You are telling us that you don't know that AAA ratings are important to investors?

You made billions of dollars going short, not net.

The U.S. Government decided not to allow AIG to default.

It was intended that Goldman not have any long stake on that piece. Is that correct?

If you have an adverse interest to your client when you are selling something to them, do you have the responsibility to tell that client of your adverse interest?

No, I agree totally with that.

Do you consider that a tremendous profit?

You sold about $700 million in subprime residential mortgage-backed securities, helping Fremont do that.

Do they have a belief that you, at least when you are going out peddling securities, that you want that security to succeed?

You are not aware that your own firm argues for large AAA tranches?

Thank you so much, Senator Collins.

If you think $12 billion is a small net short, the answer is, you think that is small.

You are benefiting now from selling stuff from your inventory.

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

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

We have to do a better job of striking the balance between what an informed client believes is important to his or her investing goals and what the public believes is overly complex and risky.

I happen to be one that believes in a free market. But if it is going to be truly free, it cannot be designed for just a few people to reap enormous benefits while passing the risks on to the rest of us.

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

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

That seems to me to be misleading, as well.

Did your group have a pretty good year for 2007?

I think there is a clear conflict of interest when that happens.

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

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.

You intended to keep short positions in all kinds of transactions we went into today.