Goldman Sachs & the AIG Bailout

Questions remain as to the role that Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson permitted Goldman Sachs to play at crucial points during the September economic near-meltdown. As the former head of Goldman, Paulson had pledged to follow strict ethics guidelines. But as Matt Taibbi notes on his blog, the conflict of interest was immense, and Goldman had unprecedented access at the most critical points in the crisis.

Aside from the Fed, the Treasury, and the New York State Department of Insurance, the main players involved in the AIG bailout that weekend were AIG (obviously), JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs. There were swarms of bankers from the latter three banks there that weekend, poring over AIG’s books, trying to figure out if AIG could be rescued without government help.

Now, we know why AIG was there, obviously. Morgan Stanley was there representing the Treasury (it had been hired to advise the Treasury on the bailouts by Paulson during the Fannie/Freddie mess, with the rumor being that it was the only bank willing to give up market positions that would have left it too conflicted to do the work). JP Morgan we know was there because AIG had hired them weeks before to come in and try to clean up its messes. Only Goldman Sachs did not have an official role at these proceedings.

So why was Goldman there? And why was Paulson calling Goldman two dozen times that week? This is one of the other problems with Gasparino’s account (”of course” Blankfein was there that weekend, he says, not telling us why this is so obvious). I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an official explanation for why Goldman was there that weekend; the ostensible explanation that most people seem to accept is that Goldman naturally was there because it was such a large counterparty to AIG.

But I suspect we’re going to find that Paulson was not on the phone two dozen times with executives from Deutsche Bank or Societe Generale or Barclays or Calyon, all of whom were significant counterparties to AIG as well. Goldman was not even AIG’s largest counterparty in the sec-lending wing of its business (Deutsche Bank was, and would eventually receive $7 billion via the bailout as a result), and yet as far as I know there were no Deutsche reps there that weekend at all. So what made Goldman special?