Political Quotes

“I am joined this evening by a number of colleagues who are going to give us, I think, the reasons why financial reform is a must in this country. And the biggest poster child for why we have to do financial reform really is in Goldman Sachs. So we thought we would start our discussion tonight by looking at the principles that Goldman Sachs has promoted on its Web site. There are 14 principles that Goldman Sachs has promoted on its Web site. The very first, and one I would like to start out with, is ``Our clients' interests always come first.'' Well, let's talk about their clients' interests coming first. Let's speak precisely about one deal, the deal called Abacus. And in Abacus their clients were many people. They had a client named John Paulson, the biggest hedge fund individual in this country. He wanted Goldman to sell mortgage-backed securities that were bad. They were subprime. And he precisely wanted them to sell them to many of their clients, and he was going to short them, meaning he was going to bet against them. {time} 1715 But it just doesn't end there. He specifically designed the package. He handpicked the mortgages that were going to be in the package. And then Goldman sold them to unsuspecting buyers. And lo and behold, what happened? What happened was Mr. Paulson made a billion dollars, and the other clients of Goldman Sachs lost a billion dollars, and Goldman Sachs walked away with $50 million of fees that were paid to Goldman Sachs by Mr.…”