On Monday afternoon Goldman Sachs posted a miserable first quarter for most of its typical investment banking divisions — and a record $6.56 billion in revenue for its trading unit, giving the bank a net profit nearly double Wall Street expectations. Mere seconds into the question and answer session of yesterday’s conference call with analysts, Guy Moszkowski of Merrill Lynch asked the question on everyone’s lips: what did the $180 billion money vortex called AIG have to do with those numbers? Nothing, insisted chief financial officer David Viniar, who said the impact of the unwind for the quarter “rounded to zero” and later professing to Bloomberg he was “mystified” over the public fascination with the question.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=143785