SEC: Goldman Sachs
Not Cause Of Oil Spill
Bankers Regret Lost Opportunity
Richieville News Service – WASHINGTON, D.C.
In a surprise finding, investigators for the Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that the massive oil spill threatening the Gulf Coast was not, in fact, caused by the investment firm Goldman Sachs.
“We were as shocked as anyone,” said SEC official Danny Podsnap. “After they wrecked the U.S. economy, bankrupted Greece and tricked kindly widows and orphans out of their life savings, we were sure that somehow they were behind this disaster, too. I guess they’re not as smart as they think they are.”
The investigators were looking into the role of exotic financial instruments called “synthetic aggregate wildlife credit swaps.” Through these complex investment derivatives, the bankers at Goldman had attempted to take out life insurance policies on the “gannets, terns, tiger shrimp, mollusks and other vertebrates and invertebrates,” living in Gulf wetlands.
Like Goldman Sachs derivatives based on unsecured mortgages, failed real estate deals and wishful thinking, the exact workings of wildlife credit swaps is poorly understood even by those who created and invested in them. According to the SEC, those who bought the derivatives were essentially, “betting against the environment, Mother Nature and the circle of life.” But in the end, the SEC could find no evidence that the Wall Street masterminds had actually caused the deadly explosion, the loss of life and the release of hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic oil into the fertile waters off Louisiana. More surprisingly, they don’t seem to have directly profited from it.
Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein expressed regret, saying that in retrospect the firm missed an opportunity to profit once again from human misery. “We clearly messed up on this one,” he told reporters. “We should have made a couple of hundred million, easy. But hey, you can’t win ’em all!”