This article aside, I find it crazy how many HN posters immediately supported GS as if at their beck and call. As a lawyer, we have detailed guidelines about w

This article aside, I find it crazy how many HN posters immediately supported GS as if at their beck and call. As a lawyer, we have detailed guidelines about who we can and cannot take on as a client because of conflict of interest. On rare occasions lawyers can represent a client where there is a conflict of interest provided it is spelled out in writing and signed by both the lawyer and client. On the other hand GS lives off of conflicts of interest and exploiting them. For example, just before the real estate bubble, GS owned a bunch of "toxic" real estate backed assets. GS sent internal emails throughout the firm to sell these assets to clients before they became worthless, and even offered additional incentive compensation for dumping these toxic assets off on their own clients. When certain GS clients lost everything and these emails were leaked a congressional hearing was held, see here: www.c-spanvideo.org/program/293196-3 When asked about the GS conflict of interest and dumping self-owned toxic assets on their clients that GS acknowledged would become worthless, the CEO responded by saying just because those assets were no longer in GS's best interest, does not mean they were not great deals for their clients, nor did GS have any duty to disclose that GS itself was dumping the same asset it was trying to sell to its own client. Be warned: This can and will happen again, despite the passing of The Wall Street and Financial Reform Act to make sure the 2008 financial crisis will not repeat itself, GS and other special interest groups made sure that prohibitions/disclosures of this type of conflict of interest were not included in the reform.