Goldman comes to town:
The CEO of Goldman Sachs and other executives from the Wall Street powerhouse are coming before Congress 10 days after the government accused the firm of fraud. The Senate panel hearing their testimony Tuesday alleges that Goldman used a strategy that allowed it profit from the housing meltdown and reap billions at the expense of clients.
Goldman executives misled investors in complex mortgage securities that turned toxic, investigators for the Senate subcommittee say. They point to a trove of some 2 million e-mails and other Goldman documents obtained in an 18-month investigation. Excerpts from the documents were released Monday, a day before the hearing bringing CEO Lloyd Blankfein and the others before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
Blankfein says in his prepared testimony that Goldman didn’t bet against its clients and can’t survive without their trust.
Also appearing Tuesday: Fabrice Tourre, a Goldman trading executive who, federal regulators say, marketed an investment designed to lose value. Tourre who famously called himself in a January 2007 e-mail “The fabulous Fab … standing in the middle of all these complex, … exotic trades he created.”
I saw this initially on my FB feed, and it teased: “Goldman Sachs executives will come before Congress today, 10 days after the government accused the firm of fraud. What questions would you like to hear answered?”
My immediate response was “firing squad or lethal injection,” so I think it is safe to say that I am now to the point I can no longer even think about Goldman rationally.