Wall Street stonewall: Goldman Sachs

Huffington Post:


Goldman Sachs refuses to comply with federal investigators probing the roots of the financial crisis, a government panel said Monday.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission slapped Goldman with a subpoena compelling the most profitable firm on Wall Street and the nation's fifth-largest bank by assets to turn over documents and produce employees for interviews.

Thus far, most of the firms at the heart of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression have voluntarily turned over documents and allowed crisis investigators to interview their employees.

This is at least the panel's third subpoena pushing financial industry exes to comply with its request. The FCIC's first such subpoena was issued to Moody's Corporation in April for the firm's delay in producing documents and allowing investigators to interview Moody's Investors Service personnel. Its second subpoena was issued last month to famed investor Warren Buffett, compelling his June 2 testimony before the FCIC. Both parties complied.

In a statement, the FCIC said it issued its subpoena to Goldman for "failing to comply with a request for documents and interviews in a timely manner."

"In seeking documents and testimony from public agencies and companies, the Commission has made it clear that it is committed to using its subpoena power if there is a lack of, or delay in, compliance," the statement noted. "Failure to comply with a Commission request is viewed with the utmost seriousness, as the Commission will not be deterred from getting desired information."

A Goldman spokesman said the firm is complying with the investigatory panel's requests.

And more from Bailout Sleuth:



Panelists are not saying exactly what they are seeking from Goldman Sachs, but they said the company responded to several very specific requests with an overload of data so extensive that there was no way to tell whether it contained answers to the panel's questions.


FCIC Vice Chair Bill Thomas said during a media conference call that Goldman Sachs has provided the panel with five terabytes of data - about the equivalent of 300 million pages of Microsoft Word files - with no meaningful index or other way to identify what's inside.


"We didn't ask them to pull up a dump truck to our offices," said FCIC Chairman Phil Angelides.