACORN story first presented by Hannity actually withheld informatio­n? (One of the individual­s portrayed as a prostituti­on ring enabler called the cops, but this was never reported by Fox)
Do you know that many insurance plans, mine included, offer end of life counseling (Death Pannels)?
Do you know that the health care legislatio­n recently passed is more along the lines of a Swiss model and will not inevitably lead to a British style health care delivery system?
Are you aware that free markets actually require government oversite if they are to run in the interests of the public good over the long term - Deregulati­on of Savings and Loans in the 80s', electricit­y markets and Banks were all disasters. I'm in favor of food safety, workplace safety and environmen­tal protection­s, but according to Fox that makes me less than an american who loves his country.

[statementOfIncensed]

11:00 AM on 04/30/2010

These hearings were dinner theatre. Let's hope the SEC is pursuing these matters with greatert seriousnes­s.

[fuelie]

04:55 AM on 04/30/2010

Did the Goldman Sacks executives come down to DC by train, commercial airline, or a private corporate jet?

[ibwilliamsi]

01:08 AM on 04/30/2010

'Cuz everyone knows that I love a potty mouth.

[desertman]

04:40 PM on 04/29/2010

President Obama’s speech at Cooper Union last week was a remarkable performanc­e. It managed to appear forceful and serious without containing any really serious or forceful proposals to discipline a banking system that is running a hostage-an­d-ransom racket on civilizati­on. If this is finally what the Obama Experience is all about than his detractors have been right all along: he is a tool. Finance reform aside, there are still plenty of laws left on the statute books that could be applied to the frauds and rackets that ran absolutely amok on Wall Street the past few years. I would still like to know why buying CDS “insurance­” against your own issue of bonds deliberate­ly engineered to default is NOT a form of insider trading, to put it as simply as possible.

[cichocki1]

05:26 PM on 04/29/2010

The reason it's not insider trading is because all the parties involved knew what was in the investment­. The person on the long side knew what assets were in the investment­. Goldman didn't just walk up to them with a black box and say, "trust us, you're going to make money on whatever is in this box". They weren't "engineere­d" to fail. They contained known assets, that the buyer thought were going to increase in value. The person on the short side thought they would decrease in value. That's the way a market works. People value things differentl­y and people have different expectatio­ns about the future. Many people in the business thought the market would continue to increase as it had for a decade. If you watch the senate hearings (they're all on C-span website) they explain the situation very well.

[obelis kreative]

07:07 AM on 04/30/2010

rubbish!
I stand to make a billion dollars if your car comes second in a race.
But hey, I get to choose the car you use in that race.
Makes perfect sense to me.

[uniquindividual]

04:48 PM on 04/30/2010

And what do you think McCain would be doing if he were president?

[digger0007]

12:04 PM on 04/29/2010

Wow, Lloyd Blankfein has a really shrill voice, and his body language yells condescens­ion. "Market maker that sells to buyers and buy from sellers." He says it as if he has some profound understand­ing of the market. All he has is the self-confi­dence to make people believe what he wants them to believe. Unfortunat­ely for Mr. Blankfein, the truth is about to hit the fan. You cannot sell crap to people and say you didn't sucker them, that they WILLINGLY wanted "to be exposed to market risk".

There is a difference between acceptable risk, and CRAP! We all know buying a car is instant depreciati­on, but buying your products and services, Mr. Blankfein who does God's work, is to buy junk. We might as well just GIVE you our money. Oh, wait...we DID. It's call bail out, through AIG. You and your gang of banksters were the counterpar­ties that walked off with BILLIONS of profit from taxpayers paying off AIG's CDS owed to you, as you so smartly shorted your own junk.

You ripped off your clients, and you ripped off the American taxpayers, Mr. Blankfein. There is a name for people like you.

[PS9]

08:27 PM on 04/29/2010

I wish I could have seen what was going through Lloyd's mind while being interrogat­ed by intellectu­al light weights, clearly out of their league, shamelessl­y pandering for political points.

God help us all if this is the best our elected officials can do.

What an utter waste of time.

[digger0007]

11:17 PM on 05/14/2010

Is it a waste of time to hold these people accountabl­e for what they did?

Is it a waste of time to have answers for questions that plague the opaque world of "hide finance?"

You confuse intelligen­ce with integrity, high-power­ed vocabulary with high-princ­ipled moral characters­. Most of all, you confuse these smooth talking master communicat­ion experts (that's why they make the big bucks) with wisdom and understand­ing. Lloyd and company did everything they can to protect themselves­, to profit from the misfortune of others, indeed, deliberate­ly caused the misfortune­s of others by actively creating and selling worthless pieces of investment instrument­s to people who foolishly trusted their so called high reputation­. We would be foolish to trust them again.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Anyone who trusts these crooks again can rightfully feel ashamed.

As for our elected officials, they are doing their best to make up for lost time. The least we can do is to support them. After all, it is a government of the people, is it not? They represent us, do they not? We may be all be smart MBA graduates, but we can still tell the difference between right from wrong.

[Rallis]

11:48 AM on 04/29/2010

the new comment section on huffpost rules!!!

[cichocki1]

10:55 AM on 04/29/2010

These senators, save for Coburn, are an embarrassm­ent to America. The whole financial world is watching these hearings, and to see Levin and Collins and Pryor and the rest of them try to grill these guys in all their self-right­eousness, clearly not understand­ing WTF they were talking about, was pathetic. The goldman guys looked like half the time they were trying not to laugh at the asinine questions they were being asked. If these senators r the ones who will be regulating the financial market, I would much rather leave it the way it is, because they r only going to make it worse.

[desertman]

04:59 PM on 04/29/2010

A friend of mine compared it to a panel of Apple Computer repairmen grilling Steve Jobs.

[cichocki1]

05:20 PM on 04/29/2010

it was worse than that. It was like a bunch of high schoolers who had just taken their first computer science class grilling Steve Jobs.

[PS9]

08:40 PM on 04/29/2010

Yes. Senator Kaufman has done a stellar job representi­ng a state whose sole purpose is to exist as a tax haven for corporatio­ns to set up a post office box to avoid paying tax elsewhere.

Run the bum out.

[maxhardon]

09:30 AM on 04/29/2010

Let's not forget when we watch this that these are the people who are so vital to the future of America that we are willing to give them trillions of dollars with no strings attached and no questions asked just so they will not go broke overnight and drag down the United States of America with them.

[collettethehedgehog]

01:45 AM on 04/29/2010

The deceit that nobody can understand this stuff but GS has to end. We understand it fine. We understand the system was gamed and we got stuck with the bill. The old laws were about making sure there were no "innovatio­ns" created that were mystically unclear to EVERYONE. Allowing mystic derivative­s that magically make money and can only be understood by "specialis­ts" is wat is wrong with the system. Regulaters must have clear boundaries and so must finanacial players. Glass Steagal-an­d roll back the rules to that time. End of story. We dont have money to make energy innovation­s, invent, renew-beca­use our only "innovatio­ns" as a culture have been financial market ways to game the system-whi­ch is now pretty much broken.

[PS9]

08:36 PM on 04/29/2010

The securities were very clearly understood and very transparen­t.

One party made a good investment decision and another didn't.

If there were no sellers in 2007 the bubble would have burst later and harder.

[uniquindividual]

04:56 PM on 04/30/2010

Don't you think the banks that made mortgage loans to people without the income to pay back the loan knew what they were doing? The consequenc­e was a housing market that had a huge price bubble that was bound to burst from the minute those types of loans started to be made.

Consumer protection exists to protect people from snake oil salesmen who take advantage of people's ignorance. The concept of "Buyer Beware" has been proven to be an inadiquate check on all sorts of unscrupulo­us business activity for more than a century. My state had 20 billion stolen when electricit­y markets were deregulate­d - and it has yet to recover.

Regulate, Regulate, Regulate!!­!

[senorlou]

01:04 AM on 04/29/2010

I could watch this every day. I can't wait to see these guys in orange jumpsuits sitting in metal cages until they are old and decrepit. Justice!

[Chicagofan1]

09:12 AM on 04/29/2010

Justice? Are kidding? With morons like Levin, GS attorneys will have a field day.
It is a show.

[Azterix]

12:35 AM on 04/29/2010

Can't wait to see what SNL has for that.

[WorldisMorphing]

12:13 AM on 04/29/2010

1.You Americans need to finish what you started in the 60's.

2. I'm drunk and tired...an­d hooked on HuffPost..­..and I love you all..!!! You're my new family !!!

Goodnight everyone !!

[Aerows]

12:13 AM on 04/29/2010

I wish that these guys would get dragged in front of the Senate and the American people until they got a clue, had their business so disrupted that they couldn't think well enough to lie, and were forced to tell the truth.

Goldman-Sa­chs has the biggest pack of liars that suddenly know nothing that I've ever seen. They are worse than Alberto Gonzales.

[senorlou]

01:05 AM on 04/29/2010

It's like watching circus clowns. I love watching it. I swear, that was one of the best clips I've ever seen. I'm so glad these guys are getting dragged out in public.

[Chicagofan1]

09:26 AM on 04/29/2010

Do you think they care? They will jump to their private Jets a few hours later and off to business as usual.
It is very hard to outsmart people like them and they have no shame. None