

It's not an easy job 'doing God's work', and this week was no exception.

First of all, GS finally settled a $1 Billion lawsuit over an investment known as “Timberwolf”.



Timberwolf became notorious after an e-mail by a former Goldman Sachs executive, Thomas Montag, describing it as “one shi--y deal” was released by U.S. lawmakers investigating the bank that year. In an April 2011 report, the U.S. Senate said Goldman Sachs tried to manipulate prices of derivatives linked to subprime home loans in May 2007 for their own benefit.

That was par for the course for GS. They are somewhat familiar with lawsuits.

However, the lawsuit that finally reached the open court this week is unusual even for GS.



A Goldman Sachs banker “procured” the services of two prostitutes as part of concerted efforts by him to cement close ties with officials at the Libyan sovereign wealth fund , as the US investment bank sought to win lucrative new business, the High Court has heard.

That sounds pretty bad, but trust me, the details are much, much worse.



A Goldman Sachs trader haggled with a prostitute in Dubai, it emerged at a trial centring on claims that the Wall Street bank took advantage of a Gaddafi-era Libyan wealth fund to fleece the country of millions.

Maybe someone could help me remember where in God's work a millionaire haggling a prostitute down in price in order to help fleece a sucker? As for the fleecing itself, well, that was epic.



The allegations came at the start of a legal claim by the Libyan Investment Authority for $1.2bn (£846m) from the investment bank. Lawyers for the LIA are claiming for losses on nine trades that Goldman Sachs executed for the fund between January and April 2008.

The LIA lost almost all its investment through the trades – one of which was the largest that the bank had undertaken in a single stock – while Goldman Sachs generated “eyewatering” profits of over more than $200m from the trades, Roger Masefield, a QC for LIA, said.

Once the losses emerged, Masefield said one Libyan official described Goldman as the “bank of mafiosa”.

The GS defense is basically "you should have known better than to trust us."

They've probably had quite a few laughs about Libya while manipulating the Treasury market.

A GS/Clinton scandal that doesn't involve $220,000 speeches, and almost slipped through the cracks involves Hillary and Bill Clinton’s son-in-law, Marc Mezvinsky, who married their only child, Chelsea, and the recently closed Eaglevale Hellenic Opportunity Fund, after it had lost 90 percent of its value.

Mezvinsky ran Eaglevale with former-GS executive Bennett Grau. Here's where it gets interesting.



the Eaglevale Hellenic Opportunity Fund imploded as a result of bullish bets on Greek bank stocks and Greek government debt. That’s raising even more eyebrows in investment circles since it was Goldman Sachs who secretly sold a complex and convoluted derivative deal to Greece in 2001 that hid the true state of its debt, then reworked the deal multiple times until Greece ended up owing Goldman a stunning 5.1 billion euros, almost twice Greece’s original obligation, thus making future bullish bets on Greece highly doubtful.

It turns out that Grau was working in the same GS division that managed to loot and bankrupt Greece.

What a coincidence.

None of this is anything GS can't handle. There's very little chance anyone at GS will go to jail...for this.

You see, there is a another scandal that the bankers at GS can't laugh off. This one involves Malaysia, and this week the New York State Department of Financial Services got involved.

They are only the latest agency to investigate. The FBI and Justice Department started looking into it last year. Just how guilty is GS is still being determined.



At issue is $3 billion Goldman raised via a bond issue for Malaysian state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd., or 1MDB. Days after Goldman sent the proceeds into a Swiss bank account controlled by the fund, half of the money disappeared offshore, with some later ending up in the prime minister’s bank account, according to people familiar with the matter and bank-transfer information viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The cash was supposed to fund a major real-estate project in the nation’s capital that was intended to boost the country’s economy.....

One red flag, they believe, is that Goldman wired the $3 billion in proceeds to a small Swiss private bank instead of to a large global bank, as would be typical for a transfer of that size, the people said.

Another is the timing of the bond sale and why it was rushed....

The 1MDB fund is the focus of probes into alleged corruption in at least seven countries. Investigators believe more than $6 billion of 1MDB’s money is unaccounted for. Mr. Najib and his family used hundreds of millions of dollars originating with the fund on the election campaign, to buy real estate, clothing and jewelry, as well as to help finance a Hollywood film, according to people familiar with the matter and bank-transfer information.

Malaysia’s attorney general, that was personally appointed by the Prime Minister, cleared the prime minister of any wrongdoing. So no harm, right? Besides, what's $6 Billion between friends?

On the other hand, maybe someone might be upset. Maybe a lot of people.