Gretchen Morgenstern today introduces us to 37-year-old Goldman Sachs managing director Jonathan Egol, who like his counterpart Greg Lippmann at Deutsche Bank, created a product that allowed investors to bet against the mortgage-backed securities other people at the firm were selling, making it so that when the market collapsed, the bank actually profited from the losses of its own clients. While pure capitalists might appreciate the genius of this maneuver, on a human level it looks like a pretty uncool thing to do. Uncooler still: Passing out T-shirts, as Lipmann did, that say, “I’m SHORT YOUR HOUSE.” [NYT]
