Search Box

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Fabulous

An AP headline this morning read:

"Goldman CEO, 'Fabulous Fab' facing Congress."

Senior Partner Lloyd Blankfein and VP Fabrice Tourre, who marketed mortgage bonds allegedly designed to go down in price, are to testify in front of Congress today.

Tourre evidently earned that nickname because of an email he sent to a girlfriend back in 2007. Imagine the scene: he's at his desk during a lull period, and naturally enough, his thoughts turn to his girlfriend, and how he'd like to be with her. Once in that playful frame of mind, he emails her and kiddingly refers to himself as "Fabulous Fab," never dreaming that anybody but her will ever see the missive.

Now that he is being called onto the biggest carpet there is, do you think he might possibly regret that momentary lapse?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Shitty deals, crap, junk - all the stuff the Vampire Squid (and to be fair much of the rest of Wall St) has been peddling. Plenty of emails to regret today.
G

John Craig said...

I honestly don't think -- as you and I have discussed before -- that the Vampire Squid is particularly guilty on this issue. As we agreed, Goldman should never have been paid off on their bad AIG bets by the government, they should never have been allowed to borrow at the Fed Funds rate, and their credit default swap bets should be done on an official exchange, but as far as betting against one of their own products goes, market makers do it all the time, and this is just a bunch of congressmen posturing and the SEC trying to prove it's on the job.

Anonymous said...

AS you know, I agree. But I do think this is a fine karmic reward for the squid's particularly obnoxious hypocritical spin about its business - God's work indeed.
G

John Craig said...

Guy --
Gotta agree with you on the karma angle. I didn't listen to the testimony, I had enough of those holes when I was there.