If understood correctly Goldman finally has a truly serious situation on its hands. A memo from above has just been circulated to Goldman's traders that henceforth no expletives are to be used in describing financial junk or otherwise in the text of 'in house' emails. Now we all remember Senator Levin holding up copy of a Goldman-formulated email describing a Goldman fabricated financial instrument as sh..., sorry, I can't say it, but you know what I mean.
Now the dilemma is, without proper clarity, without language and argot that clearly defines what they have brewed in the way of financial engineering for the less wary to gobble up (you know, those who didn't go to MIT or the Harvard Business School) at pension funds or soft overseas marks, how will they communicate to their trading desks to aggressively short (remember derivatives, CDS's and on) those very instruments? How can they now make a double bonanza, first by pocketing commissions selling the sh... (still can't say it) and then betting or having their favored clients bet against them?
This is a big problem. Hank Paulson, where are you when we need you again?
Much of the business world and the government are moving away from emails, because they can later be used as evidence. The net result is lower productivity, less of an "audit trail", more likelihood of fraud. For example, CDOs and CDSs were often sold on the phone, and Wall St can't even track those sales.
This is forcing many away from email, and that's bad.
http://www.fortunecity.com/campus/books/845/shithap.htm