Goldamn doing God’s Work – Not so much.
This report is up on Huffington. From the article:
In a July 25 email that year, Gary Cohn, the firm's chief operating officer, wrote Viniar (chief financial officer) to update him on the firm's mortgage market activities. The firm lost about $322 million on residential mortgages -- but it made $373 million on its bets against the market, bets that increased in value as the market tanked.
About 25 minutes later, Viniar wrote back, "Tells you what might be happening to people who don't have the big short." The firm made $51 million that day.
The Big Short – sounds like the name for a good book ;-)
The COO and the CFO discussing the Goldamn big con!
Senator Levin replies as part of this release:
"There it is, in their own words: Goldman Sachs taking 'the big short' against the mortgage market," subcommittee chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said in a statement accompanying the release of the internal emails.
"Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs were not simply market-makers, they were self-interested promoters of risky and complicated financial schemes that helped trigger the crisis," Levin said. "They bundled toxic mortgages into complex financial instruments, got the credit rating agencies to label them as AAA securities, and sold them to investors, magnifying and spreading risk throughout the financial system, and all too often betting against the instruments they sold and profiting at the expense of their clients."
Damning stuff. I think Blankfein goes before the Senate Committee next week.
Sorry for the short diary – I wanted to get this up.
This is no joke, and it has nothing to do with the Nevada Senate election, but I’m going to a poultry show.
The linked story also has the released e-mails. Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...