{"id":724720,"date":"2010-04-27T16:06:19","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T20:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"tag:consumerist.com,2010:\/\/1.10005066"},"modified":"2010-04-27T16:16:05","modified_gmt":"2010-04-27T20:16:05","slug":"senator-to-goldman-sachs-why-did-you-push-a-shitty-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/724720","title":{"rendered":"Senator To Goldman Sachs: &#8220;Why Did You Push A Shitty Deal?&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/consumerist.com\/assets_c\/2010\/04\/shittydeal-thumb-250x186-39787.jpg?w=780\">         <\/p>\n<p>We don&#8217;t normally put expletives in our headlines, but when a Senator says the word nearly a dozen times in an open hearing, who are we to argue? And, we have to admit, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) certainly makes a compelling case when he reads back Goldman Sachs internal emails and concludes that the company&#8217;s &#8220;top priority was selling that shitty deal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"480\" height=\"385\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/gLx2Xc1EXLg&#038;hl=en_US&#038;fs=1&#038;\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><\/object><\/p>\n<p>The deal in question involved a fund called Timberwolf, which was called &#8220;shitty&#8221; in internal company emails, and which lost 80% of its value within months of being issued. Despite the apparently accurate characterization of the fund, Goldman told its sales force that pitching Timberwolf to clients was a &#8220;top priority.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In hearings before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Levin pushed Daniel Sparks, the former head of Goldman Sachs&#8217; Mortgage Department, to admit that the company knowingly sold low-quality investments to its clients.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You knew it was a shitty deal and that&#8217;s what your e-mails show. How much of this shitty deal did you continue to sell to your clients?&#8221; Sparks declined to answer, and did his best to avoid repeating the term.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to Sparks, today&#8217;s hearings included testimony by trader Fabrice Tourre, who vowed to defend himself against the &#8220;false claim&#8221; that he defrauded investors, and CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Most denied any wrongdoing, echoing Sparks&#8217; claim that the company made some &#8220;poor business decisions,&#8221; but didn&#8217;t do anything wrong. &#8220;Regret to me means something that you feel that you did wrong, and I don&#8217;t have that,&#8221; he said.   As Levin might say, &#8220;Shitty.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/hsgac.senate.gov\/public\/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&#038;Hearing_ID=f07ef2bf-914c-494c-aa66-27129f8e6282\">Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: The Role of Investment Banks<\/a> [Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We don&#8217;t normally put expletives in our headlines, but when a Senator says the word nearly a dozen times in an open hearing, who are we to argue? And, we have to admit, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) certainly makes a compelling case when he reads back Goldman Sachs internal emails and concludes that the company&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2760,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-724720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-32x2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2760"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}