Tag Archive for Collateralized Debt Obligations

SEC Goldman Sachs Securities Fraud Complaint

The Commission brings this securities fraud action against Goldman, Sachs & Co. (“GS&Co”) and a GS&C6 employee, Fabrice Tourre (“Tourre”), for making materially misleading statements and omissions in connection with a synthetic collateralized debt obligation (“CDO”) GS&Co structured and marketed to investors. This synthetic CDO, ABACUS 2007ACI, was tied to the performance of subprime residential mortgage-backed securities (“RMBS”) and was structured and marketed by GS&Co in early 2007 when the United States housing market and related securities were beginning to show signs of distress. Synthetic CDOs like ABACUS 2007-ACI contributed to the recent financial crisis by magnifying losses associated with the downturn in the United States housing market.

Financial Turmoil: The Federal Reserve’s Grand Tour

Suspects in the subprime crisis
•Technological innovation in the delivery of credit
•Modeling approaches allowed lenders to more finely differentiate and pool riskier borrowers…borrowers who had trouble getting credit in the past
•Did lenders overshoot?
•High CLTV means thin equity for homeowners.
•Doesn’t take much of a decline in prices to put homeowners “under water”
•Lenders might have underestimated the probability of a broad housing shock