Bill Ackman With Some Controversial Remarks on Goldman Sachs

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Pershing Square Capital ManagementBill Ackman managing partner of Pershing Square Capital Management was on CNBC yesterday and talked about a variety of topics.

Bill Ackman is the going to be a main charterer of the new book Confidence Game: How a Hedge Fund Manager Called Wall Street’s Bluff. The book, according to Amazon.com, tells “the story of Bill Ackman’s six-year campaign to warn that the $2.5 trillion bond insurance business was a catastrophe waiting to happen. Branded a fraud by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and investigated by Eliot Spitzer and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ackman later made his investors more than $1 billion when bond insurers kicked off the collapse of the credit markets.”

Ackman describes the book of being about short selling and MBIA and being investigated by SEC and Eliot Spitzer. MBIA insured municipal bonds for many states and municipalities. They started to insure CDOs and other risky products.

Ackman also staunchly defends Goldman Sachs. He says that the media misrepresents the charges against Goldman Sachs. He states that it would have been unethical had Goldman disclosed who the counter party(John Paulson) was on the trade. Ackman states that SEC laws require client confidentiality. Paulson himself did not know who was the long on the trade nor did he care. This is the strongest defense I have seen anyone offer of Goldman Sachs to date.

Below is the video:

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