These are not the droids you are looking for

Felix Salmon pretends he has heard something that escaped most of us:

Matt Cameron picks up on an interesting tidbit from the most recent Goldman Sachs earnings call:

“As a result of meeting franchise client and broader market needs, we had a short equity volatility position going into the quarter. Given the spikes in volatility that occurred during the quarter, equity derivatives posted poor quarterly results,” Goldman’s chief financial officer, David Viniar, told analysts on a quarterly earnings conference call on July 20 …

In fact, Goldman managed to put the bold clause in every single article I've seen regarding their earnings -- they veritably shouted from the mountain that whatever their business as usual is, it won't qualify as prop trading.  Volcker and Congress must have been thinking of someone else ...