Topic “Goldman Sachs Group Inc.”

The decision by Senate Democrats to move ahead with financial overhaul legislation this week has prompted a last-ditch lobbying campaign by major banks and business groups, which fear the political winds have shifted against them amid widespread public anger over the excesses of Wall Street.

WASHINGTON — Financial services companies increased their spending to influence Congress during the first three months of the year, while also hiring well-connected lobbyists to press their case on new Wall Street regulations, federal records show.

With Goldman Sachs facing civil fraud charges stemming from misrepresentations of credit default swaps, Republicans and Democrats are attacking each other for accepting campaign contributions before the fraud charges were filed. In Minnesota, four members of the congressional delegation have taken money from Goldman Sachs this election cycle: Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, and Reps. Erik Paulsen and Keith Ellison. But over the last few years, many Minnesota Republicans and Democrats have taken from the Goldman Sachs trough.

NEW YORK -- As investigators in Massachusetts considered charging Wall Street firms for their role in the financial collapse, they focused on Goldman Sachs because it had bundled and sold the shoddiest of subprime mortgage loans, setting up the housing market for a greater fall by continuing to sell shaky securities even as other banks withdrew.

WASHINGTON — Hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions made by Goldman Sachs, the New York investment firm facing civil fraud charges, are becoming an issue in this year's congressional election.

The Securities and Exchange Commission fraud case against Goldman Sachs may be settled before it ever sees a courtroom. Yet intentionally or not, the SEC has already secured at least one victory in the court of media opinion.

For months, Goldman Sachs and the Securities and Exchange Commission had been involved in secret talks over allegations that the Wall Street bank defrauded customers in selling them investments designed to fail.

Last week, when news broke of the SEC’s lawsuit against Goldman Sachs—in which the bank was accused of failing disclose to investors that a hedge fund had helped stock a Goldman CDO and then bet against it—we pointed out that what Goldman did is quite similar to what other major investment banks seem to have done with the hedge fund Magnetar. (Goldman denies that its investments were built to fail. Magnetar also denies [3] it was betting against CDOs it helped create.)

WASHINGTON—Senate Democrats, resisting a last-ditch lobbying push from big Wall Street firms, are moving toward a sweeping revamp of financial regulation that would squeeze banks' lucrative derivatives-trading business.