Barry Bonds Should Have Been Playing for Goldman Sachs

The Justice Department knows how to get those guys. You know the ones who hit home runs and abuse themselves with steroids in order to hit more. Not the way the game should be played, but the last time I checked Barry Bonds hadn't foreclosed on anyone's home, nor had his actions pressured the economy to his own benefit while millions were losing their jobs.

Just yesterday a jury found Bonds guilty of obstruction of justice resulting from testimony given to a grand jurythat had been convened to follow up the federal investigation into the use of steroids by athletes.

When it rains it pours. Almost simultaneously with the Bonds' verdict the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a 650 page report "Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Collapse". Its contents were so damning that Senator Levin, co-chair of the committee, commented, "The report pulls back the curtain on shoddy, risky, deceptive practices on the part of a lot of the major financial institutions. The overwhelming evidence is that those institutions deceived their clients and deceived the public...".

The report was produced by the same Senate committee that conducted an eleven hour hearing in April 2010 with Goldman executives and employees. At that hearing lawmakers questioned Goldman's assertion that it had not bet against the mortgage market as home prices were collapsing throughout the country. As the New York Times reported, Senator Levin pointed our that his committee had found 3,400 references in Goldman documents where its officials used the phrase "net short", Wall Street jargon in this instance for having bet against the housing/real estate market.

Perjury in sworn testimony before a Senate committee? Perhaps, perhaps not. If only Barry Bonds had played for Goldman Sachs we still wouldn't know.