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Haahvad-Hee-Haw, Ha, Ha!: Sid Haaath

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Apr 28, 2010, 4:10:48 AM4/28/10

Haahvad-Hee-Haw, Ha, Ha!: Sid Haaath
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Bloomberg

Levin Grilling Blankfein Means Clash of Harvard Law Standouts
April 28, 2010, 12:16 AM EDT

By James Sterngold

April 28 (Bloomberg) -- Lloyd C. Blankfein and Carl Levin both have
degrees from Harvard Law School. Judging from their confrontation on
Capitol Hill yesterday, they hardly speak the same language.

Levin, chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations, pummeled Blankfein, chairman and chief executive
officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., with a barrage of questions about
why the Wall Street firm sold securities it was betting against.
Blankfein struggled to complete sentences as he tried to describe what
it means to be a market-maker.

“Levin had a simple narrative to tell: Goldman bet against their
clients,” said Jonathan Taplin, a professor of communication at the
University of Southern California’s Annenberg School in Los Angeles.
“Blankfein had these long complicated explanations, but I’m not sure
the average person listens or cares about that.”

The clash of the two chairmen came toward the end of more than 10
hours of public hearings looking into Goldman Sachs’s role in the
financial crisis. At times, it seemed like a mismatch. Levin, 75, a
Michigan Democrat, frequently interrupted Blankfein, 55, who runs Wall
Street’s most profitable bank.

“Your people think it’s a piece of crap and go out and sell it,” said
Levin, his reading glasses pushed to the tip of his nose, referring to
Goldman Sachs e-mails in which traders spoke of selling securities to
customers. “We’re talking about betting against the very thing that
you’re selling, without disclosing that to your client.”

Detroit, Brooklyn

Blankfein, often squinting, talked about providing “liquidity” and
using “instruments” that give customers “the risk they want.” Levin
just returned to his theme.

“What do you think about your own people selling securities they think
are crap?” the senator asked.

Both Levin, who grew up in Detroit, and Blankfein, the son of a postal
worker raised in Brooklyn, went to public schools before attending
elite colleges. Levin graduated from Swarthmore College in
Pennsylvania, and Blankfein from Harvard College in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Both attended Harvard Law School, Levin graduating in
1959 and Blankfein in 1978.

Blankfein practiced tax law before joining the commodities firm J.
Aron & Co., later acquired by Goldman Sachs. He became CEO in 2006.
Last year he received a salary of $600,000 and a bonus in stock of $9
million.

‘Rorschach Test’

Levin worked as an assistant attorney general in Michigan and general
counsel for the Michigan Civil Rights Commission before being elected
to the Detroit City Council and then winning a seat in the Senate in
1978. He is chairman of the Armed Services Committee as well as the
investigations subcommittee and has led probes into unfair credit card
practices, money laundering and the collapse of Enron Corp. Last year
he made $174,000.

The two men have risen to the heights of professions that are held in
low regard. Viewers tended to see what they wanted to in the hearing
because of cynicism both about Wall Street and Washington, said Victor
Hwang, managing director of T2 Venture Capital in Los Altos Hills,
California.

“It’s a Rorschach test for people,” Hwang said. “Was the financial
crisis caused by a failure of the markets or by the failure of
government? I am of the belief that the markets utterly failed and
that government failed to exercise good oversight. Levin is more
credible, but only because Goldman Sachs is near zero right now.”

‘Selling Junk’

Donna Grimme, president of H & N Plumbing and Heating in Prairie du
Chien, Wisconsin, saw the confrontation another way.

“I blame the politicians more than Goldman Sachs or Blankfein,” said
Grimme. “Goldman and Blankfein have more credibility than a senator.
The politicians want to get more involved. If the government would
stay out of financial markets and let things fall where they may, we’d
be better off.”

Robert Collet, a real estate broker in Downey, California, said he
lost an investment in a condominium that was foreclosed and that his
home equity of about $180,000 had been wiped out. He said he believed
many politicians were being hypocritical because they had accepted
contributions from Goldman Sachs and other financial firms. Still, he
said people needed to be protected against aggressive bankers.

“I’ll take Levin over Blankfein any day,” said Collet. “I just feel
they want it all. If they have 90 percent of something, they’re
thinking about how to get the other 10 percent. We need government to
protect us from that.”

As Levin’s questioning of Blankfein dragged on into the evening, he
lectured Blankfein about the ethics of his business.

“You shouldn’t be selling junk,” Levin said. “You shouldn’t be selling
crap. You shouldn’t be betting against your own customers.”

--Editors: Robert Friedman, Dan Reichl

To contact the reporter on this story: James Sterngold in New York at
jster...@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alec McCabe at
amc...@bloomberg.net.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-28/levin-grilling-blankfein-means-clash-of-harvard-law-standouts.html

Video: Goldman CEO Denies Wrongdoing in Crisis The Associated Press

Panel's Blunt Questions Put Goldman on Defensive New York Times
Panel questions Goldman's ethics Boston Globe

http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn&q=Lloyd%20C.%20Blankfein

Goldman Sachs executives face senators investigating role in financial
crisis

Video

Goldman execs deny charges

Goldman Sachs Executives testified under oath, swearing they didn't
deceive investors. As Anthony Mason reports, things got pretty heated
in the Senate hearing room.

» LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER

By Zachary A. Goldfarb http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/zachary+a.+goldfarb/
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 28, 2010

It was a day of public flogging for Goldman Sachs.

Summoned to a Senate panel examining the firm's role in the financial
crisis, Goldman executives endured a 11-hour excoriation that
crystallized the wide gulf between Washington's view of the storied
investment bank and Goldman's view of itself.

The seven men, including chief executive Lloyd C. Blankfein and
Executive Director Fabrice Tourre, subject of a fraud lawsuit by the
Securities and Exchange Commission, at times struck a humble tone with
the committee but gave no ground on the concerns raised by senators,
offering technical responses and eating up time looking for documents
in a 900-plus-page binder.

But for the lawmakers, who seldom engaged the finer points the
executives made about the markets, the question of Goldman's conduct
on the eve of the financial crisis was not primarily one of law or
finance.

"The SEC and the courts will resolve the legal question of whether
Goldman's actions broke the law. The question for us is one of ethics
and policy," said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. "Were Goldman's actions in
2007 appropriate? And if not, should we act to bar similar actions in
the future?"

But for Goldman's executives, it was a narrower question of what the
firm was legally required to do to serve its clients and protect
itself as the financial markets declined.

Blankfein, the public face of Goldman, began his testimony more than
seven hours into the hearing, receiving a more gentle line of
questioning than several of his lieutenants. First to testify were
four current and former mortgage executives -- Tourre, Daniel Sparks,
Michael Swenson and Joshua Birnbaum -- who all wore dark jackets and
white shirts and had worked extensively to prepare for questions the
committee might ask.

Goldman hired lawyers who formerly worked on the committee to prepare
the executives; one of those lawyers once told a trade journal that
the best strategy is "long, thoughtful pauses followed by rambling non-
responsive answers." The executives practiced the technique.

At one point, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) asked Tourre about an e-
mail he wrote that suggested he was looking to sell mortgage-backed
investments only to unsophisticated investors. But, taking his time,
he asked her three times to identify which e-mail she meant and to
repeat her question.

"I cannot help but get the feeling that a strategy of the witnesses is
to try to burn through the time of each questioner," Collins responded
in an exasperated tone.

The Senate panel released a report this week, based on millions of
pages of internal Goldman documents, that accuses the firm of
assembling risky mortgage-backed investments, making huge and
profitable bets against the housing market and acting against the
interest of its clients.

It was this last charge that provoked the strongest protests from
Blankfein as Levin pressed it. Referring to evidence collected by his
committee, Levin asked the chief executive how Goldman could sell
securities to clients without telling them that it was betting against
those very investments on the side.

Goldman Sachs executives face senators investigating role in financial
crisis

Blankfein was speechless.

"You just don't think it's relevant and needs to be disclosed. Is that
the bottom line?" Levin asked.

Blankfein attempted to explain to the senator that it is his bank's
job to act as a middleman, buying from clients when they want to sell
a security and selling them a security when they want to buy.

"You're out there looking around for buyers of stuff, whether it's
junk or not junk, where you are betting against what you're selling,"
Levin said. "You're not troubled by that?"

"I'm not troubled by the fact that we market-make as principal . . .
and that when somebody sells, they sell to us, or when they buy, they
buy from us," Blankfein responded.

Goldman also faces a suit by the Securities and Exchange Commission
that claims the firm and Tourre broke the law and committed fraud when
they sold clients a complex investment linked to the value of home
loans that was secretly designed to fail. Another firm, Paulson & Co.,
a hedge fund, helped Goldman create the investment and planned to bet
against it. But the SEC claims that relationship was not disclosed to
Goldman's clients, ACA Financial Guaranty and the German bank IKB.

At the hearing, Goldman executives, including Tourre, continued to
deny wrongdoing. But while Tourre said he told ACA that Paulson would
bet against the investment, he acknowledged that IKB was not
informed.

Goldman executives said disclosure was not necessary, because ACA and
IKB were sophisticated investors that knew what they were betting on.

Throughout the hearing, Levin cited e-mails from Goldman employees
disparaging investments they were selling to clients.

One e-mail Levin repeatedly referred to described investments Goldman
was selling as "shitty."

"Do you think Goldman ought to be selling it?" the senator asked David
Viniar, Goldman's chief financial officer.

Goldman Sachs executives face senators investigating role in financial
crisis

Viniar responded: "I think that's a very unfortunate thing to have on
an e-mail," drawing a burst of laughter from the hearing room.

But, he said, it was fine to sell an investment that was not backed by
good loans if a client wanted to bear the risk of buying it for cents
on the dollar. "We know it's not a great piece of paper, but it means
they think it's worth more than 20 cents," Viniar said.

Although they all had harsh words for the Goldman executives, the
senators themselves did not agree on everything. One topic of debate:
whether the executives were the equivalent of, or worse than, Las
Vegas bookies.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told the executives: "You are the
bookie. You are the house. You had less oversight than a pit boss in
Las Vegas."

The senator from Nevada disagreed. "Most people in Las Vegas would
take offense at having Wall Street compared to Las Vegas," said Sen.
John Ensign (R). "Because in Las Vegas, actually, people know that the
odds are against them. It's almost like somebody was playing a slot
machine [as] the guys on Wall Street were in there kind of tweaking
the odds."

Staff writer Frank Ahrens contributed to this report.

453 Comments| http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/27/AR2010042702326_Comments.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/27/AR2010042702326.html?sid%3DST2010042705380&sub=AR

Two planets collide for three hearings on Goldman

Gallery

Goldman Sachs in the hot seat
Goldman Sachs executives are testifying Tuesday before the Senate
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which has concluded an 18-
month probe of the financial firm's activities.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

By Steven Pearlstein http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/steven+pearlstein/
Wednesday, April 28, 2010

It was as if people from different planets had finally come together
in the Dirksen Senate Office Building for Tuesday's big hearing on
Goldman Sachs and its role in fomenting the financial crisis.

From Planet Washington were the members of the Senate's Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations, aging and slightly rumpled politicians
of varying sophistication who had spent several months tutoring
themselves about the fine points of synthetic CDOs and who only wanted
the aliens before them to acknowledge how much havoc they had wreaked
on the markets and the economy.

Their questions sounded more like speeches, their speeches more like
questions, as they waved around copies of some of the tens of
thousands of revealing documents and e-mails subpoenaed by the
committee staff.

Sitting opposite were four brilliant young men from Planet Wall
Street, each impeccably tailored in dark suits, white shirts and
subtly colored ties, and each sporting that one-day growth of facial
hair that holds some mysterious attraction to females in Lower
Manhattan. Tutored by Goldman's army of lawyers, the four responded to
each question with a question -- "What paragraph are you referring
to?" "Do you mean the firm as a whole or just our group?" -- or with a
parry suggesting that the question was based on false premises or a
misunderstanding of how things worked.

The Fab Four made clear that there was no such thing as a bad deal or
a crappy security, only mispriced risks. Nor were there winners and
losers, only willing buyers and sellers. Concepts such as fairness,
loyalty, shame and greed simply had no meaning on Planet Wall Street.

Finally, after five frustrating hours of talking past each other,
everyone simply gave up. A new, slightly older and more accommodating
panel of Goldman aliens was ushered in, followed finally by the firm's
chief executive. The results were largely the same: The issues were
never really joined, the conflicting viewpoints never resolved, the
full story never told.

Much of the hearing focused on how Goldman went from having billions
of dollars of exposure to the subprime mortgage market in the first
half of 2006 to posting big profits from the implosion in that same
market by the second half of 2007.

The more benign way to look at this dramatic rebound is that it speaks
to Goldman's knack for anticipating the market and its willingness to
break from the Wall Street herd. Many of us may be jealous of
Goldman's success or suspicious of exactly how it came, but surely we
are all better off than if Goldman had remained long on mortgages,
tumbled into insolvency and required a big taxpayer bailout.

On the other hand, Tuesday's hearing highlighted two big fallacies in
much of the current thinking about financial markets.

The first misconception is that having the ability to hedge positions
on everything from copper prices to asset-backed securities is
unquestionably good for the markets and the economy. Certainly it's
useful if farmers can lock the price of their harvest before they
plant their seeds, or if pension funds protect themselves from sudden
increases or decreases in interest rates.

But as we learned from Tuesday's hearing, the ease with which a firm
like Goldman can hedge against losses from esoteric financial
instruments can make an investment bank rather sloppy about the
securities it underwrites and distributes, or for which it serves as
market maker. Indeed, that seems to be exactly what happened at
Goldman, according to the documentary evidence uncovered by Sen. Carl
Levin and his subcommittee staff.

Although Goldman analysts and traders had private doubts about the
quality of the subprime mortgages coming out of lenders such as
Washington Mutual and New Century Financial, the bank was more than
willing to underwrite and make markets in securities based on those
mortgages. Without the ability to hedge so easily and cheaply, Goldman
and other investment banks might have been more careful about the
securities they created and traded, and buyers would have been more
careful about the ones they bought.

The other big fallacy is that investment banks that underwrite
securities are actually standing behind them. What we learned on
Tuesday is that when Goldman Sachs lends its good name to a new
offering and sends its vaunted sales force out to peddle it to some
teachers' retirement fund in Omaha or a savings bank in Bavaria, it
doesn't actually mean that Goldman thinks people should buy it.

In fact, there's a good possibility that Goldman knows it's a dog, or
suspects that the market is about to tank, and has already lined up a
big customer who wants to short the entire issue. And as Goldman sees
it, the firm has no legal or ethical obligation to inform those buyers
of its views or its conflicting interests.

There was a time when issuers would pay a premium to have Goldman
Sachs underwrite their securities, just as there was a time when
investors would pay a premium to buy into a Goldman-sponsored
offering.

Today, Goldman has fully monetized the value of its reputation, and
anyone who pays such a premium is a fool.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/27/AR2010042705285.html?sid=ST2010042705380

Republican senators again block vote on financial regulation

Video

Obama: U.S. deserves debate on Wall St. bill
Speaking at a town hall meeting in Ottumwa, Iowa, President Barack
Obama criticized Senate Republicans for continuing to block debate on
a bill to impose greater financial controls on the financial industry.
(April 27)

» LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER

424 Comments | http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/27/AR2010042702144_Comments.html

By Brady Dennis and Paul Kane http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/brady+dennis+and+paul+kane/
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked for the second straight day
efforts to begin debate on a sweeping overhaul of financial
regulations, saying the bill represents an overreach of government
power that could harm small businesses.

A procedural vote to consider the measure on the Senate floor fell
short of the 60 votes required to overcome the threat of a filibuster.
Fifty-seven senators voted in favor of advancing the bill, while 41
voted against it. Two senators -- Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah) and Evan
Bayh (D-Ind.) -- did not vote.

Democrats again accused Republicans of trying to block essential and
popular financial reforms. They planned another vote for Wednesday --
the third in three days -- to pressure GOP lawmakers to let the bill
proceed.

Despite the continued blockade, several Republicans acknowledged that
they will probably allow formal debate to begin soon. But they plan to
keep blocking the bill for now to give the lead negotiators, Sens.
Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) and Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), more
time to nail down agreements, locking in portions of the legislation
before undertaking a protracted amendment process on the Senate
floor.

"We'll go to the floor, sooner or later, either way," Shelby told
reporters after Tuesday's vote.

Assurances sought

As the closed-door negotiations continued, Democrats continued to
court a handful of Republicans who they think might be persuaded to
vote for the legislation, which among other things would create a
bureau to protect consumers against abuses involving mortgages and
other loans, establish oversight of the vast derivatives market, and
give the government power to wind down large, troubled financial
firms.

One of the possible swing votes, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa),
recently voted to approve a piece of the legislative package that
emerged from the agriculture committee. He said he is willing to
support the final bill only if more Republicans sign on. "Chuck
Grassley and 59 Democrats do not make a bipartisan bill," he said.

Republicans, meanwhile, want assurances that if they allow debate on
the bill, Democratic leaders will permit them to offer amendments. GOP
leaders, who a week ago insisted that Dodd's bill would perpetuate
Wall Street bailouts, opened a new line of attack Tuesday, arguing
that the legislation would harm small businesses.

"This bill would touch such entities as auto dealers. It would touch a
candy company that tries to hedge sugar prices. In short, the bill
reaches into every nook and cranny of American business," said Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). "I think most Americans
thought this was all about Wall Street. But as you look at the bill
closer and closer, you see that it is mostly about Main Street."

Shelby, too, said the "biggest obstacle" remaining between him and
Dodd is a proposed consumer regulator to oversee mortgages, credit
cards and other consumer loans. He argued that the new agency "would
be one of the most intrusive and sweeping pieces of legislation this
country has ever seen."

'A lot of anger'

While Shelby and McConnell spoke about the plight of candymakers and
car dealers, scores of car dealers flooded the Capitol -- their
flights and hotels paid for by the National Auto Dealers Association
(NADA) -- in a bid to persuade lawmakers to exclude them from the
legislation.

"We never should have been included in this Senate bill in the first
place," said Ed Tonkin, an Oregon car dealer and the NADA chairman.
"This should be a Wall Street reform, and it should focus on just that
-- fixing Wall Street -- and not small businesses like auto dealers on
Main Street."

The dealers, who won an exemption under the House's financial overhaul
bill, have an ally in Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), who said he plans
to introduce an amendment to carve them out of the Senate bill. "The
bill is so broad in its scope and sweep that it grabs a whole bunch of
entities that are beyond the target," Brownback said. "You've got a
lot of anger in America today about an overreaching federal
government."

Obama administration officials have said they would oppose efforts to
exempt auto dealers and would seek to strip out the House exemption.
The issue underscores how legislation dubbed the "Wall Street reform
bill" has piqued concern in industries nationwide.

After voting with Republicans for a second straight day, Sen. Ben
Nelson (D-Neb.) told reporters that his main concern is ensuring that
the legislation affects "Wall Street, not Main Street." He denied that
the main source of his discontent was the exclusion from the bill of a
derivatives provision he had sought that could have aided Berkshire
Hathaway, owned by Nebraska investor Warren Buffett. Nelson said that
his votes had "nothing to do with that" and that he's confident the
measure will be worked out so as not to harm Berkshire in a
retroactive way. (Buffett is a director of The Washington Post Co.)

As lawmakers continued to wrestle over the legislation Tuesday,
administration officials talked up the need for new financial rules in
the nation's heartland. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and
Vice President Biden made the pitch for a financial overhaul in
Wisconsin, while President Obama spoke in Iowa about the need for
"common-sense reforms."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/27/AR2010042702144.html?sid=ST2010042705380

Wall Street's Mr. Fabu-less

The Fabulous Fab lacked apology, but not arrogance. (Melina Mara/the
Washington Post)
Buy Photo Network NewsX Profile

62 Comments | http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/27/AR2010042704637_Comments.html

By Dana Milbank http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/dana+milbank/
Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Fabulous Fab was having another less-than-fabulous day.

Goldman Sachs whiz kid Fabrice Tourre is fast becoming the poster boy
of the financial crisis, a Michael Milken for the current times. Last
week, the SEC filed fraud charges against Goldman Sachs and the 31-
year-old Frenchman who calls himself Fabulous Fab. And on Tuesday,
Fabulous sat before a Senate panel that wanted to know how he helped a
hedge-fund tycoon make a billion dollars by dumping worthless mortgage
securities on unsuspecting Goldman customers and then betting against
those same securities -- all the while accelerating the burst of the
housing bubble and the downfall of the world economy.

"The whole building is about to collapse anytime now," Fabulous wrote
in one of the e-mails that have come to light. "Only potential
survivor, the fabulous Fab . . . standing in the middle of all these
complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without
necessarily understanding all of the implications of those
monstruosities!!!"

Fabulous, in an e-mail from 2007, described the mortgage business as
"totally dead, and the poor little subprime borrowers will not last
too long!!!" Yet two months later, he boasted that he had managed to
dump some more of the worthless mortgage securities on "widows and
orphans that I ran into at the airport."

Now Tourre is a triple-exclamation-point "monstruosity" himself --
and, in true Goldman form, he made few apologies as he testified
before the Senate investigators on Tuesday. "I deny categorically the
SEC's allegations," said Fabulous, short, slight and looking as though
he were on a break from prep school. "I will defend myself in court
against these false claims."

Yes, the e-mails were problematic. "I regret these. . . . I wish I
hadn't sent those." In his French accent, it came out more like
"regret zeez" and "sent doze."

But that was the extent of Fabulous Fab's regrets. "I firmly believe
that my conduct was correct," he testified.

Fab's arrogance, and that of his Goldman colleagues who also
testified, bested previous displays of hubris by the automotive, oil
and tobacco industries. Goldman won't be done in by new congressional
regulations or the SEC claims (though both will have more sympathy
after Tuesday's performance), but the firm will be in big trouble if
customers realize how brazenly Goldman has been abusing them.

The testimony was so maddening that Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.),
chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, was
moved to utter phrases not suitable for a general audience. Twelve
times he used a word that rhymes with "ditty" and has to do with what
would be called "la merde" in Fabulous Fab's native tongue.

"Look what your sales team was saying about Timberwolf: 'Boy, that
Timberwolf was one [censored] deal,' " Levin quoted. "They sold that
[censored] deal. . . . How much of that [censored] deal did you sell
to your clients?" Pardon his French.

One of the Goldman masters of the universe, Michael Swenson, couldn't
even be troubled to learn the pronunciation of the ranking
Republican's name. He called Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.) "Cobourne."

Coburn asked who made the decision on one of Goldman's bets against
mortgage securities.

"We worked as a team," replied former Goldman official Joshua
Birnbaum, another insolent young man on the panel.

"Are you implying," Birnbaum said haughtily, "that you can only have
one person leading teams?"

After another tangle, Coburn told Birnbaum his answer was
"inappropriate, and it's also discourteous to us. We're not that
stupid."

The Goldman men found themselves blameless in the bursting of the
bubble they helped to inflate.

"I do not think that we did anything wrong," Swenson said.

"I don't have regrets about doing things that I think were improper,"
said Daniel Sparks, head of the mortgage unit.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) asked when they became "convinced that there
was a housing bubble on the verge of collapse."

"I don't believe I used those words," Birnbaum replied with disdain.
"That's how you put it," he added.

Senators on both sides were appalled by Goldman and its witnesses. The
usually mild Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) spoke of "unscrupulous
operators who seek to profit from the public's misfortune."

"You think you're so smart?" challenged Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).
"Any street gambler would never place a bet with a bookie or a house
with the record that is revealed in the documents."

"I'd like to avoid the betting analogy," Sparks said reproachfully.

And Fabulous wanted to avoid the whole thing. The poor misunderstood
millionaire complained that "the last week has been challenging for me
and my family, as I have been the target of unfounded attacks."

Unfounded? Did he tell the clients he sold the worthless mortgage
securities to that the portfolio had been designed by somebody who was
shorting those same securities?

"I don't specifically remember the words I used," Fabulous said.

How much of the worthless portfolio was selected by the man who was
shorting it?

"I don't remember," he said.

What about his previous claim that the doomed portfolio had been
"selected and mutually agreed" with the client that bought it?

"It's not very accurate," he admitted.

The SEC probably will not rate that a fabulous answer.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/27/AR2010042704637.html?sid=ST2010042705380

Goldman's campaign giving

Goldman Sachs has been one of the top 10 contributors to federal
campaigns since 1989, and its giving has increased since the 1990s.
Donations have favored Democrats.

SOURCE: Center for Responsive Politics | The Washington Post - April
28, 2010

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2010/04/27/GR2010042705466.html?sid=ST2010042705380

"hee-haw" Show
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063908/

...and I am Sid Harth

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