Regeringen niet van plan met GS te stoppen

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

'dependant on Goldman's expertise and would continue to instruct the
bank' = we zijn afhankelijk van GS om uilskuikens te vinden die onze
obligaties willen kopen ;)

Groet / Cees

Fabrice Tourre tipped to defend actions in Goldman Sachs fraud charges
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

FABRICE Tourre, the banker at the centre of Goldman Sachs' alleged $US1
billion fraud, could appear in Washington next Tuesday to defend his
imploding mortgage product.

The Frenchman, 31, has been invited to appear at what was already likely
to be a fiery Senate committee hearing alongside Lloyd Blankfein,
Goldman's chairman and chief executive, to talk about the causes of the
financial crisis.

He is expected to say that he did nothing wrong in creating the Abacus
2007-AC1. This follows Goldman Sachs pulling Mr Tourre’s UK licence
within hours of Britain's financial regulator opening an inquiry into
the allegations.

Bloomberg also reported Tourre has agreed to testify and may defend his
actions, citing two people briefed on the plan.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Mr Tourre and
Goldman Sachs with securities fraud, alleging that Mr Tourre did not
tell investors who bought Abacus that the Paulson hedge fund had helped
to fill Abacus with dud mortgages in the hope that it would collapse.

Paulson made $US1bn betting that Abacus would implode when the American
housing market collapsed, while investors, ACA Capital Management and
IKB, lost a similar amount, according to the SEC.

Gregory Palm, Goldman's general counsel, insisted on Tuesday that Mr
Tourre, who has called himself ‘the Fabulous Fab’, had told ACA and IKB
that Paulson intended to bet against the investment.

"He believes he indicated that Paulson was interested, to use a
colloquialism, on the short side," Mr Palm said.

Paulson, which has not been accused of any wrongdoing, has written to
its investors to explain its role in the Goldman case. The fund's
founder John Paulson said in the letter that investors such as ACA and
IKB had been happy to bet against Paulson's hunch that the housing
market was about to crash.

"When we expressed our concerns about the mortgage markets, many of the
most sophisticated investors in the world were fully convinced that we
were wrong and more than willing to bet against us," Mr Paulson wrote.

Goldman has argued that as long-time mortgage investors ACA and IKB knew
that another investor was taking a counter view on the property market.

There were signs yesterday that the scandal was costing Goldman business.

BayernLB, one of Germany's biggest banks, said that it would stop
dealing with Goldman with immediate effect. Gordon Brown is also under
pressure to banish Goldman from the Government's advisory rota, but it
will remain on the list of authorised "Gilt-edged Market Makers".

The government pays Goldman a fee for very large sterling gilt issues -
which it syndicates - and the bank also participates in weekly auctions
of sterling debt on behalf of clients.

It is understood that the Debt Management Office is unlikely to drop
Goldman, which acted as lead manager on three of the biggest gilt issues
last year, because it needs the bank's expertise in sovereign debt sales
and access to its clients.

The government has struggled to sell sterling gilts as concerns about
the ballooning deficit have mounted. The German equivalent of the DMO
said that it was also dependant on Goldman's expertise and would
continue to instruct the bank.

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