The Securities and Exchange Commission's case
against Goldman Sachs Group largely comes down to a single word central to
securities law: material. Goldman will be judged on whether the information it
failed to tell its clients was material, meaning important or relevant, something a
buyer would want to know before buying. Peter Huang, a securities law professor at
Temple’s Beasley School of Law, agreed. "If you were buying something, you should
care about the fact that the person who was picking the things you were buying was
actually betting against them," he said. "That's the part that wasn't disclosed."