GOLDMAN SACHS IN LATE 2006

I noted before that Goldman seems to have realized in December 2006 that the Big Shitpile was going to collapse & this e-mail seems to show that Goldman was determined to unload its crap on customers.

Goldman’s Tourre E-Mail Describes ‘Frankenstein’ Derivatives
By Christine Harper

April 25 (Bloomberg) -- Fabrice Tourre, a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive director facing a fraud lawsuit in the sale of a mortgage-linked investment, said an index that facilitated derivatives trading in the market was “like Frankenstein.”

The so-called ABX index is “the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: ‘Well, what if we created a ‘thing,’ which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?’” Tourre said in a Jan. 29, 2007, e-mail released yesterday by Goldman Sachs. Watching the index fall is “a little like Frankenstein turning against his own inventor.”

Some e-mails indicate that selling securities to customers was part of the firm’s effort to get rid of its mortgage risk and take a negative stance on the market.

“My basic message is let’s be aggressive distributing things because there will be very good opportunities as the markets goes (sic) into what is likely to be even greater distress and we want to be in a position to take advantage of them,” Chief Financial Officer David Viniar wrote in a Dec. 15, 2006, e-mail to a colleague.