Many at the firm might wish it could go private again and recover its capitalist vim. But after a decade of huge success it is now too big to do that. It is also so dedicated to trading that it cannot go back to being a normal, boring bank. Greed and success … have already pushed Goldman Sachs into a kind of prison.

The legacy of the president of Brown University, a Goldman Sachs director for those ten years.

… and the company she keeps as a director of Goldman Sachs:

1.)

Raj Rajaratnam, the founder and head of the hedge fund, Galleon Group, is suspected of being tipped off about the Buffett investment by Goldman director, Rajat Gupta.

2.)

Now that Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta is under investigation for passing inside information to Galleon’s Raj Rajaratnam, we might as well get to the bottom of what happened with Goldman board member Stephen Friedman during his tenure on the board of the New York Fed.

Basically what happened is that Friedman suddenly more than doubled his personal stake in Goldman in the middle of the financial crisis.

As chair of the New York Fed, Friedman wasn’t supposed to sit on Goldman’s board OR own Goldman stock, but Tim Geithner gave him a waiver to do both.

And now the question is… Did Friedman have some special inside information about the Buffett deal or Goldman Sachs’ financial strength that wasn’t in the public realm?

3.)

I dunno. Coming up. University Diaries will cover the story of the next one as soon as it breaks.

Oh. And of course there’s this:

Goldman Sachs’s CEO and other top officers are accused in a pair of shareholder lawsuits of lax oversight in deals involving risky mortage-backed securities that later went bad.

The lawsuits filed Thursday in New York State Supreme Court name Lloyd Blankfein and the firm’s entire board of directors as defendants.

The suits follow civil fraud charges filed last week by the Securities and Exchange Commission over the same investments.

The SEC says Goldman committed fraud by failing to disclose important information about the securities that might have scared off investors.

The two suits, filed by shareholders Robert Rosinek and Morton Spiegel, accuse Blankfein and other officers of “systematic failure” over 3 1/2 years for not properly vetting 23 mortgage-linked deals at the center of the SEC suit. Those deals, called Abacus, led to $1 billion in losses.

Brown University’s president resigns from Goldman Sachs at the end of this year I think. I don’t know the exact date. And I don’t know if that means she’ll be included in this and no doubt other lawsuits against the firm.

********************************

Simon Johnson offers a larger view of the world historical events of which Brown University is a part:

[Goldman Sachs head Lloyd] Blankfein is starting to sound – and act – a lot like Nicolas Biddle, head of the Second Bank of the United States (by far the most powerful commercial bank of the day), during his confrontation with President Andrew Jackson in the early 1830s.

When Jackson first challenged the Second Bank, many people thought his concerns about the bank’s powers were excessive. But then Biddle started to fight back, spending money freely to buy congressional affection (and even leading orators) and attempting to contract credit in order to demonstrate that Jackson was hurting America.

At that point, people understood that Jackson was essentially right. The Second Bank had become so powerful that it could challenge elected executive authority and, if Biddle won, the consequences for democracy would be dire.

We are now in the phase when the most dangerous of our banks – and the people behind them – will go to any lengths to distort the realities and completely mislead people. The only way to deal with this is to do what Andrew Jackson would have done – attack, in no uncertain terms, misrepresentation wherever we find it.

… We should now view Goldman Sachs and our other five megabanks in the same terms that Andrew Jackson’s secretary used for the Second Bank of the United States, “Independently of its misdeeds, the mere power, – the bare existence of such a power – is a thing irreconcilable with the nature and spirit of our institutions.”

Paul Krugman, in today’s New York Times:

… Capital was channeled not to job-creating innovators, but into an unsustainable housing bubble; risk was concentrated, not spread; and when the housing bubble burst, the supposedly stable financial system imploded, with the worst global slump since the Great Depression as collateral damage.

So why were bankers raking it in? My take, reflecting the efforts of financial economists to make sense of the catastrophe, is that it was mainly about gambling with other people’s money. The financial industry took big, risky bets with borrowed funds — bets that paid high returns until they went bad — but was able to borrow cheaply because investors didn’t understand how fragile the industry was.

And what about the much-touted benefits of financial innovation? … [A] lot of that innovation was about creating the illusion of safety, providing investors with “false substitutes” for old-fashioned assets like bank deposits. Eventually the illusion failed — and the result was a disastrous financial crisis.

… An intriguing proposal is about to be unveiled from, of all places, the International Monetary Fund. In a leaked paper prepared for a meeting this weekend, the fund calls for a Financial Activity Tax — yes, FAT — levied on financial-industry profits and remuneration.

Such a tax, the fund argues, could “mitigate excessive risk-taking.” It could also “tend to reduce the size of the financial sector,” which the fund presents as a good thing…

University Diaries proposes CAT – a Corporate Activities Tax – to be levied on universities whose presidents and other administrators (and professors) sit on the boards of corporations like Goldman Sachs and thereby bring shame and ridicule to their schools.

Let Ruth Simmons and Mark Emmert and Phyllis Wise enrich themselves as corporate stooges. But make their universities pay a price for it.

A guest blogger at Simon Johnson’s Baseline Scenario laments

potent credit default swaps, a key ingredient to the [economic] crisis. The existence of this $60 trillion (now $45 trillion) notional value market, protecting and connecting counterparties across the system, led to a $180 billion taxpayer-funded bailout of AIG.

She notes that one of their champions was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury, Larry Summers. And she reminds us that “during Larry Summers’s tenure [as president of] Harvard, certain swaps were put in place; then, according to Nina Munks of Vanity Fair, ‘for reasons no one can seem to explain, the university simply forgot to (or chose not to) cancel its swaps. The result was a $1 billion loss.’”

… The board at Goldman has seen its constitution change in light of the financial crisis, with Ruth Simmons, president of Brown University, standing down, and Rajat Gupta, a former head of McKinsey who is becoming entwined in the Galleon hedge fund scandal, resigning.

… The change in constitution of the board could help Goldman deal with some of its issues head on…

So Gupta left because he’s about to be accused of insider trading. And Simmons? The writer for CNN Money doesn’t really say why she’s leaving, though she seems to think Goldman will be better able to deal with its issues “head on” without Simmons.

And why is that?

Because Simmons is incompetent as a director of a complex financial organization. She seems to be good at being a university president. She should probably have stuck to that. But now, after a decade at Goldman Sachs, she’s in deep doo-doo.

The president of Brown University, who for ten years has been a director at Goldman Sachs, issues a no-comment in response to the university’s newspaper.

Simmons wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that it would not be appropriate for her to comment on the situation at this time.

Why is it inappropriate for a director of a company to say something in response to government charges of fraud against it? Did the students ask Simmons whether she supports the company’s press release expressing outrage at the charges and vowing to defend its honor? Does she disagree with that statement? As a director, didn’t she have to review and vet it?

What’s inappropriate is for a leader of a university and a corporation to say nothing to both sets of her constituents (students, stockholders) when the attention of the world is focused on a claim of illegal behavior for which, as a director of the company, she may have to take some responsibility.

At the very least, Simmons needed to confirm her support for Goldman’s official statement in response to the charges. She is a Goldman official. She represents the company.

A University of Maryland law professor comments in the New York Times:

[What’s particularly] galling is the constant refrain from both Wall Street C.E.O.s and former regulators that no one could have predicted the [housing] crisis. However, the S.E.C. allegations are premised on the fact that hedge funds and Goldman Sachs itself were so convinced of cataclysmic failure that they were looking for investment vehicles that would profit each time a homeowner defaulted on his or her mortgage.

In other words, there were competent and smart people making billions because they could foresee the obvious: people with poor credit would not be able to repay their home loans.

In short, it was not that no one knew…

What did Ruth Simmons know?

Did she – as she will eventually say – know nothing?

Then why was she a director of Goldman Sachs? Why did GS pay her many millions of dollars for being a Goldman Sachs director? For ten years?

Another commentator at the NYT asks:

Why have there been no criminal charges? Why did the S.E.C. only name a relatively low-level Goldman officer in its complaint?

Ruth Simmons is a very high-ranking Goldman officer. Eventual criminal, not merely civil, charges will surprise no one. I’d say Brown University needs to start asking itself whether it has a president able to give the campus her full attention.

Or whatever partial attention she’s been giving it. As Pablo Eisenberg asks:

Did it not concern the Brown board that its president was [until recently] spending an inordinate amount of time and attention helping to direct and oversee three major corporations at a time when universities and colleges are themselves under increased financial stress, experiencing a crisis in financial aid and facing serious questions about systemic faculty and staff inequities?

One of the corporations she continues to oversee is now in very serious legal trouble. Through omission or commission, Simmons helped get it there. What is she going to do about that? What is going to happen to her because of that?

********************************

Simmons isn’t the only Goldman Sachs director suddenly struck silent.

William W. George, a Harvard Business School professor who has served on Goldman Sachs’s board since 2002, referred a request for an interview to the company’s press office. His Twitter account, which lauded JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon for his firm’s better-than-expected earnings on April 14, remained silent on the controversy surrounding Goldman Sachs.

George is the author of 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis.

Lesson #1: RUN CRYING TO THE COMPANY’S PRESS OFFICE

… at Syracuse University.

Rumor has it Brown University has a lock for next year on Lloyd Blankfein, who will speak to graduating students on “Doing God’s Work.”

…. about the lengthy relationship between Brown University and Goldman Sachs is getting as long as the period of time Brown’s president has spent away from campus overseeing the compensation packages of that firm’s traders.

Here’s the post. Keep an eye on it and its many updates.

As one of Goldman’s directors, Simmons should soon be making a statement to the Brown community on recent events.

… things can be pretty swanky.

University students are young, inexperienced. And they’re not going to be at your university for long. You can take advantage of them.

You can take advantage of them because they’re unlikely to have the time or inclination to understand the workings of your school’s complex organization.

Take student fees. They’re kind of an abstraction, aren’t they? Students pay tuition, and then on top of that of course they have these fees…

But what are they for, exactly? How many universities really break down the numbers?

UD‘s grateful to Elizabeth, a reader, for alerting her to this article

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-student-funds4-2010apr04,0,2506603.story?track=rss

in the LA Times about various abuses of student fees at some public universities in California. Here’s one of three examples:

At UCLA, student fees are being used to save a plan to renovate Pauley Pavilion, home of the school’s legendary basketball team.

In 2006, administrators launched a campaign to raise $100 million from private contributors to pay for the $185-million upgrade, which includes cushier seats, a high-definition scoreboard and expanded locker rooms. But when the fundraising effort fell victim to the recession, administrators changed the finance plan to include $25 million from student fees.

“Students really weren’t involved in the process, beyond maybe some rubber-stamp committee,” said UCLA Student Regent Jesse Bernal. “I don’t think they know enough about it.”

Most of the student money, $15 million, will come from fees approved by a student referendum in 2000 to maintain two older campus buildings that house gyms and student centers. The remaining $10 million had been set aside for seismic repair of student facilities.

Using that money to renovate the arena “seems like a strange priority,” said long-time UCLA fundraiser Richard Bergman, who originally chaired the Pauley Pavilion campaign. He said he was summarily dismissed last year after complaining about several aspects of the project, including the dip into student pockets.

… Bergman said that when money got tight, administrators should have scaled back their ambitions.

Steve Olsen, UCLA’s chief operating officer, acknowledged that the referendum approving the fee included nothing about Pauley Pavilion.

… Few students will be able to afford a good view at the renovated Pauley, where seats between the baskets are expected to cost more than Lakers tickets, Berman said. Season tickets will require a one-time fee in the tens of thousands of dollars….

… all graduated from Johns Hopkins University. UD almost went there.

As Baltimoreans, all of these people knew and know that it’s Johns, with an S; but most people say John.

The university has finally tired of correcting everyone all the time. UD‘s friend Courtney, who works at Hopkins, sends her this article from the university’s website:

(Baltimore, April 1, 2010) The Johns Hopkins University announced today that it is bowing to the inevitable and officially changing its name to “John Hopkins.”

“We give up,” university President Ronald J. Daniel said. “We’re fighting a losing battle here. And we strongly suspect the extra ‘s’ was a typo in the first place.”

Since its establishment in 1876 as America’s first research university, Daniel said, anyone and everyone has stumbled over “Johns Hopkins,” omitting the seemingly superfluous “s” altogether or dropping it randomly into the name anywhere but where it belonged.

… Squads of staff members fanned out early today over the university’s campuses throughout the Baltimore-Washington area; in Bologna, Italy; and in Nanjing, China. They employed screwdrivers, chisels, spackle, spray paint – whatever it took to remove the annoying surplus sibilant from residence halls, lab buildings, buses and trucks.

“Thank heavens,” a history of art/flute double major said as she joined a grounds crew trying to pry a particularly recalcitrant consonant from the East Gate at the Homewood campus. “It’s bad enough trying to convince everyone that we’re not all pre-meds. But correcting people’s pronunciation 41 times a day? It’s just exhausting.”…

The winners of this year’s Pritzker
Award for architecture are a Japanese
team, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa.

Their recently completed learning center
at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne
is a sad flat cratered slice of moon

inside of which the lunar abstraction
proceeds unhindered by any object
of interest, or, indeed, any differentiation
into rooms where one might privately
study or daydream or make out.

No dreaming allowed in this bright white
airport where your every step has been
engineered for maximum visual access,
so that you can become another plastic
white chair.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Sylvia Plath captured the mood.

The Moon and the Yew Tree

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God,
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky——
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness——
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness—blackness and silence.

Nemazee’s Harvard pedigree, his generosity and his political hobnobbing created a facade of legitimacy that led people to overlook the possibility of deception.

One of UD‘s perennial themes. Universities routinely function as respectability cover for criminals.

The medical school at Tufts has a little of everything.

It has the heroic Dr Jerome Kassirer, who writes, and testifies in front of Congress, about the “thinly disguised bribes” that pill and device marketers offer to physicians.

It has the appallingly inept Dr. Kajoko Kifuji, who does little these days other than testify in multiple courtrooms about her malpractice.

And it has, most recently, a whole bunch of cardiologists who seem to be involved, along with the device manufacturer Medtronic, in a false claims investigation.

… of the aftermath of the latest shooting at a university campus — Ohio State, at a maintenance building, one worker killed, two wounded — has an eerie eloquence. The silent images of police drifting in darkness, siren lights pulsing on top of cars, ambulances sidling to the site. So familiar.