Goldman from Richard Russell

Richard Russell wrote this about the Goldman settlement in his Dow Theory Letters:

Goldman Sachs pulled off its greatest transaction with its recent settlement with the SEC. Goldman was selling mortgage securities that had been structured to fail with the bubbly housing market. These doomed securities were sold en masse to unwitting Goldman clients. If the case had gone to court as it should have, Goldman's reputation would have been ruined and its CEO would have been ousted. But Goldman paid the SEC a $550 million fine, and the case was completed and dropped. Sure, $550 million was the biggest settlement in SEC history, but it represented only two weeks of profit from Goldman's first quarter. In the Russell opinion, Goldman could have been hit with a two billion dollar fine, and Goldman would have gladly paid it with no arguments.