Goldman Sachs Launches GS Bank, An Internet Bank With A $1 Minimum Deposit (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader recaps a report from TechCrunch: Traditionally, Goldman Sachs has functioned like a run-of-the-mill investment bank with minimums to open an account in the range of $10 million, and returns not guaranteed. Goldman is opening its doors to the masses today with the launch of GS Bank, an FDIC-insured, internet-based savings bank. Anyone with an internet connection and a dollar can join, as that is what each account's minimum balance must be. GS Bank's interest rates give customers an annual yield of 1.05 percent, a rate that trumps the average U.S. saving's bank yield of .06 percent APY. GS Bank was a result of Goldman's acquisition of GE Capital Bank, the online retail bank previously run by General Electric's capital arm. The move is to diversify revenue streams and strengthen liquidity. GS Bank currently has total deposits of around $114 billion. In other news from the multinational banking firm, Goldman Sachs believes virtual-reality and augmented-reality "will be the next generation computing platform" worth $80 billion by 2025.

Comments

Ooooh~~

[Edis Krad]

Goldman Sachs!
Synonym with trustworthiness and financial stability. Just exactly where I want to put all my money in!

Re:Ooooh~~

[Desler]

Of course they shorted it because they set up the whole thing to fail in the first place.

Re:Ooooh~~

[whoever57]

You think GS is bad. Here is my experience with a Delaware-based escrow company.

Before I start, the main function of an Escrow company is to hold the money and pay it out to the correct people and only at the appropriate time.

1. Money is in escrow. Intended to be held for some time with some conditions on release.
2. One of the conditions on release of money puts payment in jeopardy.
3. Escrow company sends one of the parties their share BEFORE the money should be sent to anyone and before the issue from step 2 is resolved.
4. Escrow company sues the recipient (who is in India with no US connections) in US courts. Obtains a meaningless default judgement.
5. Escrow company deducts the cost of obtaining the meaningless judgement from the amount to be shared amongst the rest of the escrow participants.
6. One of the participants successfully sues the escrow company to force it to eat the legal bill (and any excess money sent in error in step 3.) itself.
7. Escrow company adds its legal costs defending 6. to the amount deducted from the other participants (except for the one who sued).
8. Other participants sue the escrow company to get it to eat all its legal costs and any excess sent in error to the one participant in step 3. Suit is successful and eventually, the Escrow company has to agree to not deduct any legal costs and make up any excess money sent in step 3.

In summary, escrow company screwed up, tried to pass the costs onto the very people it should have protected and had to be sued twice to get it to eat the costs of its own mistakes.

Re:Ooooh~~

[ShanghaiBill]

why did they need the bailout then?

GS did not need a bailout. Their customers/victims did. They received some TARP money, but they certainly didn't need it.

Re:Fuck Goldman right in the Sachs

[Anonymous Coward]

You certainly don't have to do business with them. But if you have evidence of specific crimes that nobody else has managed to identify, you might want to pass those along to the DoJ.

There's no need to inform the DoJ. Goldman says that it did commit the crimes it was accused of. This statement is part of the settlement and rather unusual as most of the banks were allowed to settle with a "neither agree nor disagree" kind of statement.

This note from the Justice department has some details of specific crimes.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr...

Re:Fuck Goldman right in the Sachs

[bloodhawk]

No idea on which people there specifically belong in jail. But do you really think GS would pay 5.1 billion in compensation for fraud in a settlement with the DOJ if it was innocent? It was a disgrace that they were able to pay their way out of criminal charges.

Re:Fuck Goldman right in the Sachs

[PopeRatzo]

Which GS people committed which crimes for which they should be in prison? Please be specific.

Lloyd Blankfein, CEO. See the presentence investigative report on him and Goldman from 2010.

He traded against his clients, which is a crime. Then he lied to the FBI and Congress about doing so. That's conflict of interest, fraud and perjury.

Now it's up to you to explain why he should NOT have gone to jail for these crimes other than the fact that Goldman controls the Fed. Please be specific.

http://www.rollingstone.com/po...

http://www.reuters.com/article...

Re:Which rock did you crawl out from under?

[mrchaotica]

What should have happened is every employee above a certain pay grade should have been brought up on RICO charges and the corporation itself should have lost its charter and been dissolved.

Re: So...

[mrchaotica]

That's why instead of giving creditors your ACH information so they can "pull" payments from your account, you should use your bank's online bill pay feature to "push" the payments. Sometimes that isn't a good option (e.g. when the bill is variable but the creditor refuses to send e-bills, or when they give a discount for signing up for their auto-pay system), but otherwise you should use it.