Goldman Sachs - Market Manipulation

GS has been a suspect for a long time, from conspiracy advocates to main street investors, of somehow manipulating markets. See Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone article for instances (here it is from another source. News this week certainly throws fuel on to the fire.

Last week ex-GS employee Sergey Aleynikov was arrested under the accusation of having stolen trading software from GS.

Sergey Aleynikov, an ex-Goldman Sachs computer programmer, was arrested July 3 after arriving at Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey, U.S. officials said. Aleynikov, 39, who has dual American and Russian citizenship, is charged in a criminal complaint with stealing the trading software. Teza Technologies LLC, a Chicago-based firm co-founded by a former Citadel Investment Group LLC trader, said it suspended Aleynikov, who started there on July 2.

OK, that is the, "yeah, so what, people do stupid things" part. The interesting part comes next.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Facciponti told a federal judge that Aleynikov’s alleged theft poses a risk to U.S. markets.

Oh? How so?

“The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways,”

Oh, really? So, GS defacto admits that they have software (program trading) to manipulate the markets in unfair ways? Unbelievable...or not. The market has certainly moved in ways counter to most of the talking heads on TV in the past several weeks.

Is GS being sponsored by the Federal Government or the FED to "prop up " the markets. Is GS unfairly profiting by front running orders? Will this software end up as a national security threat if it falls into others hands?

Reading for the story
Link One
Link Two
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and the Reuters article