I find the whole story that GS is front-running to be without much credibility. If GS really was front-running, their clients would certainly notice and take their business elsewhere.

Similarly, the stories going round about GS front-running the entire market are equally implausible. Quite apart from the issue of how they might do this (no, colocation is nothing to do with it), if they were then people would certainly have noticed and you can be sure that JPM, MS etc would be complaining loudly.

But in regards to the disclaimer, yeah, that could mean almost anything and definitely doesn’t sound like the usual we’ll use your data for marketing purposes Internet disclaimer. Normally a disclaimer, doesn’t mean jack, if the activity itself is illegal which frontrunning is. However, there might be a legal gray area in regards to the Internet. I don’t know (although that hasn’t stopped the Feds from confiscating winnings at Internet gambling sites, regardless of whether or not the site has any physical tie to the US).

What might me better, is if someone could get Goldman on the record saying, “We wouldn’t do anything through information obtained on our Website that would be illegal if done at any actual physical location.”

I’m also interested in a question that I’ve never seen really addressed anywhere in regards to the brokerage arm of these big investment banks. How much money do these folks make acting as a broker and processing transactions? We all know that these guys are not interested in merely collecting antes. If the money they make charging brokerage commissions is relatively small money, then it would same to raise obvious questions as whether or not their real game isn’t frontrunning. I also have to say that it would seem to me to that if this isn’t something that should be banned in the first place as being an inherent conflict of interest. Processing stock transactions as an allegedly neutral broker in a market in which different arms of your company are players in that very market would seem to be ludicrous on the face of it and invitation to corruption.

Congratulations on your article. Those in the pits know what of I speak. Others can keep defending Goldman’s sterling success at increasing oil prices artificially, impoverishing entire nations, and bringing the globe to the brink-all for Goldman’s obscene benefit.
Bubble Benefit Bonanza is their mantra.

“Those who believe absurdities are condemned to commit atrocities,”
a para phrase of the Voltaire quote which is aimed squarely at the free
market fundamentalists who insist Goldman is “pure as gold and innocent as a newborn lamb.”

If you bury your head in the sand long enough, you will likely suffocate; a bit of air, however, might revive your faculties and elucidate your skewed view.

That’s what this feels like: G-S owns the gov’t and can have whatever investigation or rules it doesn’t like shut down, as we continue to pay the price as they drain our riches from the country into the hands of a select few.

Keep up the good work, Matt! You deserve a Pulitzer for your reporting on them and your classic piece on the whole Wall St. meltdown.

If Paulson is to appear before the Committee on Oversight….that you mentioned, wouldn’t it behoove us to contact each and every one of these members and request their aide print out Matt Taibbi’s articles The Big Takeover and The American Bubble Machine, and present it to the Congressional person they work for. I spent at least three hours today contacting my own rep and two senators from Florida plus Kucinich. I also contacted Bill Maher by email, who always has Taibbi on, Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann to research the article and have him on. There are so many, many more people to contact. What his article needs is transparency to as many Americans as possible. Mayber it is simplistic, but I cannot think of a better way. We need to also add when calling a congress member, demand investigation, and tell them no more money for bank bailout. Plus Goldman needs to be broken up.