Congressional Hearing

Ready to Rumble - The Goldman Sachs Congressional Hearing Preview Game

Ready to Rumble, Senator Carl Levin is on a roll. In preparation for the Goldman Sachs hearing on Tuesday, Levin released Goldman Sachs emails (pdf). From Senator Levin's press release:

“Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs were not simply market-makers, they were self-interested promoters of risky and complicated financial schemes that helped trigger the crisis,” said Sen. Levin. “They bundled toxic mortgages into complex financial instruments, got the credit rating agencies to label them as AAA securities, and sold them to investors, magnifying and spreading risk throughout the financial system, and all too often betting against the instruments they sold and profiting at the expense of their clients.” The 2009 Goldman Sachs annual report stated that the firm “did not generate enormous net revenues by betting against residential related products.” Levin said, “These e-mails show that, in fact, Goldman made a lot of money by betting against the mortgage market.”

House Congressional Hearing on How SEC Missed Matloff

More oh gee, how did this happen? stuff on capital hill.

The New York Times did a live blog on the hearing and it's basically a true waste of time, oh, more audits, obviously a $50 Billion dollar Ponzi scheme just fell through the cracks

The real meat will be:

The SEC was warned on several occasions by Boston investment professional Harry Markopolos that Madoff's firm probably represented the world's largest Ponzi scheme. In such a scheme, some investors are paid with other investors' money. Allegedly using such a technique, Madoff was able to produce double-digit returns to investors year after year.