This past weekend Ben Stein, a modern day economic genius, wrote a piece in the New York Times questioning the independence of economist Jan Hatzius, a Goldman Sachs economist. Jan wrote a detailed paper describing how the mortgage meltdown could aversely effect other industries in the market. He hypothesized that the mortgage crisis could continue, creating enormous problems for investors, especially companies holding mortgage backed securities.
From an outsiders perspective there is nothing wrong with Jan forecasting the economic future of our markets, actually that is what we expect of our economists. The problem with Jan's prediction, as Ben lays out, is that the company that is signing his paycheck every week is shorting the mortgage industry. Goldman Sachs benefits every time a well respected (and highly paid) economist bad mouths the mortgage industry. Goldman Sachs is basicly a huge hedge fund answering to nobody and manipulating the markets by controlling the media. Goldman has billions of dollars invested in the markets and somehow managed to make money while every other bank were writing down billions in assets.
The most interesting part of this article is that Ben Stein is a shareholder of Goldman Sachs! I guess if you can't beat em, join em.
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