Thursday, October 02, 2008

"Hank" Paulson and Goldman Sachs

Sez here that Mr. Paulson, prior to becoming Secretary of the Treasury, was the happy recipient of some of those multi-million-dollar bonuses now going out of fashion...

According to page 20 the Goldman Sachs 10-Q regulatory filing for the first quarter of 2006:

During the three months ended February 2006 and February 2005, the firm securitised $19.25bn and $15.24bn, respectively, of financial assets, including $18.15bn and $14.43bn, respectively, of residential mortgage loans and securities.

Meanwhile, on page 22, we find that Goldman had big exposures to Variable Interest Entities “which primarily issue mortgage-backed and other asset backed securites and collateralised debt obligations”. The exposures included $22bn of CDOs, $2.9bn of “asset repackagings and credit-linked notes” and $6.5bn of “mortgage-backed and other asset-backed” securities.

Mr Paulson now declares himself shocked, shocked that structured finance was going on on Wall Street but he was there at the time, and the $18.7m bonus he received for the first half of 2006 presumably reflected it.

And what was he doing?

Guess? ___________

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