Page 324 - Cfo News Today

Crackdown on wall street. liberal groups pushing democrats to expanded reform. companies with nothing to do with wall street complain the bill will hurt business. christine matties is the cfo of united services automobile association. how would you guys be dragged into this? >> the issue with financial service reform, we support that, were the number one provide are of financial services to the u.s. military. we favor anything that provides consumer protections and helps people become financiall...

The too big to fail section, but on the derivatives, we havent worked that out. we certainly havent worked out the consumer agency because it is so broad-sweeping. were going to try. were going to keep talking and see what happens. sooner or later, the bill will probably have to go to the floor. but anything we can agree on, thats progress. >> youre not close to a deal, still not close to a dole? >> conceptually. sometimes thats inches, half inches. but were not real close to closing the well de...

>> see, thats what happens when you have a university of alabama -- >> all right. lets play this sound bite that i think is fascinating. this is the cfo, i believe, of goldman sachs, talking about these e-mails and how he characterizes them. take a look. >> and when you heard that your employees in these e-mails, when looking although these daeals, said, god, what a bloo[ bleep ] deal, when you hear your employees say that if e-mails, do you feel anything? >> i think thats very unfortunate to ha...

They lost 1.2 in 2008 and theyre going to say senator levin is being political. theyve been under it for the last week and i think tomorrow youll see lloyd blankfein, you know, fight back. >> to bring up what vicky is saying these are just a few e-mails and goldman sachs can point to what they lost but when you look at the polling you have people who want overwhelmingly some kind of reform and when you hear things like we made some money and this kind of language, were making serious money, and ...

Lives quote goodness. facing angry lawmakers when they testify tomorrow on capitol hill. joining me robin far zad and christine romans. theres a lot of populist anger out there. but goldman has towed the line that what they were doing was starting to short the market, betting against the housing market, just to manage their risk. i want to show you a couple of e-mails released by senators on saturday. one is from a manager in 2007 saying, weve got one manager saying, sounds like well make seriou...

Red-hot. their defense we didnt make money on the mortgage mess, its now full of holes. from e-mails bragging about making a killing on the housing markets decline. in october, 07, the cfo boasted, quote, sounds like we will make some serious money. and besides that, one of the biggest guys at goldman wrote, quote, of course we didnt dodge the mortgage mess, we lost money, but made more than we lost because of shorts. now, shorting is basically pet betting an investment will lose money. the whit...

Lost money and even bigger bets helped fuel the financial crisis. this gives more fuel to the s.e.c.s civil fraud charges filed against goldman. here is how it worked according to the agency. goldman led a big hedge fund that was supposed to lose money and sold the deal to investors on bets that it would go up. a trader jokes about the bonds he sold afterwards, laughs about pedaling them to widows and orphans while he expected the boom to go bust. goldmans defense, the bank lost more than a bill...

A bright guy. but when he chose to make the statement is a week that gallop came out with a report that says 1.5 million people, who are either unemployed or underemployed got jobs in the last 30 days. the indications are that obamas policies are working. and there is big movement now in jobs situation. >> cheryl: trace? >> we are not seeing it. high-tech in particular. cfo was interviewed and said if the administration doesnt do more to educate the people and give us incentives to stay, high-te...

>> its still hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. based upon the evidence weve seen, that they committed a crime. certainly a prima facie case is there. there is evidence of civil and criminal misconduct. and i think we will see prosecutors looking very, very hard at this. and i think in fact there is no doubt civil cases will be brought. we had a failure, always you pointed out, the ceo, the cfo, an accountants and the regulators and the fed. will there be cases? almost without a doubt, whe...

Why is our leverage x? what are you doing to keep the company solvent when people are questioning it. i say if you look at this case, what they put out there today, or last night, theres not a criminal charge here. >> you know, the more we hear about the way the banks have been operating, the more people wonder why they havent come up with new and better regulations. look at greece, with our banks complicit and their downfall. >> orange county, california, what happened in greece is what merrill...