Goldman Sachs To Pay $5 BILLION In Mortgage Settlement
NO CRIMINAL CHARGES
We've covered the issue extensively. This is why no one goes to prison.
Goldman Sachs will pay $5 billion to settle federal and state probes into the bank's sale of mortgage-backed securities before the financial crisis, the Justice Department announced Monday. Authorities said Goldman misrepresented the quality of loans it securitized and then sold to investors ahead of the housing bubble and 2008 crisis. The settlement includes a $2.4 billion civil penalty, $1.8 billion in relief payouts to underwater homeowners and affected borrowers and $875 million to resolve various other claims.
"This resolution holds Goldman Sachs accountable for its serious misconduct in falsely assuring investors that securities it sold were backed by sound mortgages, when it knew that they were full of mortgages that were likely to fail," acting Associate Attorney General Stuart Delery said in a statement.
Authorities said Goldman acknowledged that it received information indicating certain loans did not meet the standards it had described to investors. They also said the bank did not "typically" identify and eliminate loans with credit exceptions.
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Back in 2006, the financial titan Goldman Sachs was preparing to sell a bundle of housing loans it had purchased from the mortgage giant Countrywide. After a Goldman analyst wrote an optimistic assessment of Countrywide's mortgage stock, a company due diligence officer responded with a cryptic email, apparently dissenting from the analyst's view. "If they only knew. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ." he wrote — with 34 ellipses.
What those ellipsis may have been referring to is the fact that Countrywide business model relied upon issuing mortgages to buyers who couldn't afford them, and then selling those mortgages as high-quality investments — a practice that helped precipitate the 2008 financial crisis.
Leading up to the crisis, Goldman Sachs bought up these questionable mortgages and sold them to investors, marketing them as a sound financial product even as its own internal assessments raised concerns. The US Justice Department highlighted that internal Goldman Sachs email on Monday, as it announced a $5.1 billion settlement stemming from Goldman's conduct in the lead up to the financial crisis. The announcement does not include any criminal charges against Goldman executives — rather it asks the firm to pay the equivalent of 70 percent of its quarterly revenue in fines.
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Reader Comments (12)
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/11/us-sec-charges-texas-attorney-general-paxton-in-alleged-stock-scam.html
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/11/revealed-hillarys-wall-street-speeches-bootleg-tapes
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-03-25/blankfein-foundation-pumps-11-million-into-harvard-robin-hood
From the roughly $240 million Lloyd Blankfein received in salary, bonuses and stock awards at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. during the past decade, about $11.3 million went to Harvard University, the Robin Hood Foundation, the UJA-Federation of New York and several dozen other philanthropic targets.
Donations by the Lloyd & Laura Blankfein Foundation, a nonprofit run by the Goldman chief executive officer and his wife, Laura Jacobs Blankfein, cover the period 2000 to January 2009 and average about $1.3 million a year, according to the organization’s tax filings.
During that period, Blankfein’s compensation included an annual salary of $600,000 and $125.6 million in cash bonuses. As of March 8, he owned 3.37 million shares of Goldman stock worth $587.8 million at yesterday’s closing. Blankfein declined multiple requests for an interview about his philanthropy through Goldman spokesman Joseph Snodgrass.
“Philanthropists are motivated to create a family foundation because it allows you to be fairly strategic and focused when making gifts,” said Patrick Rooney, executive director of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, in a phone interview. “It also gives you a way to say ‘No, this area isn’t our focus.’”
After Blankfein and Goldman Sachs were criticized for setting aside a near-record $16.7 billion to pay employees in the first nine months of the year, the firm subtracted $519 million in the fourth quarter and used $500 million to fund a charitable contribution. In 2007, he received a cash bonus, stock and options valued at $69.3 million on top of his annual salary, and he got no bonus in 2008.
Robin Hood
Robin Hood, a poverty-fighting organization led by David Saltzman, received gifts from Blankfein ranging from $23,350 in 2002 to two donations totaling $850,000 in 2006, the year Blankfein became Goldman’s CEO. He is also a Robin Hood trustee.
http://fortune.com/2016/02/03/goldman-sachs-hillary-clinton-blankfein/
He hasn’t directly donated to her campaign either.
Goldman Sachs GS 1.28% CEO Lloyd Blankfein won’t say who he is backing for president. The reason: He thinks his support could be toxic.
In a CNBC interview this morning, Blankfein, who has been a Hillary Clinton supporter in the past, was asked if he is again supporting the Democratic frontrunner, who narrowly won Iowa. Blankfein dodged the question.
“I don’t want to help or hurt anybody by giving them my endorsement,” he said.
Blankfein supported Clinton for president in 2008 when she lost the nomination to Barack Obama. And he has widely been reported as helping Clinton raise money for her current campaign. So it seemed odd that he wasn’t willing to publicly say he is backing her.
The reason could be that Blankfein thinks his endorsement could be perceived as a black mark for Clinton. Her neck-and-neck rival Bernie Sanders has made Wall Street greed and breaking up the big banks a key point of his campaign. And he’s said that Clinton is too close to Wall Street to reign in the influence of the financial sector. Last week, Sanders’ campaign ran an ad saying that Wall Street firms are buying off politicians. The spot focused on Goldman Sachs, which has paid Clinton lucrative speaking fees in the past.
http://news.vice.com/article/goldman-sachs-to-pay-billions-in-fines-related-to-the-financial-crisis-but-nobodys-going-to-jail
http://www.wsj.com/articles/who-loses-the-most-from-brexit-try-goldman-sachs-1460403274?shareToken=st0288efb36719463f996f65024569150e&mod=e2tw
INVESTORS SHOULD LOOK AT THIS CASE PROVING TRILLIONS IN FRAUD:
John Kasich's State of Ohio is totally corrupted & stealing family homes & Ripping Off Investors by Violating Due Process & Spoliation of Documents for Securitized Assets to illegally pad state pensions & profit partners of his past employers via Securities Fraud & Federal Tax Evasion. Google: Jerry Blake in Canton Ohio on Linkedin for details.
I can prove BNY Mellon as Trustee has SCALPED TRILLIONS FROM INVESTOR GROUPS around the world & strategically blacked-out information in their illegally acquired Summary Judgments “To Make Them Untraceable To Countless Investor Groups Re-Sold Same Assets”. (58 Redactions in just this one case alone.) The State of Ohio & their Judges hiding Conflicts of Interest are absolutely complicit in these events which are Federal Crimes that the DOJ should be investigating. I have the proof of these claims & many more. Please note: I am qualified to make these statements related to real estate & securities. I am available for interviews.
Will gladly swear to & can fully document every word I have ever published on Public Corruption I have personally witnessed in Ohio, in a Federal Courtroom. Sincerely, Jerry A. Blake - Broker/President at Blake Commercial Realty in Canton, Ohio. (You won't believe how far Kasich's Ohio goes to cover-up my evidence of State & Federal Crimes of Public Officials by committing even more including State Employees Tampering With Court Records by adding pages clearly dated long after recording date.)
Believe it or not! I have a Feb 8th 2016 letter from Ohio Attorney General claiming Ohio has no jurisdiction to investigate, telling me to take it to FBI & DOJ. Evidence available upon request for Reporters, Politicians & Investor Groups.
BNY Mellon may be the least known among American banks on the list of institutions deemed above the law by the international cartel of bankers dictating policy to slavish American politicians and bureaucrats. See page 2 of...
http://www.fsb.org/wp-content/uploads/2015-update-of-list-of-global-systemically-important-banks-G-SIBs.pdf
"Believe it or not! I have a Feb 8th 2016 letter from Ohio Attorney General claiming Ohio has no jurisdiction to investigate, telling me to take it to FBI & DOJ."
Oh, I believe you. The OH AG is completely full of shit, of course, but I find the fact that he'd make such a ludicrous statement completely credible.