Goldman takes on new role: taking away people's homes

[deminks]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/77841.html

SAN JOSE, Calif. — When California wildfires ruined their jewelry business, Tony Becker and his wife fell months behind on their mortgage payments and experienced firsthand the perils of subprime mortgages.

The couple wound up in a desperate, six-year fight to keep their modest, 1,500-square-foot San Jose home, a struggle that pushed them into bankruptcy.

The lender with whom they sparred, however, wasn't the one that had written their loans. It was an obscure subsidiary of Wall Street colossus Goldman Sachs Group.

Goldman spent years buying hundreds of thousands of subprime mortgages, many of them from some of the more unsavory lenders in the business, and packaging them into high-yield bonds. Now that the bottom has fallen out of that market, Goldman finds itself in a different role: as the big banker that takes homes away from folks such as the Beckers.

(end snip)

Gawd, buy up risky loans, make side bets against them, then go seize the property. Win Win for Goldman. Too damn bad for the people who tried to put a roof over their heads.

[barbtries]

1. caption to the video on the page:

How one couple beat Goldman Sachs and saved their home

going to read it now.

[ixion]

2. wow... I'm so glad we bailed them out

I mean, who would be around to make our lives miserable?

Oh yeah, there's the rest of the F.I.R.E. industry for that. :eyes: