Taibbi's latest

This board is a funny place.

The heist of the century takes place under 330 million noses - not one perp walk - and the SportsJournalists.com is spittin' mad at Taibbi and his use of 'fuck'.

 

Just think it's funny that every time he pounds something out it's as if he's personally blown up the Death Star.

It's been business as usual for Goldman and partners since his first sensation.

 

I don't understand the attacks on Taibbi, at least based on this article (which is the subject of the thread). He took the Senate report and concluded Goldman was lying about their role in some securities transaction.

He seems to have built a solid case. Now, there may be an accurate rebuttal out there. But the links provided by one poster are from 2009 so they do not rebut this article.

So why is so much personal venom directed against Taibbi? Why does his high school or his father's income make this a bad article?

As for the posters who think that Goldman is to rich and powerful to be indicted, I agree. And I also agree that many others besides Goldman are to blame for the collapse of the financial crisis. But to criticize a journalist for writing an article against someone who is powerful enough to shrug it off or to criticize a journalist because he tries to only expose only one crime, not every crime is to me absurd.

As someone who has read a lot about the financial crisis I think this piece is excellent. Stop attacking Taibbi's "silver spoon" and rebut the article or go write an article about other crooks in the financial system.

 

My resistance is that Taibbi has been known to misinterpret and/or frame debatable "facts" to fit the mission he has set for himself, which is to bring down Goldman Sachs. It's like Michael Moore: When you're shooting that high, everything better be airtight. It has proved not to be in the past with Taibbi.

Having said that, Goldman truly is evil so I don't have a huge problem believing the substance of his article. Tone matters too, though.

 

Not attacking him. He's clearly gifted. There's no misidentifying that. Is it possible -- and I mean this honestly and respectfully -- to critique someone's work on this board without being accused of having an axe to grind or having a raging case of envy? Because more time gets wasted in these debates searching for ridiculous false motivations than spent on the ideas themselves, or they style with which they are put forth.

Taibbi has said (in his own self-congratulatory way) that he has an ability to get to the bottom of very complex systems, lay them on their side, inspect the machinery and then relate that to his audience in a concise manner. People spend not weeks or months, but lifetimes studying the markets. And they would be the first to tell you that they still don't know everything. Or certainly that it would take more than 10,000 words, a lot more patience and a lot less impudence to lay it out like so. You think it's excellent. Great for you. And him. I hope you won't mind if someone might happen to differ, and find all of this a little undercooked.

 

Agreed. I can understand why people might be annoyed by and dislike Taibbi's inflammatory style in past pieces, but I've no clue why venom would be directed toward this one.

This piece isn't based on embellished hyperbole, instead it's founded on the official findings of a SENATE INVESTIGATION, for cripes sake, EXTREMELY credible source information.

As for the prior suggestion here that Goldman's conduct is "not indictable", WHY the fuck not? Because they're too rich and powerful? Fuck that. If what they did constitutes crimes under our criminal statutes, then they're indictable.

And I find frightening the rationale that indicting them would be unrealistic because there'd also be so many "thousands of other private (companies) and public (politicians, appointees) entities that would need to be fitted for pinstripes." If that's true, then we need build more damn prisons until the market manipulating and influence peddling class finally starts getting the message that they're not above the law.

Nobody ever suggests that the petty dope dealer or shoplifter should get a pass because there are so many thousands of others getting away with the same thing. Instead, our policy is to prosecute the ones we catch, knowing damn well that they're are plenty others getting away with the same crimes. Not sure why any different rationale should apply here. Goldman Sachs has now been caught, it's their turn to face the consequences, we'll get the next guy when he gets caught. Same damn way it works for street level crime.

 

Things Taibbi does well:

1. Explain CDOs and difficult financial issues to the public in a way that is both accurate and understandable.
2. Document the double-sided game the New York Times already exposed but failed to fully uncover.
3. Tell a story where the information could be incredibly dry.
4. Combine prior research with his own information. (I have good reason to believe he had very qualified background sources.)

Things Taibbi does poorly:
1. Some analogies. (Specifically, the gas-on-the-fire analogy as a "triple screw" makes no sense, as the second and third "screws" are not distinct but rather a single market price outcome. In addition, the "blocking the door" comment makes little sense.)
2. Analyze corporate law. (He complains that the Supreme Court has made it too difficult to prosecute companies, but he essentially concludes that Goldman Sachs easily meets the standard.)
3. Over-sell his hand on paraphrases. (What struck me was the way he added into "Goldman's" explanation of one of the products that Goldman told investors that the securities did not come from them. But the only evidence he presents is that Goldman called it securities from "the Street." While that is immoral, Taibbi shouldn't be falsely claiming that Goldman explicitly lied. What he had was damning enough. It needlessly detracts from his credibility.)
4. Conflate words in different context. (The difference between "underperforms" -- which by definition requires a prior subjective estimate -- and "performs" -- which can be viewed as an objective standard -- was blurred.)
5. Includes meaningless assertions. (For example, that the "first thing" Goldman did was to "tell no one." The phrase is meaningless; it suggests that he wanted to claim a concerted hush-hush operation, couldn't get enough evidence to say the first thing was to <i>agree</i> to tell know one, but included the line anyway.)

In sum, Goldman's actions almost certainly merit criminal charges, and Taibbi does an excellent job telling the story of the actions in a cogent way. But I think he is much like Richard Posner: He's very smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is.

Those with a slight pulse on the industry knew that Goldman had bet against its clients in this fashion long before this article, but a self-selection bias (and probably celebrity culture) surrounding Taibbi has turned him into a legend with accolades unnecessarily inflated. His work is very good, but it still has holes in it, and he's neither the only one nor the first tackling the issues.

 

Taibbi v. McCardle on CNN:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/video-taibbi-vs-mcardle-on-goldmans-responsibility-to-its-clients-20110516

 

Two things:
• Why did she keep looking off to the left while she was on camera?
• A producer at CNN must have been hovering over the seven second delay button out of fear Mattie T. was about to drop the F bomb.

 

I'm pretty sure she was looking at Michelle Bachmann.