Carl Levin

Well, if it weren't for the big short, you would have been deeply in the red that year, wouldn't you?

An amazing performance with a market that went under in mortgages.

You made billions of dollars going short, not net.

No, I agree totally with that.

But you guys wanted to take a heck of a lot more risk on shorts, and that is, according to your own numbers, what happened.

And that group made, as I understand it, $3.7 billion on the short side, basically, right?

You said they only used half of the suggestions. I am asking you--they did not use, you said--or they did use half.

You are benefiting now from selling stuff from your inventory.

And your own person said they are too smart to buy this kind of junk.

But it was the big short which kept you in the black that year, wasn't it?

You guys were profitable, and you were profitable because you had invested heavily in shorts.

Billions seem large to a lot of folks who have lost their homes.

That total is consistently below zero, home, throughout the whole year.

You were consistently short. As a matter of fact, you were very short.

So you would agree that you were in a net short position for most of the year? Would you agree to that?

Do you see where the second paragraph says, 'At the end of the meeting, the Paulson team'--this is you speaking--'told us that they were happy to have met'...

During most of 2007, we maintained a net short sub-prime position and therefore stood to benefit from declining prices in the mortgage market

You ought to have plenty of regrets. I do not think that you are willing to acknowledge them, but you ought to have them.

You are trying to shift the risk of that junk to somebody else.

Your salesperson believed it was junk.

They think you are fiduciaries, and then...

Do you think that a customer has a right to believe that you want that security to succeed?

You knew Paulson was on the short side of the trade. Is that correct?

It could have been more accurate.

You think, hey, give the less flexible folks to our customers. We will save the more flexible for ourselves.