Goldman Bet Against Housing Market

Emails can always come back to haunt you. According to a slew of messages released by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Goldman Sachs executives were patting each other on the back for betting against the housing market and making “some serious money” while the market crashed and families defaulted on their mortgages. Goldman Sachs remained profitable—the firm picked up $51 million in a single day in July 2007, and the secret appears to be shorting the housing market. These messages seem to contradict what Goldman has been saying about the impact of the credit crisis on business. “Of course we didn’t dodge the mortgage mess,” Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein wrote in late 2007. “We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts.”