Did Goldman Sachs cause the financial crisis, Senator Pryor wants to know? And assuming the answer is yes, which he believes it is, do the executives on Capitol Hill today feel bad about it? If so, how much? Let’s go around the room and get everyone’s answers on that.
Josh Birnbaum: What? You want me to “editorialize about the financial system and how investment banks play a role?” I went to Wharton!
Dan Sparks: [Who is, by the way, hot.] Nope, not our fault. “Regret to me means something that you feel that you did wrong…I think it’s clear that credit got too loose and … risk over all wasn’t respected across the industry and we participated in that industry…Our clients lost money, and we feel bad about that. We have sympathy for them…” [Pryor: (Paraphrasing here) Let me just ask the same exact question one more time, in hopes of a different answer, did you do anything wrong?] “We didn’t do anything wrong.”
Fab Tourre: “I feel sad.”
Michel Swensen: [Who is emerging as the real star of this thing, totally blunt, would totally tell you if you looked fat in that, etc.] ““We did not cause the financial crisis. Specifically to the mortgage desk, I do not think that we did anything wrong.”
