Topic “Goldman Sachs”

For almost two years, Goldman Sachs has been spinning what many believed was a far-fetched tale.

Goldman has maintained that it had entirely hedged its exposure to the American International Group before A.I.G. collapsed in September 2008. Goldman’s chief financial officer, David Viniar, has repeated over and over again: “We had no direct exposure.”

With the financial system on the verge of collapse in late 2008, a group of troubled banks doled out more than $2 billion in bonuses and other payments to their highest earners. Now, the federal authority on banker pay says that nearly 80 percent of that sum was unmerited.

The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission is appearing before Congress days after the passage of sweeping financial regulation that gives the agency new powers and a landmark settlement of civil fraud charges with Goldman Sachs & Co.

Days after the Securities and Exchange Commission secured a $550 million settlement from Goldman Sachs, the agency’s chairwoman said on Tuesday that the commission was pursuing several other investigations related to the 2008 financial crisis.

Goldman Sachs agreed Thursday to pay $550 million to settle a fraud suit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission that accused the storied Wall Street bank of selling a subprime-mortgage investment that was secretly designed to fail.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., already under scrutiny from regulators, faced new questions from a congressional commission about whether it aggressively marked down the value of its mortgage-securities positions to benefit a bet Goldman made against the mortgage market.

A bipartisan panel reviewing causes of the financial crisis grilled Goldman executives about valuations of mortgage assets the Wall Street firm provided American International Group Inc. and other trading partners in the mortgage crisis of 2007 and 2008.

WASHINGTON — Reversing its oft-repeated position that it was acting only on behalf of its clients in its exotic dealings with the American International Group, Goldman Sachs now says that it also used its own money to make secret wagers against the U.S. housing market.

As Congress rushes this week to complete the most far-reaching financial reform plan in decades, the banking industry is mounting an 11th-hour end run.

An effort to force some of the nation's biggest banks to spin off their lucrative derivatives-dealing operations appears to be gaining traction, as members of a House-Senate conference begin finalizing details of far-reaching new financial regulations.

The Congressional Oversight Panel on Thursday lambasted the government’s decision to rescue American International Group in September 2008, saying the bailout continues to have “a poisonous effect on the marketplace.”

The panel, which was created to monitor the emergency funds disbursed under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, said that the bailout initiated under the Bush administration reinforced the idea that certain businesses were too big too fail.