Gaddafi Sachs: When Bad Things Happen to Bad People
It’s the feel-good story of the morning: Goldman Sachs took $1.3 billion of Libya’s money in 2008 and promptly turned it into no money at all, according to the WSJ: “The $1.3 billion of option investments were hit especially hard. The underlying securities plunged in value and all of the trades lost money, according to an internal Goldman memo reviewed by the Journal. The memo said the investments were worth just $25.1 million as of February 2010 — a decline of 98%.” That is particularly delightful. And then, the panicked firm offered the foul government a number of chances to make their money back, but nothing ever came of it. On the plus side, they have so much money that they wouldn’t really notice the $1.3 billion disappearing into garbage investments — and meanwhile, many of the people mismanaging the money jumped ship for even-more profitable pastures when they saw the writing on the recession wall. Now much of Libya’s money, which is essentially stolen from its citizens, is frozen, and Army leaders are defecting while NATO bombs and baloney “truce” talks occur.