Following up on Sen. Carl Levin’s (D-MI) dismantling of Goldman Sachs at this morning’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) slammed the investment bank in her opening statement.
Saying that Goldman hides behind complicated jargon to mask financial moves and products that aren’t quite above board, McCaskill offered some definitions.
“Let me just explain in very simple terms what synthetic CDOs are,” she said. “They are instruments that are created so that people can bet on them.”
She continued:
It’s the La La Land of ledger entries. It’s not investment in a business that has a good idea. It’s not assisting local government and building infrastructure. It’s gambling, pure and simple, raw gambling. They’re called synthetic because there’s nothing there but the gamble, but the bet.
“You had less oversight than a pit boss in Las Vegas,” McCaskill said.
All of you were lemming-like. You were chasing each other. What you worried about most was a bad article in the Wall Street Journal, not a regulator. You were chasing compensation. You were chasing your colleagues and other investment banks, and you were trying to make a killing.
McCaskill closed with this: “You think it’s so complicated? And you think you’re so smart? Any street gambler would never place a bet with a bookie or a house with the record that is revealed in the documents that this committee has gathered.”
Watch:
