Goldman Sachs (GS) has put out a response to the piece from the New York Times's Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story, claiming the bank bet against its clients and won.

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Background: The New York Times published a story on December 24th primarily focused on the synthetic collateralized debt obligation business of Goldman Sachs. In response to questions from the paper prior to publication, Goldman Sachs made the following points.



As reporters and commentators examine some of the aspects of the financial crisis, interest has gravitated toward a variety of products associated with the mortgage market. One of these products is synthetic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which are referred to as synthetic because the underlying credit exposure is taken via credit default swaps rather than by physically owning assets or securities. The following points provide a summary of how these products worked and why they were created.



Any discussion of Goldman Sachs’ association with this product must begin with our overall activities in the mortgage market. Goldman Sachs, like other financial institutions, suffered significant losses in its residential mortgage portfolio due to the deterioration of the housing market (we disclosed $1.7 billion in residential mortgage exposure write-downs in 2008). These losses would have been substantially higher had we not hedged. We consider hedging the cornerstone of prudent risk management.



Synthetic CDOs were an established product for corporate credit risk as early as 2002. With the introduction of credit default swaps referencing mortgage products in 2004-2005, it is not surprising that market participants would consider synthetic CDOs in the context of mortgages. Although precise tallies of synthetic CDO issuance are not readily available, many observers would agree the market size was in the hundreds of billions of dollars.



Many of the synthetic CDOs arranged were the result of demand from investing clients seeking long exposure.



Synthetic CDOs were popular with many investors prior to the financial crisis because they gave investors the ability to work with banks to design tailored securities which met their particular criteria, whether it be ratings, leverage or other aspects of the transaction.



The buyers of synthetic mortgage CDOs were large, sophisticated investors. These investors had significant in-house research staff to analyze portfolios and structures and to suggest modifications. They did not rely upon the issuing banks in making their investment decisions.



For static synthetic CDOs, reference portfolios were fully disclosed. Therefore, potential buyers could simply decide not to participate if they did not like some or all the securities referenced in a particular portfolio.



Synthetic CDOs require one party to be long the risk and the other to be short so without the short position, a transaction could not take place.



It is fully disclosed and well known to investors that banks that arranged synthetic CDOs took the initial short position and that these positions could either have been applied as hedges against other risk positions or covered via trades with other investors.



Most major banks had similar businesses in synthetic mortgage CDOs.



As housing price growth slowed and then turned negative, the disruption in the mortgage market resulted in synthetic CDO losses for many investors and financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, effectively putting an end to this market.