goldman sachs has a charge from the securities and exchange commission. we ve been reporting on that. that is a civil charge. nobody goes to jail. it s a fine, if they were to be found guilty of that. something has developed on that front. something has developed on that front and that is this. numerous reports the s.e.c. has referred this case now to the justice department. so for a criminal investigation, which takes it up a notch, right? a criminal investigation, it s a probe, it s early, it is not charges. it s not guaranteed that it will be charges. but just to let you know this is what has developed. goldman says given the recent focus on the firm, they re frankly not surprised by the report of an inquiry. and they are going to fully cooperate with any requests for information. as you know, we ve been covering it extensively. the s.e.c. fraud charge against goldman sachs, it has to do with a billionaire investor, hedge fund investor named john
look into it. meanwhile, we are looking into all these e-mails, 20 million pages of e-mails. that s a lot of e-mails. first of all, i want to show you some of them from lloyd blankfein, the ceo of goldman sachs. they have a lot of different positions. first of all, from lloyd blankfein, betting on the mortgage mess. of course, we didn t dodge the mortgage mess. we lost money and then we made more than we lost because of shorts. although it is not over. so who knows how it will turn out ultimately. a lot of people zeroing in on this e-mail, looking sort of gloatinging about the shorts on the housing market, america got hurt and goldman, all they cared about was making money. on the downgrade of mortgage security from a goldman sachs manager. sounds like we made some serious money. again, all as this whole housing market is starting to crumble.
fab reese tourre, the 27-year-old who set fire to the global capital system, might have some of that in everything else, but nothing yet to suggest there was a dr. evil saying we re going to make a billion dollars off of this. this sounds like an awful lot of money to you and me, but when you look through the e-mails and sift through them. there were 21 million pages of e-mails they turned over they say they are cherry picking through them. these are different individual deals where goldman is showing, look we lost 2.5 million but good news made 5 million on this one. goldman was standing there in the middle of the mortgage crisis with some bets that were long and others that were short. a while ago they told me in late 2006 there were ten days in a row when the internal risk bell went off saying there was
goldman sachs, lots of different e-mails like this, by the way. goldman sachs responds pretty forcefully. this is all ahead of a hearing on tuesday. all of this was released over the weekend. goldman sachs, the u.s. senate subcommittee has cherry-picked just four e-mails from almost 20 million pages of documents and e-mails provided to it by goldman sachs. it is concerning. the subcommittee seems to have reached their conclusion before holding a hearing. they are giving some indication of what their stance is going to be. it doesn t team to be hat in hand. this has been the tone of goldman over the past year. they are there to make money. that s what they do and, in january, i asked an official at goldman, what are you guys going to do about your global reputation problem. they said, we don t have a reputation problem. hour clients are very happy with
self-determination as opposed to depending on dwindling commissions. they were betting its own money on things. not only putting a buyer and seller together the old-fashioned way but putting its own money at risk to make money. sometimes putting its own money gets its other company. the question is, did they create some really complicated structures that other people were buying and selling as well that may have contributed to the crisis? we know that goldman saw the crisis coming and profited from it. but did they cause it in any way, that s what congress is trying to find out. everyone is looking for the subprime villain. goldman is an he especially convenient villain. suddenly the e-mails are coming out and sec was accused of being asleep at the switch. i think it s going vexingly