[InternetPerson]

I agree with jnordwick that "Quartz and Athena are both failed projects." For example, Mike Dubno, Kirat Singh, and three other managing directors on the Quartz project are all gone [1].

I agree with the grandparent post that "Goldman's position in the crash truly had nothing at all to do with superior risk management systems and was a mixture of political favors and luck"

The snake oil in this case is what p4wnc6 (who's spot on) highlighted: "The team within Goldman that had architected and developed this years ago had spun out into a consulting group that essentially reimplemented the same thing" [at other banks].

The product that they sold (a SecDB clone) is pure snake oil, and the projects (which were massively expensive) delivered very little value.

Consider: If SecDB really lives up to the hype, then why would Goldman let all these other banks steal Goldman developers and straight-up copy it?

[1] http://news.efinancialcareers.com/us-en/253040/three-bank-of...