[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6071-6072]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       GOLDMAN SACHS AND BAD BETS

  (Mr. WELCH asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, last week we saw two stories about Goldman 
Sachs. It made record profits of $1 billion a month for the past 3 
months and it was sued for civil fraud by the Securities and Exchange 
Commission for the manner in which it made that money misleading its 
own clients.
  Goldman has transformed itself from one of the most respected 
institutions on Wall Street to one of the most reviled for putting 
itself ahead of its clients and the American people. The $1

[[Page 6072]]

billion designed-to-fail Abacus deal for the benefit of a hedge fund 
billionaire who needed to get richer did not create a single new job in 
America. It did not provide a single American family with a new 
mortgage. It didn't help a single new business get started. It did more 
to damage the economy than it could possibly have done to have helped 
it.
  But the only difference with this Texas Hold'em new poker game that 
Goldman fuels is that when Goldman makes a bad bet the American 
taxpayer is the loser.

                          ____________________