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Because this was a great excuse to shut down offcoast drilling. first off, i guess we could address that on its merits but why would you, if it has anything to do with the region of new orleans, why would the former fema director say anything other than next question? i think he should stay away from comments on this sort of thing. one of the things you ve seen already is a conservative means circulating that this was somehow, i don t know, an inside job, rush limbaugh made noises in that direction the other day that this is suspicious somehow, this this is a conspiratorial desire to stop offshore drilling and it s very similar to the same conspiracy theories floated by members of the congress in the republican party in the s.e.c. complaint against goldman. i think there is a real kind of conspiratorial bench to the way republicans conceptual lies the obama administration and its move from the extreme margins to just sort of mainstream republican thinking now. porpoises trained. ....
The company accused of making big bucks over the collapse of the housing market at the expense of its investors. and let s bring in roger altman, former treasury secretary under bill clinton, also henry blodgett, ceo and editor in chief of the business insider. great to have you both. roger, i ll start with you, is this a smoking gun or all for show. i don t think you ll see a smoking gun. i don t think it will be a good day for goldman sachs. there will be a lot of heat and light. i don t think there will be any revelations. the debate is getting a little crazy. today s press is filled with goldman sachs made a lot of money shorting the housing market. well, there s nothing legal or wrong about taking a short position on anything. now, the s.e.c. charge against goldman is very technical and i m not a lawyer, i don t know how that will come out. ....
Some of the charges that are flying around now are getting pretty crazy. meanwhile in terms of this 18-month investigation by the senate subcommittee, we ll hear about documents they uncovered, all kinds of e-mails, we ll be talking about that here as well. essentially they are not saying they did something illegal. it seems more this is about placing the blame. how much blame should goldman have in the meltdown. the hearing is symbolic, america s public outrage at wall street. to roger s point this has gone way beyond the narrow fraud charge the s.e.c. brought against goldman on one specific deal. it had to do with disclosure. this is much larger than that. roger, from goldman s perspective, what do you think their stance is now internally. are they say, look, let s suck this up, move through it and move on. we know we re going to continue ....
To be successful and smart and do our things for years, decades to come. i think there are two main points. one, all of this is harming goldman sachs. there s no question about this. it s harming its reputation, goldman sachs. really, in the industry? corporate board rooms around the world. there s no question that it s harmful. the longer it goes on, the more harmful it is. at the same time i think myself, if they could settle this quickly, they probably would. so i suspect it s going to be hard to settle and probably drag out for quite sometime and ultimately be resolved in the courts. is it harmful to them? it definitely is? let s talk about potential conflicts of interest here. according to opensecrets.org, we ve got numbers to show. goldman sixth on the all-time donor list, $31.6 million, most going to democrats, 64%, 35% to republicans. you ve got folks on the committee today who are going to be grilling these guys who have ....
You know that will be out. that the republican leadership is now, thank god, not because i m a republican, i m an independent, but thank god there are a number of voices that president obama seems to be considering. now, if the final bill comes out, and it doesn t have any protections against the federal mortgage agencies, i will not support it. i am supporting it in a general way that guys like o neil can t be allowed to game the system anymore. right, but what we have to not bill doo, bill is, not allow the populist sentiment which i think it is legitimate out there. bill: of course it is. bill bill to override what we know about what the government is also doing. the fact that the federal government filed that civil fraud action last week against goldman, the day the inspector general at the sec revealed the malfeasance, the negligence, on the part of the sec, and getting out in front of that alan ....