THIS IS ENCOURAGING

The Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommitte reached a truly bi-partisan conclusion: Goldman Sachs is a parasite.

Senate panel rebukes Goldman, others over risky mortgage deals
By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2011

WASHINGTON — Goldman Sachs, which paid $550 million last summer to settle federal fraud charges from an offshore mortgage deal, failed to tell investors in a second, $2 billion bundle of risky mortgage securities that it was secretly betting on their default, a Senate panel charged Wednesday.

When the securities' value plunged, Goldman reaped a $1.35 billion profit at the expense of its investors, the Permanent Investigations Subcommittee said in a scathing summary of a two-year investigation into the chain of deceit and greed that caused the nation's financial crisis.

Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the subcommittee chairman, accused the Wall Street giant of deep conflicts of interest, "abusive practices" toward its investors and "disgraceful" tactics in exiting the subprime home loan market.

Unlike the crisis inquiry commission, which fractured in partisan disputes, the Senate subcommittee report was presented as fully bipartisan. Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the ranking minority member, joined Levin at a news conference, decrying the expenditure of over $8 million on the independent commission "that didn't report anything of significance."

Coburn also assailed Congress for failing to police the financial industry.

"We can prevent the next one of these from happening if Congress does its job," Coburn said.

The same panel found that Moody's and Standard & Poor's had the morals of a crack whore trainee:

Report: Big profits drove faulty ratings at Moody's, S&P
By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2011
WASHINGTON — Analysts who reviewed complex mortgage bonds that ultimately collapsed and ruined the U.S. housing market were threatened with firing if they lost lucrative business, prompting faulty ratings on trillions of dollars worth of junk mortgage bonds, a Senate report said Wednesday.

Profits at both companies soared, with revenues at market leader Moody's more than tripling in five years.

More than 90 percent of AAA ratings given in 2006 and 2007 to pools of mortgage-backed securities were downgraded to junk status.