TIME TO NATIONALIZE THE MOTU?

(h/t Atrios)

You may recall the Dot Com Bubble and how the MOTU thought about what they were doing. This attitude was rampant at Goldman Sachs.

First, there was a deal called "Timberwolf":

Tom Montag, then a senior Goldman executive and now head of corporate and investment banking at Bank of America, was quoted as describing the deal in an e-mail as follows: “Boy that timeberwof (sic) was one shi**y (sic) deal,” according to the Senate subcommittee.

The subcommittee said that Matthew Bieber, the Goldman trader responsible for managing the deal, later described the day that the Timberwolf security was issued as “a day that will live in infamy”, recalling the language President Franklin Roosevelt used for the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor.

Second, we have the private thinking of one of Goldman's MOTU, Fabricio Tourre:

“…More and more leverage in the system, the entire system is about to crumble any moment…the only potential survivor the fabulous Fab (as Mitch would kindly call me, even though there is nothing fabulous abt me…) standing in the middle of all these complex, highly levered, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all the implications of those monstruosities !!!“