Thursday, April 18, 2013

The Real Reason Goldman is Mum on Risky Assets




From Fortune: How risky is Goldman Sachs? Don't ask. Executives won't tell you. On a conference call with analysts on Tuesday to announce first-quarter earnings, which beat expectations but still somehow disappointed, Goldman's CFO Harvey Schwartz was asked about a key measure that tracks how many potential risky securities or loans the bank has. Had it risen or dropped? Schwartz's response: We aren't saying.

Goldman doesn't have to. Dodd-Frank, the banking reform law passed in the wake of the financial crisis, doesn't require Goldman and other big banks to begin using the measure Schwartz was asked about for another few years. Nonetheless, nearly all the big banks began regularly disclosing the new figure of so-called risk-weighted assets, known as Basel 3, last year. Goldman is the only holdout….

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