Corrections: Matt Taibbi, Goldman Sachs and Heidi Moore

A letter from Jim Ledbetter, the editor of The Big Money, corrects a fact in our column yesterday on Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi’s treatment at the hands of the financial press. In discussing a piece by Heidi Moore at The Big Money, we conflated the amount of Goldman Sachs’ total mortgage assets with AIG with the amount of their government bailout funds.

Big Money editor Jim Ledbetter writes:

I read your entertaining piece on the Awl about Heidi Moore and Matt Taibbi (this is the first I am learning of “concern trolls.”) I agree with the thrust of some of what you said. But I think in the context of the WSJ article, you have seriously misrepresented what Heidi wrote in TBM back in August.

You wrote: “So much, then, for Moore’s point that Goldman wasn’t appreciably more exposed than other banks trading with AIG, since ‘Merrill Lynch received $12 billion, as did France’s Société Générale and Germany’s Deutsche Bank’ after the $80 billion insurers’ bailout.”

Heidi never wrote that Goldman’s exposure was lower! I don’t think we knew then, nor do we know precisely now, what Goldman’s exposure is. She was comparing apples to apples: how much of the AIG bailout ended up in Goldman’s pocket? That’s the issue originally raised by Taibbi. But you’ve mixed in an orange, by talking about their overall exposure, which was simply not the subject of Heidi’s article.

Even if you’re right, by the way, and GS exposure was $33 billion, and they only netted $12 billion from the bailout, then that means that the government left them on the hook for $21 billion-which surely does not bolster Taibbi’s point that the government serves as Goldman’s lackey.

I do hope you will correct this glaring misuse of numbers.

Thanks, and best,

Jim Ledbetter

Editor, The Big Money

Chris Lehmann responds:

Big Money editor James Ledbetter has written in to dispute that the sum that Wall Street Journal’s reporters mention as the extent of Goldman Sachs’ exposure at AIG — $33 billion in total mortgage assets-represents a qualitatively different figure than that used in Moore’s original takedown of Taibbi, which was the $12.9 billion in government funds that Goldman received as part of the AIG bailout. In comparing Goldman’s bailout take to that of other major banks, Moore was not asserting anything about Goldman’s total exposure in the meltdown-a point I had missed, since Moore initially presented the comparison in the voice of an anti-Goldman conspiracy adherent. That’s still no excuse for flubbing a key category distinction, though, and I apologize to Moore and Ledbetter for doing so.