Goldman to cut 15% of workforce

[Iron Condor]

Goldman Will Reduce Capital Markets Workforce, N.Y. Post Says

By James Kraus

March 21 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. plans to dismiss as much as 15 percent of its workforce in the capital markets and related support departments, the New York Post reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.

The reductions are likely to come in the division that includes investment banking, debt and equity underwriting and merger advice, the newspaper said. Employees were first notified about the staff cuts on Monday, the Post reported.

Goldman Sachs London-based spokesman Paul Kafka had no comment to make on the report, when contacted by Bloomberg News today

Banks like GS dont like to lay off people only to rehire them again in six months time.. so if this is true they expect the slowdown to last some time..

I think the next IT downturn will begin in April and probably last a year or two.

[AtW]

Banks like GS made the Western world sleep walk into what is going to be the biggest world financial crisis - they now expect to be bailed out. They might be, however I think new laws will come out worldwide that would severely limit what banks can do - this kind of stuff happened already in the USA ages ago when at some point banks were not allowed to do certain things (like I think own shares in companies directly), the end result will be that the banks as we know them won't exist. Just like water utilities these institutions should be boring, do their job and small guaranteed profit - safe and reliable, what they should not do is play dangerous games on financial markets in order to squeeze a couple more percentages of short term profit.

[OwlHoot]

[..] the end result will be that the banks as we know them won't exist. [..]

Guffaw!

Are the squirrels six feet tall on your planet Alexei?

(Actually squirrels love hoarding things, so you probably have more banks there assuming naturally they're smarter than you.)

[AtW]

(Actually squirrels love hoarding things, so you probably have more banks there assuming naturally they're smarter than you.)

Hoarding to survive, not to speculate and resell at higher value to other squirrels when they are dieing from starvation because some squirrels used borrowed money (highly leveraged) to buy all crops.

Do you really think that the society will just tolerate this crap that originated from financial markets? I think in the USA they had pretty strict retrictions on what banks could do - it's time for those to return - the primary purpose of banks is to conduct payments and keep money in their accounts safe. They did not do that recently so now they are at risk of collapse that they use to blackmail regulators in order to get bailouts. How the heck can you protect this kind of behavior? Only if you are a complete banker.

[bored]

This is 15% of capital markets workforce, not of all workforce...

[sappatz]

banks

The following Banks have already been nationalised :

Northern Rock
Bears Sterns (5th US investment bank)

HBOS soon ...

Many British banks face bankruptcy. Look at this :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/mai...ukbanks118.xml

[AtW]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/mai...ukbanks118.xml

Odd chart. I think LTSB (the bank I use) had very little writedowns saying they did not play these games, which is the right thing for any good bank to do. On the other hand I think I seen HSBC having big writedowns.

Either way I think in a couple of years we will definately see some serious laws designed to cut down on this crap that banks were involved in - if they can't regulate itself then some good laws are in order.

[HairyArsedBloke]

For AtW: Hedge Funds

[sappatz]

hedge

just another hedge fund is collapsing under the current deleveraging mode

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ba06914a-f...077b07658.html

[bobhope]

Odd chart. I think LTSB (the bank I use) had very little writedowns saying they did not play these games, which is the right thing for any good bank to do. On the other hand I think I seen HSBC having big writedowns.

Either way I think in a couple of years we will definately see some serious laws designed to cut down on this crap that banks were involved in - if they can't regulate itself then some good laws are in order.

You can't really regulate against booms and busts - it's the way of capitalism. You might as well try to legislate making stupidity illegal.