Goldman CDO case could be tip of iceberg

[happy_liberal]

(Reuters) - The case against Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) over a 2007 mortgage derivatives deal it set up for a hedge fund manager could be just the start of Wall Street's legal troubles stemming from the subprime meltdown.
The practice of creating synthetic CDOs was not uncommon in 2006 and 2007. At the tail end of the real estate bubble, some savvy investors began to look for more ways to profit from the coming calamity using derivatives.

The SEC's charges against Goldman are already stirring up investors who lost big on the CDOs, according to well-known plaintiffs lawyer Jake Zamansky.
"I've been contacted by Goldman customers to bring lawsuits to recover their losses," Zamansky said. "It's going to go way beyond ABACUS. Regulators and plaintiffs' lawyers are going to be looking at other deals, to what kind of conflicts Goldman has."

An investigation by the online site ProPublica into Chicago-based hedge fund Magnetar's 2007 bets against CDO-related debt also turned up allegations of conflicts of interest against Deutsche Bank, Merrill and JPMorgan Chase.
Magnetar has denied any wrongdoing. Deutsche Bank declined to comment. Merrill and JPMorgan had no immediate comment.
The Magnetar deals have spawned at least one lawsuit. Dutch bank Cooperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen-Boerenleenbank B.A., or Rabobank for short, filed suit in June against Merrill Lynch over Magnetar's involvement with a CDO called Norma.

"Merrill Lynch teamed up with one of its most prized hedge fund clients -- an infamous short seller that had helped Merrill Lynch create four other CDOs -- to create Norma as a tailor-made way to bet against the mortgage-backed securities market," Rabobank said in its complaint filed on June 12 in the Supreme Court of New York.
Regulators at the SEC and around the country said they would be investigating other deals beyond ABACUS.
"We are looking very closely at these products and transactions," Robert Khuzami, head of the SEC's enforcement division, said. "We are moving across the entire spectrum in determining whether there was (fraud).
Meanwhile, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a statement his office had already begun a preliminary review of the Goldman case.
"A key question is whether this case was an isolated incident or part of a pattern of investment banks colluding with hedge funds to purposely tank securities they created and sold to unwitting investors," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a statement.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63G21Z20100417

[kentuck]

1. I say appoint a special prosecutor.....

and name him Elliot Spitzer.