Goldman e-mails: ‘Serious money’ to be made

[IDemo]

Firm boasted about money it was making as housing market collapsed

msnbc.com news services
updated 12 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Goldman Sachs Group Inc. officials boasted in late 2007 about the money the investment bank was making from betting against risky mortgages, according to a collection of e-mails released by a Senate panel on Saturday.

The e-mails were released ahead of a hearing on Tuesday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations into the origins of the financial crisis and as the bank battles a fraud lawsuit by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"Of course we didn't dodge the mortgage mess. We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts," Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein said in an e-mail dating from November 2007.

"Sounds like we will make some serious money," said Goldman Sachs executive Donald Mullen in a separate series of e-mails from October 2007 about the performance of deteriorating second-lien positions in a collateralized debt obligation, or CDO.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36753472/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/

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