Expand Goldman Sachs Investigation

Floor Speech

Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, all America has heard about ``too big to fail,'' and they are still pretty angry about that and the bailout of Wall Street. But now there is a new addition to the lexicon thanks to Goldman Sachs, and that is ``designed to fail for profit.''

Goldman Sachs worked with a hedge fund manager who put together collateralized debt obligations that he hand-picked because he thought they would fail. Goldman got a fee for putting them together, Goldman sold him insurance, or bets against them, and then Goldman went out and sold to unknowing investors those same securities as great investments.

We are thankful that the Securities and Exchange Commission is back on the beat after a long nap under the Bush administration and Chris Cox. We congratulate Chairwoman Schapiro, but we are asking her to expand the scope of her investigation to look at any credit default swaps that were paid to Goldman Sachs that involved these so-called Abacus instruments and whether or not we could reclaim those as ill-gotten gains for America's taxpayers.

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