From the Financial Times article:

Goldman Sachs on Tuesday apologized for its role in the financial crisis and pledged $500m – or about 2.3 per cent of its estimated bonus and salary pool for 2009 – over five years to help 10,000 small businesses across the US recover from the recession.

The moves come as Goldman tries to defuse a political and public backlash at its plans to share billions of dollars among top dealmakers after rebounding sharply from the turmoil and earning record profits in the first nine months of the year.

Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s chief executive, told a corporate conference in New York that the bank regretted taking part in the cheap credit boom that fueled the pre-crisis bubble. “We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret,” Mr Blankfein said. “We apologise.”

Goldman Sach’s apologizing …  maybe the theories behind 2012 are true.  I thought I would see the end of the world before I would see a conscious out of GS…. even though the payoff is extremely weak compared to the estimated $21.8 Billion set aside for compensation for the year…  oh and the fact that they profited from the demise of the mortgage backed securities they originally helped create which helped fuel the boom and bust of America.

Full article at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/782afd66-d3bd-11de-8caf-00144feabdc0,s01=1.html?ftcamp=rss&nclick_check=1

Well when you have the SEC busy prepping their resumes and fighting off congressmen its easy to let some things slip by.  This could be the case today when the AA ramp up started around 3:30pm right before the close and their surprise “in the black” EPS numbers.  You can really see the big gorillas in the last minutes loading up on this with the volume spikes.   Im guessing that right about now they are enjoying a nice steak at Luger’s.

One thing that I find funny is that if you look at the Alcoa numbers year over year:

• Q3 revenues are down 34% from last year
• Q3 EPS is down 75% from last year  (q3 2008 $0.33 vs q3 2009 $0.08)
• Q3 Profit down 71% from last year
• Stock price last year $14.71 … after hours tonight $14.99

Well I guess we can throw them the ol “the market is forward looking” bit to get the market pumping on this.

Sorry for this rant, but Im sick of everyone in the media concerning themselves with the facts that GS made a ton of money and are going to pay their workers well.  Although it is true that they took bailout money and were basically rescued from bankruptcy… thats old news. 

And at the time nobody did anything to stop it… there were no riots across the country… nobody called their congressman and told them to stop the bailout… well maybe some of you did, but definitely not the millions of  disgruntled people and TV personailities that are now bitching about Goldman’s success.  I think that nobody would be bitching if they participated in the Goldman Sachs run of about 199% from its November low.

And yes there is reason to be mad that GS and the like are bigger than the government, but that has been the case for more than a century.   And now all the sudden people are waking up to this fact..?. but are likely going to hit the snooze bar again and do nothing about it.  ……  click full post below to continue

With today’s sell off it looks like someone forgot to boot up the computers today that have been doing the majority of the buying in the markets as of late.  Or maybe GS and the  boys are starting to feel a little heat for all the manipulation?

A very disturbing coincidence is happening over at the NYSE with regard to program trading.  The NYSE has moved to decommission the requirement of involved firms (such as GS, MS, JPM) to report their DPTR (Daily Program Trading Report).   The document below is a copy of the memo.  Thanks to Zero Hedge for bringing this forward.

What happened to more Transparency Obama???

Letter from NYSE on full post….

Today is dragging on with some of the slowest action I have seen in a while.   Some interesting trends have been developing with the end of the quarter coming to a close and a holiday week next week.  Firms are going to be  “window dressing” as much as they can and with a lot of the floor probably in the Hamptons early for the Independence day holiday there is a lot of room for manipulation to the upside.

Speaking of which Goldman Sachs has recently bounced back in a huge way in terms of its program trading unit.   Click read full post for more and chart