At the Senate hearings that have explored Goldman Sachs operations, a common analogy that has cropped up has to do with gambling and the nature of "risk". According to an AP story today, "Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein testily told skeptical senators at a hearing Tuesday that clients who bought subprime mortgage securities from the Wall Street powerhouse in 2006 and 2007 came looking for risk "and that's what they got."
Now, Russian Roulette is also a risky game. I submit that GS is being charged by the SEC with using an approach suggested by this image in "playing the game" with some of their "less sophisticated" (or more greedy) clients. I think some such clients may have expected significantly more empty cylinders than GS had actually loaded in GS's favor.
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