Overstock.com - Goldman Sachs Documents Naked Short Selling

Goldman Sachs Documents Naked Short Selling

In May, 2012, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone wrote an article, Accidentally Released - and Incredibly Embarrassing - Documents Show How Goldman et al. Engaged in 'Naked Short Selling'

The article discusses how in the course of discovery of lawsuits between Goldman Sachs, BankAmerica versus Rolling Stone, Overstock, the Economist, Bloomberg, and the New York Times Goldman Sachs accidentally filed an "unredacted version of Overstock’s motion as an exhibit in their declaration of opposition to that motion. In doing so, they inadvertently entered into the public record a sort of greatest-hits selection of the very material they’ve been fighting for years to keep sealed."

The material released purports to show that at the highest levels within Goldman Sachs, naked short selling was known, facilitated, and encouraged, and that Goldman Sachs would reveal non-public information about the overall positions of naked short selling on specific businesses to its large hedge fund partners.

Was Goldman really disclosing “nonpublic data concerning customer short positions” to its big hedge fund clients? That would be something its smaller, “Muppet” customers would probably want to hear about.

When I contacted Goldman and asked if it was true that Masterson had shared nonpublic customer information with a big hedge fund client, their spokesperson Michael Duvally offered this explanation:

"Among other services it provides, Securities Lending at Goldman provides market color information to clients regarding various activity in the securities lending marketplace on a security specific or sector specific basis. In accordance with the group's guidelines concerning the provision of market color, Mr. Masterson provided a client with certain aggregate information regarding short balances in certain securities. The information did not contain reference to any particular clients' short positions."

Read more about this topic:  Overstock.com

Famous quotes containing the words goldman, documents, short and/or selling:

    Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity produce individuals foreign to one another, and in everlasting antagonism with each other.
    —Emma Goldman (1869–1940)

    In the course of writing one historical book or another, it has happened that I could hardly restrain myself from simply copying entire documents. Indeed, I sometimes sank down among the documents and said to myself, I can’t improve on these.
    Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)

    Never mind if you fall far short of the thing you want to do,—encourage your effort. If no one else will say it to you, say it to yourself. “Not so bad.” It will make the next effort easier and better.
    Josephine Demott Robinson (1865–1948)

    I concluded that I was skilled, however poorly, at only one thing: marriage. And so I set about the business of selling myself and two children to some unsuspecting man who might think me a desirable second-hand mate, a man of good means and disposition willing to support another man’s children in some semblance of the style to which they were accustomed. My heart was not in the chase, but I was tired and there was no alternative. I could not afford freedom.
    Barbara Howar (b. 1934)