Posted on 04/16/2010 8:49:07 AM PDT by Sleeping Freeper
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday charged Goldman Sachs & Co. and one of its vice presidents for defrauding investors by misstating and omitting key facts about a financial product related to subprime mortgages.
The SEC alleged in a lawsuit that Goldman structured and marketed a collateralized debt obligation that hinged on the performance of subprime residential mortgage-backed securities. However, it failed to disclose the role that a major hedge fund, Paulson & Co., played in the portfolio selection process as well as the fact that the hedge fund had taken a short position against the CDO.
"Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio, while telling other investors that the securities were selected by an independent, objective third party," said Robert Khuzami, director of the division of enforcement, in a statement.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
Both homeowner and mortgage orginator should be called in for questioning. Homeowner may have to explain how he claims he makes 100K salary when tax records show 60K. Banker needs to explain why his underwriter department did not verify the info on the application. Put both under scrutiny and you will have them pointing fingers at each other for fraud. Sooner or later the truth will shake out and one of them or both will be going to jail. This is what is needed to prevent future fraud. If left alone, the mortgage agent will make saleman of the year, and in fifteen years may end up as the senior exec of the bank. When the public has forgotten the crisis, he may try the scam again and the younger workers will follow because history has showned that the gov will do nothing to prosecute thus the risk of getting caught is nil while the ill begotten gains will be worth the risk. Our grandchildren will be stuck bailing out these too big to fail banks again. Camp 1 and Camp 2 is correct.
Wiki answers
“Paulson started warning his investors back in the middle of 2006 that the frenzy to build and sell housing was a bubble about to pop. His New York-based firm, Paulson & Co., made big bets predicting the edifice would soon come crashing down. The wager paid off in the first nine months of 2007, when Paulson’s Credit Opportunities funds rose an average of 340 percent.
That gain earned Paulson an estimated $1.14 billion in performance fees for the nine months ended on Sept. 28. Fees on Paulson’s other eight funds bring his total to $2.69 billion, which puts Paulson and co-manager Paolo Pellegrini at the top of Bloomberg’s ranking of best-paid hedge fund managers. John Paulson is no relation to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the former chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.”
Civil charges, not criminal. So, nobody is going to be shut down, or sent to jail.
When the Fed bailed out AIG, nearly all that money passed through to Goldman.
This is a joke, of course. The folks at GS are just doing their quid pro quo back to the Fed. And the PR of “doing their job” is completed by the SEC.
This is even more pathetic than Merrill Lynch and Elliot Spitzer back in 2001/2002.
The Plunge Protection Team is going to be working overtime this afternoon to bring the market back up.
“Goldman Sachs” is to “America’s economy” as “lamprey” is to “lake trout”
As a financial professional, I have no problem with someone making an honest market bet, based on a very wise analysis, that pays off handsomely.
What bothers me in this particuar case is that the bet wasn’t honest, in so much as Goldman purposely crafted a structure designed to fail, and then sold it as if it was a good investment. That is not an honest bet borne of wise analysis. It is fraud.
“Goldman purposely crafted a structure designed to fail, and then sold it as if it was a good investment. “
Where were the ratings agencies?
Rating agencies are a joke. They were getting paid to consult on the construction of deals like this, and then they gave the deals good credit ratings. Quid pro quo.
Don’t get distracted. Who runs the SEC?
Answer: Obama
Who did Paulson work for?
Answer: GS
Ok, so, a small charge and a couple youngster VPs will be tossed under the bus. Why?
To distract from larger GS crimes that the SEC will ignore...AND, AND, AND,
To distract us from other stuff Obama is trying to push through like bank and lending “reform” and other disastrous bills.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
That’s the guy. I have not read the book yet (I own it but I’m finishing a re-reading of Atlas Shrugged) but I did read the WSJ article on him about 18 months ago.
Henry Paulson worked for GS, too.
“Where were the ratings agencies?”
Where was our republican congressional oversight....one of them was getting big bucks from Goldman.
This table lists the top donors to this candidate in the 2008 election cycle.
John McCain
Merrill Lynch $373,595
Citigroup Inc $322,051
Morgan Stanley $273,452
Goldman Sachs $230,095
JPMorgan Chase & Co $228,107
US Government $208,379
AT&T Inc $201,438
Wachovia Corp $195,063
UBS AG $192,493
Credit Suisse Group $183,353
PricewaterhouseCoopers $167,900
US Army $167,820
Bank of America $166,026
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher $159,596
Blank Rome LLP $154,226
Greenberg Traurig LLP $146,437
US Dept of Defense $144,105
FedEx Corp $131,974
Bear Stearns $117,498
Lehman Brothers $114,357
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=n00006424
Henry Paulson will look out for his own.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Paulson
Right. But the Paulson mentioned in the story is not Henry Paulson.
Obama raised $14.8 million from Wall Street in the 2008 election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics — more than any politician ever, and more than George W. Bush raised in both of his elections combined. From the fattest cat, Goldman Sachs, Obama raised $997,095, more than four times McCain’s Goldman haul and more than any candidate has raised from any single company since the McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulations.
Then there’s the revolving door between Wall Street and the West Wing, spinning as rapidly as ever. Citigroup’s and Goldman’s tentacles into the White House have been well-documented by Obama critics on the Right (most thoroughly by Michelle Malkin in her best-seller “Culture of Corruption”) and the Left (most famously by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone).
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Obama-brings-purrs-from-Wall-Street_s-fat-cats-8658762-79346897.html
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