Teamster trouble
First it was the politicians, then the public — and now it’s the rowdy Teamsters that are riled at Goldman Sachs and its CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
Wall Street’s richest firm and the storied union went head-to-head yesterday in a public knockdown over Goldman’s bets aimed at pushing the nation’s biggest trucking firm, YRC Worldwide, into financial collapse.
Teamsters boss James Hoffa threw the first punch by publicly blasting Goldman’s behind-the-scene moves to create derivatives and other bets that Hoffa said would hasten the struggling trucking company’s descent into bankruptcy, and throw tens of thousands out of work, but would also generate larger profits for Goldman.
Using the language of bankers instead of Teamster toughs, Hoffa in a letter to Blankfein accused the gold-plated firm of “actively soliciting bond trades for clients and underwriting credit-default swaps to benefit from a failed [debt] exchange and resulting bankruptcy.”
The union boss went on to say that “the relatively small benefit Goldman would derive for itself in fees or for clients from such a position is unconscionable given the fact that the 50,000 livelihoods could be ruined by a bankruptcy filing.”
The money-losing trucking company is desperately working with creditors to swap 95 percent of its stock for $536.8 million in debt notes to win breathing room from its financial woes.
