With a deal like who could loseyou ask, EVERYONE!

Anything that Deutsche Bank and Goldman sponsor, or are underwriters for.. ( here's a hint.. Blackstone is owned by Deutsche Bank)  only means disaster for anyone who sinks money into these two fraudsters. So, here's some advice by someone who has dealt with  Deutsche Bank, Don't invest in there messes! Also, boycott the Hilton!

Blackstone's Hilton looks to launch IPO week of December 2: sources

11:15:00 BST

By Olivia Oran

Thu Oct 31, 2013 7:52pm GMT

(Reuters) - Hotel operator Hilton Worldwide Inc, owned by private equity firm Blackstone Group LP (BX.N), is aiming to launch its initial public offering the week of December 2, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
The people cautioned that the timing of the float could change depending upon a regulatory review which is still in process. They asked not to be identified because the timing of the IPO is still confidential.

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Blackstone declined to comment, while a Hilton representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Blackstone took Hilton private in 2007 in a $26.7 billion deal, which was one of the largest leveraged buyouts that preceded the 2008 global financial crisis. In September, Hilton filed for an IPO to raise $1.25 billion.
Blackstone is hoping the stock market will value Hilton at around $30 billion, sources previously told Reuters.
Founded in 1919 by Conrad Hilton, the hotel operator's brands include such high-end names as Conrad and Waldorf Astoria. Hilton has 4,041 hotels, or 665,667 rooms under its umbrella, located in 90 countries. The company itself owns or leases 157 hotels, including the Waldorf Astoria in New York and the Hilton Hawaiian Village.
The IPO comes as Blackstone looks to exit several real estate investments. This week, shopping center unit Brixmor Property Group Inc (BRX.N) raised $825 million in an IPO.
Blackstone in July filed to take another hotel chain, Extended Stay America Inc, public, and the company said on Thursday it could be valued at as much as $4.2 billion.
It is also looking to sell or take public hotel chain La Quinta, potentially valuing it at up to $4.5 billion.
Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE), Goldman Sachs (GS.N), BofA Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley (MS.N) are the lead underwriters on the Hilton offering.

Getting Big Banks Out of the Commodities Business

A debate has broken out over whether the country’s largest banks should be allowed to own physical commodities, including the facilities used to transport, store and process these goods. This may be the strangest debate we have had about banking in the United States in the last five years, because the answer is completely obvious: it is a new and very bad idea to allow big banks to also dominate any dimension of the commodities business. It is also not sustainable politically, and the big banks will soon have to divest themselves of these activities.
The headlines are attention-grabbing and the investigations are substantive. Goldman Sachs is reported to be slow-walking aluminum out of warehouses that it controls. JPMorgan Chase is settling accusations that it manipulated energy prices and may also face pressure to get out of the metals and oil business more broadly. Big companies that buy aluminum, like MillerCoors, are not happy with the way banks have been operating, and these nonfinancial companies have an important political voice also. The political changes afoot may also affect Morgan Stanley and Barclays, which both have significant involvement in commodities.
Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio and a leader among those who want a safer and better run financial system, asked recently, “What do we want our banks to do, make small-business loans or refine and transport oil? Issue mortgages or corner the metals market?”
Banks have not always been allowed so many tentacles. Go back, for example, to the political deal behind the founding of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. After the crisis of 1907, there had been wide-ranging arguments on whether the United States should have a central bank, along the lines that already existed in some parts of Western Europe.
One major and legitimate concern expressed by some of Senator Brown’s predecessors (including Louis Brandeis, then a prominent skeptic of banking practices and later a Supreme Court justice) was that providing bankers with a government backstop would enable some of them – particularly those already running large financial institutions in New York – to become even more powerful.
This concern was shared by others, more to the right of the political spectrum, who worried that anyone who could borrow from the Fed would gain an unfair advantage in nonfinancial activities. The financier J.P. Morgan was seen as a dominant force in sectors like railroads and steel, and there was a great deal of broader concern about what was regarded as the “money trust.”
The ultimate quid pro quo was, not unreasonably, that while the newly created Fed would act as a lender of last resort to banks, it would also help to constrain the activities in which these banks could engage. The consensus was that the United States needed a stable banking system for intermediation (from savers to borrowers) and to run the payments system. Outside of that, a freer market – without downside protection provided by the Fed – was the choice.
In part, the restrictions on banks’ activities were about limiting risk, but these constraints were also very much about commercial fairness. The Fed was not offering any kind of backstop to manufacturing or transportation companies, and if banks were to enter those activities, they would presumably have an unfair advantage.
In recent decades, unfortunately, this picture changed drastically. In part, firms known as “investment banks” (which were not banks in a legal sense) were allowed to become more like regular Federal Reserve System banks, becoming larger and financing themselves with short-term liabilities (including what are known as repo transactions).
As Thomas Hoenig, the vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, put it recently about the financial crisis of 2008,

The facts are, however, whether the institutions were called a “commercial bank,” “investment bank” or “shadow bank,” it was by the time of the crisis a distinction without a difference.

When the crisis hit, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were allowed to become bank-holding companies, with access to funds from the Federal Reserve. They were not, however, required to divest their commodities activities (or anything else that we can discern).
At the same time, existing large banks were allowed to add a wide range of commodities-related activities. Citigroup was allowed to expand into commodities after 2003, and its competitors followed suit. A great deal of JPMorgan Chase’s expansion into commodities actually took place after the financial crisis, with the acquisition of Bear Stearns as a key step in that direction. (See this 2010 profile of Blythe Masters, a key executive.)
When you allow any companies both cheap government-backed financing and carte blanche to take over other sectors, what would you expect to happen? And if you allow any kind of unfair market power to develop, surely it would be a shock if this did not result in higher prices or less good service – or even some kind of manipulation.
All of the above was on the table at a recent Senate hearing conducted by Senator Brown. For details on the history and policy choices, see the testimony of Joshua Rosner, an executive at Graham Fisher & Company. For a view that is more supportive of the banks’ current structure, read this column by Gregory Meyer. I also recommend this definitive essay, “The Merchants of Wall Street: Banking, Commerce, and Commodities,” by Saule Omarova.
In my assessment, there is no case for banks to own physical commodities, let alone crucial parts of the nation’s infrastructure. This is an unacceptable concentration of power that has led to abuses – and will again.
Big banks are not even good at running financial services – remember the crisis of 2007-8 and the never-ending run of scandals since. Why would anyone think he can do a better job running any aspect of the commodity business?
As for diversifying their risks, if that is your goal for big banks, why not allow them to go into the production of cellphones, trash removal or operating hospitals? Seriously, once you let banks acquire assets in any sector, that Federal Reserve backstop will carry them a long way.
Who in private business wants to go head-to-head with JPMorgan Chase or Goldman Sachs in any nonfinancial sector? Unless you are seriously considering offering Fed support to Apple or U.P.S. or Wal-Mart or all commodity traders, get the banks out of the nonfinancial sector.
Camden R. Fine, head of the Independent Community Bankers of America, puts it well in a recent blog post:

The bottom line is that these huge financial firms have grown so large and become so interconnected in our economy that they are demonstrating classic signs of monopoly power: collusive and anticompetitive behavior that pushes prices up and reduces the social surplus provided by free markets. Not only are these institutions driving up consumer costs, they are doing so with the insurance of a taxpayer-funded backstop if their businesses ever sour. And make no mistake about it, the time will come again.

Don’t rely on the banks to pick and choose which parts of the commodity business they would like to keep. As Bart Chilton of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said this week, the Federal Reserve “can and should reverse” the policy that lets banks own and trade physical commodities.
“I don’t want a bank owning an electric service, or cotton, corn or feedlots,” he said. “I don’t want banks owning warehouses, whether they have aluminum, gold, silver or anything else in them.”

How Goldman will sink the ships

Investors Lost, Goldman Won on WaMu Deal 

 

Washington Mutual Inc. and its Long Beach Mortgage Co. subprime-lending unit rang up one of the worst failures in U.S. history. Left in the wake were billions of dollars of soured loans and questionable lending practices.
But when times were better, the two companies had a powerful partner on Wall Street: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS -1.31%

Beached

• May 10, 2007: Goldman and WaMu underwrite bonds backed by $532.6 million in mortgages.
• May 16, 2007: WaMu unit says $49.3 million in loans are worthless.
• May 17, 2007: 'Good news,' Goldman trader writes in an email, 'we make $5mm' because the firm shorted the bonds.

Recently released emails and other documents, including securities filings, show how Goldman, considered one of Wall Street's most elite banks, built its mortgage business by closely working with lenders such as Washington Mutual and Long Beach, two firms that "polluted the financial system" with souring loans, according to a Senate review of Washington Mutual on April 13.
"Long Beach…was not a responsible lender," Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.), chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said in his opening remarks April 13. "Its loans and mortgage-backed securities were among the worst performing of the subprime industry."
Goldman declined to discuss its business with Washington Mutual or the communications in the emails released by the Senate panel.
Goldman was one of several Wall Street firms that helped sell bonds backed by Washington Mutual loans. Over the weekend, the Senate subcommittee released internal Goldman emails, including one showing that the firm made a $5 million trading profit by betting against securities Goldman sold in a Long Beach bond offering that lost money for its investors, raising a potential conflict with its clients. On Tuesday, the panel plans to question Goldman executives in a separate hearing.

The emails and others like them highlight "the importance of transparency, the importance of things being in the open, the importance of it being known who is in a position to benefit from what," senior White House adviser Lawrence Summers said Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation."
Much has been written about Washington Mutual's failure. In September 2008, the Seattle lender was forced to sell itself to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. JPM -0.87% at the height of the crisis in the largest-ever U.S. bank failure. But there has been less scrutiny of the ties between Washington Mutual and Goldman, which emerged stronger than rivals after the mortgage market's collapse.
J.P. Morgan said the Washington Mutual loans and securities being investigated were issued before J.P. Morgan's purchase of Washington Mutual. A lawyer for former Washington Mutual Chief Executive Kerry Killinger couldn't be reached.
At times, executives at Washington Mutual discussed seeking out Goldman for its reputation for excellence, according to Washington Mutual emails. But Washington Mutual executives also were wary of their partner because of concerns about how the Wall Street firm traded.
"We always need to worry a little about Goldman because we need them more than they need us and the firm is run by traders," a Washington Mutual executive wrote in an email released by the Senate panel in its probe of the lender.
Long Beach was founded in 1979 as Long Beach Savings & Loan by Roland Arnall, a Los Angeles developer who got his start in business in Los Angeles selling flowers on a Los Angeles street corner. A unit called Long Beach Financial Corp., based in Orange, Calif., was sold to Washington Mutual in 1999.
Aided by mortgage brokers who channeled loans to Long Beach, Washington
Mutual and Long Beach ended up bundling subprime home loans into $77 billion worth of securities, according to the Senate inquiry.

Some Long Beach bonds were ultimately used to allow Wall Street firms and hedge funds to bet against the U.S. mortgage market. Long Beach bonds were among those underpinning subprime-mortgage indexes—assembled by Goldman and other Wall Street firms—that allowed those firms and hedge funds to bet against the housing industry, according to data provided by Markit Group Ltd., which helps run the indexes.
The Long Beach loans ended up being among the worst performing in the indexes, according to a Nomura Holdings report. Separately, some Long Beach bonds also underpinned the Abacus 2007-AC1 debt pool now at the center of a Securities and Exchange Commission securities-fraud case against Goldman, which the firm is fighting.
By 2005, Long Beach was in trouble. According to the Senate report released April 13, Long Beach had to buy back $875 million of nonperforming loans from investors. Problems persisted.
Behind one sale of Long Beach securities was Goldman. In 2006, Goldman teamed with a Washington Mutual unit to sell a debt pool called Long Beach Mortgage Loan Trust 2006-A. Both firms agreed to buy some of the securities with the intention of reselling them or making a secondary market for them, according to a prospectus for them. Of the $496 million deal, Goldman was expected to purchase about $322 million of the securities with the intention of reselling them.
Washington Mutual executives appeared troubled by loans at Long Beach.
In an April 2006 email, a Washington Mutual executive told Mr. Killinger that
Long Beach's "delinquencies are up 140% and foreclosures close to 70% ... It is ugly."
By early 2007, Goldman bankers also were growing anxious about their business dealings with Washington Mutual and Long Beach, according to emails released as part of the Senate investigation into Washington Mutual.
A Goldman banker raised questions about the performance of Long Beach loans that were "performing dramatically worse" than other similar deals in 2006. "As you can imagine, this creates extreme pressure, both economic and reputational, on both organizations," the Goldman banker said.
In May 2007, Goldman executives were discussing problems facing the debt deal it had helped underwrite called Long Beach Mortgage Loan Trust 2006-A, according to emails released by the Senate panel.
Among the Senate documents is an email from a Goldman executive to Michael Swenson, then a Goldman managing director in the firm's mortgage group, about the 2006-A bond deal. In an 8 a.m. email, Goldman executives circulated a securities report that showed loans inside the pool had soured.
Six minutes later, a Goldman executive wrote, "bad news…(the price decline in the bonds) costs us about 2.5 mm," adding, "good news…we make $5mm" on a derivatives bet against the bonds.
The Senate panel, in a statement over the weekend, said the email showed how the soured Long Beach bonds "would bring [Goldman] $5 million from a bet it had placed against the very securities it had assembled and sold."
Mr. Swenson declined to comment through a Goldman spokesman. He is among the Goldman executives set to appear at Tuesday's hearing. A Goldman spokesman said in a statement: "It's our standard, prudent practice to hedge exposures."
Despite the close relationship between Washington Mutual and Goldman, Washington Mutual wondered which side Goldman was on. In October 2007, Mr. Killinger wrote in an email about a situation with Goldman: "I don't trust Goldy on this. They are smart, but this is swimming with the sharks. They were shorting mortgages big time."
  This is the link to SEC info
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1355515/000127727706000388/form8kpsa20063.htm

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1119605/000127727706000409/fwptermsheet_longbeach2006a.pdf