Carl Levin Wants To Cut Off Lloyd Blankfein's Tentacles

Combover Carl and his senator pals on both sides of the aisle have released their final assessment about what went down to cause that little financial crisis thing a couple years back and, in not much of a surprise, the two-year investigation's findings included a lot of finger pointing and squid slapping at Lloyd Blankfein and the rest of the light-hating mollusks who allegedly have their tentacles wrapped around the countenance of the human race.

Specifically, Levin said he "found a financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest, and wrongdoing,” and that the pit's king cobra, Goldman Sachs, "clearly misled their clients and they misled the Congress."

Others responsible for the crisis, according to the report, were Deutsche Bank, which, like Goldman, supposedly pitched and sold "crappy" securities that it believed were basically "crap."

Also, perhaps even more at fault than the big banks, the report claims, were the big ratings firms. That is, S&P and Moody's were largely to blame for nearly bringing down the entire financial system. According to the report, "Perhaps more than any other single event, the sudden mass downgrades of RMBS and CDO ratings were the immediate trigger for the financial crisis."

Going back to those conflicts of interest that Levin mentioned, Republican Senator Tom Coburn also noted that the investigation exposed, “without a doubt, the lack of ethics in some of our financial institutions who embraced known conflicts of interest to accomplish wealth for themselves, not caring about the outcome for their customers." Coburn added that "when that happens, no country can survive and neither can their financial institutions."

And to that I would add this: embracing "known conflicts of interest to accomplish wealth for themselves" is a cornerstone to every major investment bank's operations throughout not only this country but the rest of the planet as well.

(Bloomberg: Goldman Sachs Misled Congress After Duping Clients: Levin)

(Related: U.S. Senate vs. Lloyd Blankfein: Yesterday's Main Event on Capitol Hill)