Between 2005 and 2007, Goldman Sachs underwrote more than $11 billion of mortgages backed by the federal government and sold billions more in mortgage-backed products. When the bank’s senior managers saw, in late 2007, that the great masses of mortgage products they were producing were toxic and destined to blow up to catastrophic effect, the bank not only didn’t alert regulators but accelerated its efforts to sell off its dangerous products to hedge funds, other banks, and other unsuspecting customers as quickly as possible. “Let’s be aggressive distributing things,” said CFO David Viniar.
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